Even after he makes it back to Masyaf- his Masyaf, before time and templars manage to take away everything that makes it home- Altair has a hard time getting the incident out of his mind. When he tells the story to Malik, his friend can only offer a few words of sympathy. No real help. Altair is disappointed, but not surprised. He tries to to imagine what he would have said a few years ago, if someone told him he would soon have time travel to worry over. He decides he wouldn't have had anything nice to say.
He spends a lot of time worrying about it in private, and wishing there was someone he could talk with about it all. He starts to cut himself off from the rest of the order again, much to Malik's frustration. "You're supposed to be an example here," his friend snaps one night. "Not a novice with an overinflated opinion of himself."
It's on that same night, many hours after Malik has given up on Altair and left him alone, that Altair hears something behind him and turns, fully expecting another argument. He has an angry statement half ready on his tongue when he sees who it is in his doorway, and stops. "Ezio," he says, and he's pleased to find that he barely needs to try to make the apple translate for him. It gets easier every time. "What are you doing here?"
"Ah-" Ezio looks a little worn out. Honestly he looks like he's been crawling around underground somewhere. "It's a long story."
"It's always a long story," Altair says.
"True," Ezio laughs, and sits down. "I told you I came to Masyaf to search for wisdom. I didn't find it. But there's a locked door under the keep-"
"No there isn't," Altair interrupts.
"There will be, then," Ezio insists. "Someday. And the keys that unlock it are-" he reaches into his robes and pulls out a smooth stone disk. It glows dimly, and the faint reaction Altair can feel from the apple tells him its precursor technology. "They're you."
"What do you mean they're me?" Altair asks.
"I've never seen an animus," Ezio says. "But I think this is probably close to the same thing. Only it's not limited to looking at your ancestors. I found this under Constantinople, and I could..." he hesitates, weighing words. "Feel that there was someone in here. I didn't realize it was you until I got here."
He passes over the disk, and Altair turns it over in his hands. "So you're looking at my memories now," he says. "And someday I'll have to go track these disks down to record the memories onto them."
"So that someday I can find them, and use them to come tell you to go look for them," says Ezio.
"Why didn't I put more interesting memories on them?" Altair asks.
"I don't know," Ezio says. "They're your memories."
Altair passes the disk back. "And they're keys, too?" he says. "What do they unlock?"
Most people wouldn't have noticed the flicker of hesitation that crosses Ezio's face, but Altiar is good at reading people. Almost as good- he thinks of Malik- as he is at driving them away. "There's an old legend," he admits. "The library of Altair-"
It strikes Altair as funny, all of a sudden. Here's this man- a master assassin in his own right, many years Altair's senior, weathered and battle scarred- and for some reason, he still thinks Altair is some mythic figure out of legend. He laughs, and thinks- that statue in the sanctuary has a lot to answer for. "I promise," he says. "Whatever wisdom you think is hiding in there, it's not worth it. I don't have much to offer."
Ezio looks him over. "How old are you?" he asks.
"Twenty eight," he says.
"Don't give up on yourself yet," Ezio says. "Trust me, when you're old, looking back on twenty eight feels like looking at the ground from the top of a cliff." He shrugs. "I wasn't even a full assassin until I was twenty nine."
Altair considers the man across the table from him, feeling his respect grow. Before Desmond died, Altair heard a lot about what Ezio had managed to do for the brotherhood. It had been a scattered mess when Ezio began, and by the end- "I don't think I can do what you did," he says. The words are bitter on his tongue, and he feels incredibly small as he says them. "I know how to fight, and I know how to kill. I don't know how to lead."
"You'll learn," Ezio tells him.
"And?" Altair asks. "Even if I do everything you think I can do, it'll all be gone by the time you're born. Desmond told me- the order is scattered and weak. The templars have all the power."
"But there are still assassins," Ezio says. "There are always assassins. Look at Desmond's time- the templars have all the power again, and everything I've done in my lifetime is gone. But the assassins are still there. There will always be assassins, as long as there are templars. As long as there are people that don't believe in freedom."
Altair sighs. "I remember the day Desmond came out of the animus saying he'd just lived through the birth of some ancestor that couldn't be bothered to figure out how to breathe," he says. "When did you get this all figured out?"
"Right now probably isn't the best time to mention the codex," Ezio says.
"The what?"
"Altair?"
He turns, and finds Malik in the doorway, looking at him like he's just lost his mind. "Who are you talking to?"
"Who's he?" Ezio asks, at almost the exact same time. Altair looks between the two of them, and gives a mental sigh. He can already tell that between Malik's sarcasm and Ezio's invisibility (much the way no one but Desmond could see Altair, it seems Altair is the only one who can see Ezio), this is going to be a difficult conversation.