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

Unfortunately, I will not be able to publish a chapter next week, as my schedule is a bit more busy than usual. Everything should be back to normal (for the foreseeable future) starting the week after that!

Chapter 90

Ezio gave Rosa's door a powerful knock and stepped back to wait for her to answer it so as to avoid being hit in the face as it swung open (it had happened before, and she had teased him about it mercilessly). Instead, however, he heard her voice call from inside.

"I already told you, Franco, come back later! Tell the others I don't have time for a race right now. I'm busy!"

Ezio hadn't, until this moment, considered how much he had missed the sound of her voice. It was exactly the way he remembered it. At the risk of interrupting whatever Rosa was doing and receiving whatever punishment would have likely befallen Franco under similar circumstances, Ezio opened the door himself and stepped inside. He could tell from the sound of her voice that she was around the corner and wouldn't see him as he came in. Nevertheless, she heard him all too well.

"Well, Franco knows better than that, so that had better be Ugo or Antonio and it had better be important!" she warned. He could hear her shuffling some papers.

Ezio stepped around the corner so that he was within view.

"Then you must accept my apologies for this interruption, I'm afraid."

Rosa was sitting at a desk looking over some documents and books (presumably from the library in the Palazzo della Seta) when he found her. It was strange to see her so concentrated on what she was reading, but there she was, sitting in the same room in which he had found her so often before. There was an unmistakable hint of aging about her, and indeed, about himself. Her dark hair was sprinkled with occasional gray strands that matched his. They were both still very much in their youth, but the half-decade's difference between Rosa now and the Rosa of the past startled him a bit.

He was, of course, not nearly as startled as Rosa, whose eyes widened as the voice and the man standing in front of her clicked with the memories in her mind.

"Ezio!" she stood up. "What are you doing here?"

"Intruding on your work, it would appear," he chuckled, indicating the papers. "What is all this?"

She looked at them for a moment. "This? These are…just some things I've been reading." She shook her head to collect her thoughts. "They're not important. Well, they are, but not right now!"

She ran over and hugged him, and he hugged her in return. All his concerns about the awkwardness of the meeting immediately vanished, and he was content to have this moment.

She released him several seconds later and paced around excitedly.

"I don't know what to say!" she laughed at herself. "There is so much I want to talk to you about! Did you receive my letter?"

"Sì, just before I left Forlì. I did not have a chance to reply to it before I left, but Zio Mario stopped me on my way to Firenze. We have to postpone our mission for the moment, so I decided to visit you. When did you learn to read and write?"

"I've been studying as I can," she explained. "As I said in the letter, Antonio has been helping me."

"You also said you wished to speak to me about something," Ezio reminded her.

She nodded hesitantly. "Sì, I do, I do. I'm just…now that you're actually here, I'm not sure how to begin."

"Then just begin," he urged her. "I will listen."

She took a deep breath and exhaled, but before she could say anything, her eyes fell on the materials she had been reading, and Ezio's followed. Upon this second and closer inspection, he began to recognize what she had been reading. They were things he had read as well, during the long days he had spent in Monteriggioni when he first fled Firenze with his mother and sister. They were the writings that had given some context to the death of his father and explained the history and purpose of the war of which he (and now, Ezio) was a part.

When Rosa noticed that his eyes were now fixated on the desk, she remained silent. There was nothing, they both knew, that she could say or do in that moment to get his attention. In the next moment, she would have to explain everything, but for this one, she would have to wait while he quietly came to understand what her lips had failed to speak.