When Altaïr woke up, he was in chains.

He could see nothing. There were no shades of black in the room to tell him anything about where he might be. Heavy metal links weighed down his hands. When he finally managed to pull himself up so that he was kneeling, he felt the lack of a hood on his head and found he could not stand before the chains yanked him back.

"Do not bother, my friend," Ezio said from somewhere nearby. "We have both been chained."

"Where are we?" Altaïr asked, feeling gravel in his tone.

"Somewhere underground, I think," the other Assassin answered. Altaïr heard the rattle of shifting chains as Ezio moved around. "I do not see how we can escape."

Altaïr did not answer. Instead, he had rearranged himself into a more comfortable seated position, and he was resting his hands on his knees. He closed his eyes, although the darkness made it unnecessary, and focused.

"And how is meditation going to help?" Ezio asked.

Altaïr refused to let it disrupt his concentration. He soon felt the familiar release of mind, and he opened his eyes. He had a perfectly clear view of the room. It was small, just spacious enough to hold him and Ezio apart. He saw the place where the chains connected to the floor. They were poorly nailed to a wooden block. He thought he might be able to loosen the chains and crawled over to the block. Ezio's form was glowing blue in the darkness, but only to Altaïr's eyes, providing an unseen light to guide his way.

"What are you doing?"

"You should learn to silence your tongue," Altaïr said sharply, flicking his hidden blade into place. He chipped away at the chunk of wood until the chain came free.

"It is a simple question," Ezio said. Altaïr heard chains sliding across the floor towards him and looked down to see two empty restraints, then glanced up to see Ezio massaging his newly freed wrists one at a time. "After all, it is not as if it would be useful to be carrying these things around when we make our escape."

Altaïr felt anger boiling within him again, and everything soon went dark once his previous serenity was lost. His frustration only grew when he realized that he could no longer see what he was doing, so when Ezio took his hands and unlocked each restraint with one of his hidden blades, it took a great deal of control to keep from assassinating the man.

"There is a window up there. I believe we can escape through it."

"Do you know where we are?" Altaïr asked.

"We cannot have been taken far," Ezio answered. He set to climbing the wall, leaping from one protruding brick to the next with ease. Altaïr's eyes had adjusted to the darkness just enough to see Ezio's black form moving up to the window. He felt he had little choice but to follow. Ezio hauled himself up to the sill of the window and carefully perched on it, looking out at something Altaïr could not see since he was still clinging to the wall a few feet below.

"Can you see anything?"

"There are a few guards. I can dispose of them easily enough. Then we can find a way out."

"What about the man who did this to us?" Altaïr said with a thinly veiled snarl. "Borgia, you said."

"I cannot kill him yet," Ezio insisted. "I have to kill the Templars beneath him first."

"There could hundreds of those," Altaïr replied, "or thousands. Why not deal with him while we are here, when he is likely close?"

Ezio was silent for a few seconds. "Murder sends a message," he said simply. With that, he leapt silently down from the window and took care of the two guards standing directly below. Altaïr nimbly jumped after him in time to embed a blade in the neck of one of their attackers, almost enjoying the satisfying squelching sound the short knife made as it pierced the flesh like meat. He reached for his sword, half expecting it to be missing, but he was pleased when his hand met its hilt. It felt good to be destroying enemies and making use of his skills. It was perhaps not as public and challenging as he would have liked, but there was still a certain satisfaction to it. Ezio began to run off, but Altaïr remained where he was.

"Come, we must go," Ezio said, careful not to raise his tone too high. "Quickly."

"I have a plan."

Soon, the two Assassins were calmly progressing toward the exit, both of them dressed in the clothing of the dead guards. A flicker of firelight in a nearby room caught Altaïr's attention, and he started to walk towards it, but Ezio took his shoulder and stopped him.

"We must leave," he quietly insisted. Altaïr reluctantly followed once again.

He surprised himself with how relieved he was that he felt fresh, cool night air on his face once they emerged from the tunnels. He glanced up briefly as a gliding eagle eclipsed the moon, moving like a piece of night across the stars. After studying the sky momentarily, Ezio determined that they were not far from Venice. They resumed their regular attire and made their way to the city.

"You seem hesitant to kill this man," Altaïr said finally, unsure of a better way to dissolve the silence between them.

"I must remove his followers first," Ezio answered. "It will weaken him."

"You had a chance to destroy him when he could not have been any more vulnerable," Altaïr noted, "and yet you did not seize it."

"What would you know about my plans?" Ezio snapped, "Or any sort of plan, for that matter? You would sooner break every tenet of our creed by killing innocent people!"

Altaïr ran forward a few steps to catch up with him and looked him squarely in the eyes. "At least I do not hide behind my lineage."

The fire was clear in Ezio's voice. "What lineage do you have to speak of at all?" he shot back. "My family is-"

"Your family is dead!" Altaïr was shouting now. "You cannot be so proud of a thing that has been destroyed!" His voice suddenly went cold. "You claim yourself an Assassin, Ezio, yet you have not been trained to rely only on yourself." He could see the outer wall of Venice by now and decided he would reach it on his own. He began walking, leaving Ezio standing where he was.

"You were taken from your parents when you were very young."

Altaïr stopped.

"This is what happened, yes?" Ezio continued, slowly stepping towards him. "You lost them somehow. Either they were killed, or you were taken away."

"What would you know of my past?" Altaïr asked, inwardly hoping it was too quiet for Ezio to hear. "I cared not for the strangers that barely raised me."

