ANNNNND ITS 100 CHAPTERS! *PARTY STREAMERS AND CLAPPING* Alright guys, I'm literally writing the last chapters as you read this. We're on the home stretch, and I have a lot of feels. A lot. This chapter will be uploaded in its entirety today, and I hope to be updating a lot after that. Ideally, one chapter/phase a day, depending. This is it. This is really it. I can't wait for you all to read it.

Enjoy, as always! :)

In the middle of the night, Ezio sat with wine. He had poured it for the want of something to do, but was not in the mood to drink. He swirled it around his goblet, and in the light of the candle, it suddenly struck him that it looked a lot like blood. Suddenly disgusted, he pushed it away from him, and stared at it.

He'd been fighting since he was seventeen years old for a number of things. But they were always things he could understand, see, and touch. Liberty was something he saw and heard. An understanding of his purpose in this world was his own personal victory.

But this? This war for time and space? He could not see, touch, or hear it. He could not understand it. And so he knew he would go to battle tomorrow without understanding what he was fighting for. The thought did so not terrify him as freeze him. And that was more disconcerting than being scared.

'Ezio?'

He started, and spun around in his seat. Claudia was there holding a candle, looking in on Ezio with a sad smile. Their mother stood behind her, a hand on her shoulder, and she looked in on Ezio with a look so full of emotion that it was almost blank.

And there was nothing left to say on the matter that could fix it. All that they wanted to do was perhaps approach him, and spend some time in his company. He reached out his hand to Claudia, and with a look of utmost relief, she went forward. With the candle forgotten about on the table, she took Ezio's hand tight in her own, and in a gesture that they had not done since they were tiny children, Ezio pulled his sister onto his lap. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders as she tucked her head under his chin, her hand clinging to his clothes. Maria stood over them, elegant as ever, and as ever watchful. Ezio reached up and gripped her arm as she in turn gripped his. A mark of respect, and of equals.

And this is how the three passed the night, surrounded by each other. Of what each reminded them of what had happened, and what was yet to come.

'Where're we going?' Amy called up to Rory, who was scaling a ladder a little awkwardly above her.

'Up to the roof!' He called back. 'La Volpe. He, uhm, showed it to me one night.'

'And why are we going up there?'

'Just wanted you to see it.'

Rory scrambled up onto the roof, and extended his hand down to Amy. She let herself be helped up, complaining about it all the while.

'Rory, we've got stuff to be doing. The Doctor isn't going to do this on his own and we really…need…to…' Her words came to a slow, stuttering stop as she took in the whole of Rome, exactly as it was meant to be. The streets glistened with lamp lights and moved with the people heading back home like a gentle tide at night. And the whole of the city sprawled itself out like a map, its fingers reaching in to the darkest corners and illuminating every beauty it could reach.

'I just – '

Amy turned to look at Rory, who was motioning awkwardly with his hands. He froze when he realised Amy was looking at him, but with what seemed like a very concentrated effort he carried on talking.

'This city. It's beautiful, and – and pretending to be a thief with everyone else really made me see this place as exactly what it is. It's just that it never stops. It never stops changing and I'd be in one place one day and then come back to the same spot and I wouldn't recognise it. And I'm not very good at climbing – ' he winced slightly. 'But looking down on it, all those people and getting to know the city I realised that this place is just a beacon for everything else. Everything that's happened and will ever happen is because of this place, and it burns, Amy! It burns with all these people and ideas and possibilities and then I realised that even though there was all of this that made me feel like that, you -' he came to a halt, and was staring at his wife as if he couldn't quite grasp the words while she was looking at him.

'What, Rory?' Amy breathed. She was literally hanging on every word. She'd never heard him so vocal, so incensed. And when he finally looked her in the eye, her breath caught in her throat. She could almost count the stars that seemed to cluster around his head in the sky.

'You burn brighter.'

There was a moment, infinite in its capacity, that was shared between them. And it was filled with the astounding realisation that perhaps there was something that moved within them, strings that crossed and tied because despite one ceasing to exist and the other remaining trapped in a box, they would always return. And that was the way it would stay.

Amy took two steps forward, and Rory remained where he was until he leant in when Amy's mouth came towards his.

And there was where they remained, as the universe wished it so, and as they themselves did.

I put the two scenes together, it was a little short as it is, and we're done with those one word updates :P Rory MAY be a little bit OOC there, I was really struggling with it, but I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out! More updates on the way today! :)