[A/N]: Thanks for reading! Feedback is always welcome!

Chapter 84

Nothing had gone according to plan. Nothing at all.

When Ezio and Machiavelli had arrived in Forlì, they were met outside the walled citadel by Caterina Sforza and her armed escort. Caterina was as charming as Ezio remembered her, although he was a little concerned to hear she had ordered the death of her husband since their last encounter. She and Machiavelli explained the work he had done for the Templars, creating a map of the Codex pages for them. Machiavelli expressed regret that she had turned to mercenaries to eliminate him instead of requesting the help of the Assassins, at which Caterina rolled her eyes.

The pleasantries were short lived, however, as they soon discovered that the citadel had been attacked during Caterina's absence and they had been locked out. Ezio managed to slip inside and open the gates, and the company fought their way to safety inside Caterina's fortress.

A few hours later, two men who apparently went by the name of Orsi approached with their troops and informed Caterina that they had abducted and would kill two of her children unless her husband's map and Ezio's Apple were returned to the Templars. Ezio tasked Caterina and Machiavelli with keeping the Apple safe inside the fortress while he rescued her children, killing one of the Orsi brothers in the process. When he returned, he discovered that the other Orsi had used the threat as a distraction to lower the defenses of the fortress so they could launch another attack and take the Apple. Ezio commandeered a horse and rode after him.

Within an hour, he had caught up with and killed the other Orsi, but was stabbed in turn. He tried unsuccessfully to get back on his horse with the Apple to ride back into the city for help, but tumbled to the ground and dropped the Apple. As he drifted out of consciousness from blood loss, a monk happened to be passing by. Ezio was going to ask for the man's help until he bent down and picked up the pouch that held the Apple with a hand that was missing a finger. Ezio reached out to stop him, but it was no use. With the package in hand, whether he was an agent of the Templars or simply fascinated by what he had found, the monk left Ezio for dead and wandered off.

The next thing Ezio knew, he was waking up in a bed in Forlì a couple days later with bandages around his stab wound. The first face he saw was that of a relieved Caterina Sforza, who explained that he had been found by one of her men by chance and taken back into the city. Ezio explained that he had to go and find the monk who had taken the Apple from him, and she gave him her husband's map to the Codex pages and wished him luck.

Thus began a long and nearly fruitless endeavor to find any information they could about a man they knew nothing about aside from Ezio's fuzzy memory of him. Letters were dispatched to the other Assassins explaining the situation, and Machiavelli rode to Roma in case the Apple was somehow making its way back to Rodrigo Borgia.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. Five long years passed in total as Ezio searched the city and surrounding areas for information, writing in frustration to the other Assassins of his leads and how they eventually grew cold. In his letters to Antonio, he would always ask how Rosa was faring, but the elder thief's responses were vague at best, as the more pressing issue was the missing artifact. At the very least, Ezio received the impression that she was keeping busy, which gave him some comfort. In truth, his mind was fairly occupied as well.

He often wondered if she had spoken to Antonio as he had asked her to. Considering her illiteracy, she would certainly need Antonio's help if she wished to write to Ezio, although Antonio might have been wary of sending unnecessary correspondence between them. He desperately wished to visit Venezia and see her and the other thieves, but the danger the Apple might pose in the wrong hands was too large for them to ignore. He began to wonder if his search would ever come to an end.

This last thought was running through his head, as it often did, when he was met outside Caterina's fortress by a courier, who handed him a letter and took several of his in return to take to the other Assassins. Ezio paid little attention to the letter until later that evening, when he was able to sit down and read it after a typical busy day. When he unsealed it, the first thing he noticed was the handwriting, as it was a hand he had not seen before. At least, not with a quill in it.

[A/N]: Okay, this is where the writing becomes a bit more difficult, as the timeline gets pretty weird here. I know it's strange to skip ahead 5 years, but there are some major gaps between the events in Forli and the events that follow in Florence and Rome. Ezio goes to Spain at some point as well, but I'm sort of glossing over that like the main game does. (Why he goes off on this crazy adventure while they've misplaced the Apple of Eden, I still don't understand, but that's beside the point.)

I have some idea of how I want to carry out the rest of this story now that Ezio is canonically away from Venice most of the time, but I don't know if it's going to make everyone happy with me, so I'm going to do it in a way that makes ME happy and hope that it works (which is basically what I've been doing so far).