"You must care for someone, then." Ezio was standing just behind him, speaking past his shoulder. "Now imagine if you had to watch them die."

Altaïr turned around to face him properly. "Save your tricks," he said. "I will not sympathize with you."

"It was merely a question, my friend."

They returned to Venice in silence. Altaïr vanished once they were over the city walls, dashing across unfamiliar rooftops bathed in moon and shadows, letting the world blindly wash over him in a way he hadn't done in a long time. It was like meditating while moving, running, letting his body glide freely and fluidly over a multitude of surfaces like the shadow of an eagle while his mind wandered. The night was cold and clear, and the stars looked down on him like chips of glass. He soon found himself perched on top of a church's bell tower, breathless and gasping for air, inhaling the chilled breezes with such force that they stung like shards of glass in his chest and grew in his lungs like icy twin trees. He remained stolid and silent as a magnificent white eagle landed soundlessly beside him, studying him through curious dark eyes.

Desmond awoke with a flash.

At first, he could only see white. He thought it was the ceiling, but it was too pure, too perfect to be that, not to mention that it was glowing. As the light started to recede just a little, he realized he was looking at the figure of a bird. His mind came rushing back to him. Altaïr had been running, moving with the ease of the wind over the world, twisting and turning and flying without wings. And then he had stopped, and he was looking at a bird.

He found it curious that the bird's beak and talons gleamed gold, mingling with the blinding white of its feathers. Its eyes were two spots of black, shining like pebbles against the field of snow on which they rested, watching him in much the same way that he was watching them. He could hear nothing except his own breathing.

"Who are you?" The words escaped from his mouth before his mind could stop them, and he realized instantaneously that it must have seemed a stupid thing to say, talking to a bird as if it were human. The better question was what was he doing there, why had he been pulled out of the memory with Altaïr so suddenly, or what should he do now, but he felt they should at least get acquainted.

Naturally, the bird said nothing. It inclined its head toward him, and it looked to him like it wanted to be petted. He stretched a hand toward it, unsure of what it would do. He nearly closed his eyes, not wanting to watch it bite him, if that was truly what its reaction would be, but his fingers landed on the filmy, airy feathers, and he smiled. He wondered if the bird was smiling, too.

"I'm Desmond."

The bird's head flicked downwards for a moment, indicating a nod. Did it know that already?

"Who are you?" he repeated. It suddenly opened its beak and clamped it down his fingers, and he withdrew his hand, feeling tiny teeth-like ridges graze his skin. "Ow!" He grimaced to see droplets of blood slowly growing through the stark white lines crossing his hand, like water being squeezed through a sponge. He cradled it with his other hand. "Fine, I get it. You don't want to tell me who you are."

There was a tingling sensation in his fingers that was beginning to crawl up his arm. He flexed the fingers cautiously and looked back up at the bird, but it was gone. He felt dizzy and held a hand against his head as his entire arm went numb. He decided wryly that it was a good thing he was already near the ground, because he fell backwards with no hope of catching himself, and as his world went black with a stinging pain in his head and in his arm, he realized he had never woken up at all.

Altaïr blinked. The mysterious eagle had vanished before his eyes, and he would have thought it a trick of the moonlight if it were not for a handful of gleaming feathers resting placidly next to him where the creature had once been. He picked them up and studied them for a moment before placing them in a pouch on his belt, wondering if Ezio had even heard of the tradition of painting a feather with an enemy's blood. He decided he would not be surprised to learn that Ezio had never shown another man such respect, even in death.

He saw a glint of light from not far away. It was only for a moment, but it caught his attention. He knew the form of the man darting away from him and moving through the darkness with an ease similar to his own. He rose to his feet and began the chase, wondering who it was that Ezio wanted to kill this time and why he had let a stray moonbeam dancing on the blade of his knife give him away. He had much to learn.

Altaïr stopped running when he saw the other Assassin dive off of the roof and heard the telltale splash below. He looked over the edge and watched as Ezio climbed up onto a nearby boat, then proceeded to search beneath its covering and withdrew a handful of shining gold coins. Altaïr merely sighed and leapt across the gap between two buildings to follow Ezio's as he returned to the warmth of the canal waters. Altaïr occasionally lost sight of him beneath the slowly rolling waves, and his task was made more difficult when the canal emptied into a much larger area with several merchant ships. He climbed down to street level and melded with the shadows, carefully scanning the water for any sign of unnatural movement.

Ezio's face breached the surface momentarily as he refilled his lungs, then he disappeared again, but Altaïr knew what to look for now and could more easily make his way along the shoreline to follow the other man's path. A few moments after Ezio disappeared behind a ship, Altaïr heard the barely perceptible sound of something being lifted out of the water. He spotted three men standing on the ship's deck and climbed up the side of a building to get a better view of them. They were dressed very similarly; all of them appeared to be guards. He frowned. Even one such as Ezio would not waste time dispatching of guards unless it was necessary. He closed his eyes, silently meditating on the subject, and when he looked again, he recognized the gleaming gold hue surrounding the man on the far right, separate from the blood red auras of his companions.

The man bathed in golden light reached for his chest as a blade pierced it, then let out a muffled, gurgling half-scream as he was hauled over the side of the ship and vanished with a splash into the water below. Altaïr left the scene. It was not long before Ezio met him on the rooftops once again.

"How did you know which one to kill?" he asked immediately, knowing Ezio instantly understood that he had been followed and watched during the entire ordeal. He smirked as if he had planned that part of it.

"It was the one in gold," he answered simply. Altaïr did not reply.