Over

Ezio smiled and watched as the ghostly figure of the strange man known to him only as Desmond smiled faintly, then disappeared probably forever.

He could not believe that his mission really was finally over, that his tasks whether given to him by Gods or some other divine entities were complete.

"I think that I can finally go home now, see Claudia and maybe take a long needed rest with Sophia, somewhere nice and breezy like a villa in Milano would do" he thought to himself, as the room descended back to darkness save for a few dotted torches around the library.

He had spent a long time in these catacombs, but now it was time to leave. This chapter, and his full involvement with the order was over. He needed a rest.

"Sophia must be getting worried" he thought, taking a final look at the apple as he stepped away to make his leave.

Before he could do that however the apple from the other side of the room began to glow brighter, and brighter, causing him to turn in confusion.

Ezio wheeled round slowly as the growing golden light shimmered, wondering if more dancing paintings that seemed hollow yet real would show up and that maybe it would give him some new task to worry about. What he didn't expect though was the apple to levitate completely by itself and then with a mighty explosion shoot golden energy outwards towards him, through him and around the room as he felt the mind numbing static of the ancient magics mould over him.

Ezio would have dived to the side and avoided the light had his reflexes not been that of a middle aged man albeit a Master Assassin who had brought down armies and cults and built up the Assassins to favourable positions all over Europe whilst weakening the Templars and pushing them back to square in many areas whilst eliminating them in Italy entirely.

So the light hit him and sent him shooting back into one of the old bookcases with the force of a giant hitting a spring lamb. Ezio gasped as the wind was knocked from his lungs and cried out as his back hit the upper shelf, knocking the case over and into the one next to it.

"Catzo" he groaned as he gritted his teeth and attempted to stand, finding it hard, something sprained. His vision blurred slightly but he could hear behind him as the other bookcases began to topple like dominoes, set off with the force from him crashing into the first.

"Why would the apple attack me? How could the apple attack me?" he thought as he use his hook blade to grasp the side of the bookshelf and with a burst of strength wrench him out of the broken old wood and paper and onto to the cold stone floor.

He groaned wearily and limped towards the library exit, clasping his cracked and possibly broken ribs in pain as he heard Sophia shouting if he was ok or not. He would have answered, had not at that exact moment the entire world begun to shake very violently.

His injury made him very unsteady and he almost fell over as the roof of the library began to crack and small chunks of stone fell, breaking into dust when they hit the ground. A few torches went out and Ezio watched as a pillar fell between the doorways, followed by the section of roof it was holding up.

After another few seconds thought he felt and heard a terrible clang as a larger piece of stone hit him on the head, knocking him out. He had no time to think of Sophia, Assassins, Templars or retirement or that he was probably going to wind up dead.

He did ask whether he was alive or not when he did come round later though. He opened his eyes groggily and coughed, inhaling dust particles that now filled the cold and deadly silent air. He sniffed and tried to stand but found it near to impossible as his limbs refused to obey him.

He tried again and was still unable to coerce them into doing anything except giving off aches and pains, some that had been there and others that had only now just arrived thanks to the huge collapse of the library entrance.

He flicked any eye open and saw that he was staring at the dark ceiling of the library, now missing large chunks, making it look like even more of a scarred ruin. Only three torches glowed now, dim and running low on oil Ezio new they wouldn't last long.

'Sophia' Ezio suddenly thought in panic. 'I hope she is ok, hopefully she'll go to the village just out of the fortress and find help. The locals seemed willing and friendly enough' he thought as he was finally able to gather the strength to roll onto his stomach where a terrible site greeted him.

The Entrance had been more than destroyed when that pillar had collapsed. It was actually no longer there. It was only a large mass of rocks that would take miners weeks if not months to move through even with gunpowder on hand.

Ezio didn't seem to be thinking that this was a great injustice. If anything he thought it was typical.

Having his life now cut to maybe a few hours of choked air and forced to never see his family or Sophia again.

Instead he chuckled at the irony of the fact that an Apple of Eden, a tool he had once wielded to do good, that he had sought for all over the world, had done this to him.

He wasn't sure why he found it funny but it was. Unfortunately chuckling resulted in coughing so he stopped abruptly and laid his head on the cold stone floor of the library. "Sophia will get help, try for a few weeks maybe to dig me out with what she finds but then she will mourn, she is smart and knows how it works... she will find another" Ezio uttered sadly to the darkness, his only friend in the world now.

"Sophia will inform Claudia, and she will inform the Brotherhood, and then there will be a god awful funeral that everyone will have to attend and naturally my name will probably be made into some grand legend like Altair's" he sighed, not liking the idea of being made onto a god-like figure, having spent his life fighting god-like figures.

'At least the fight will continue and the Brotherhood will not rest until the Templars are all put down and the people free to govern their own minds for what is the best way to live together. Desmond will carry on.' He thought as he got his finger to move, wriggling them to return feeling as he sniffed at the musty air.

He pushed his hand against the floor and suddenly his other body parts began to function, life returning to them even if that was a drained and injured energy that also brought pain and weariness that he was oh so sick of now.

He shakily stood up, really feeling his age through his injuries. His little scars were faded but the stab in the gut from Rodrigo still felt painful in his mind as it did right now. As did his shoulder and right side from the gunshot wounds he's sustained in Montrgrione just before it's fall and his timely ironic fall to accompany it. Finally the more recent injuries of the carriage chase where he's almost several times fallen to his death along the treacherous roads.

"So many times I could have died and yet fate picks choking in an ancient library to be one." He shook his head not believing it. Yet as he limped to the blocked entrance his earlier observations were confirmed that all way to Sophia, through physical or oral communication was blocked and would not be movable for some time.

He scanned the room with his eagle vision to see if he could find anything, naturally nothing turned up besides the apple now lying dormant, the powers seemingly expelled from it. There was no secret door or compartment this time, just the blackness and the apple faintly glowing snidely at him in the corner.

He didn't even want to look at it, angered that it would do this to him after all he had done for it… or at least it's Masters. The anger melted into a new fit of coughs as it become increasingly harder to breathe and he was forced to sit down until he stopped.

Ezio was beginning to feel a little dizzy. The kind of dizzy he remembered feeling whilst he and Sophia were high over the mountains. This dizzy he knew would end up with him feeling nauseous and then sleepy and then most likely nothing as he'd be dead.

He rubbed his brow and wondered for how long he'd been knocked out, probably too long, but then in the end it didn't matter. He was dead and that was that. There was nothing else to do except wait for it to end.

He took the agonising time to remember his life. His poor brothers and his Father; his many loves in his younger years all who had been mainly one-night stands his first true love Catarina, who'd left him for her family as was rightly so, his years of honing his skills and killing and finally Constantinople and all it's amazing and diverse treasures that had led him to convey the message in the library to Desmond, the man centuries ahead of him who would continue this fight... the never ending fight.

He would never understand him or his purpose but in the end he didn't need to, and was content with the amazing life he had despite all of the killing it involved, even though it was necessary and could not be condemned as it had freed many peoples and stopped evil dozens of times over.

Ezio coughed again as he felt the nausea coming and going and the torches died out, now only the apple giving off light. He wheezed the horrid air and his lungs cried for the breeze and fresh air of the mountains that tasted like sweet Tuscanese wine compared with this.

"If I could do it all again I would try to save them all. Try to not hurt anyone that didn't deserve it and probably devote more time to those I love" he whispered as his mind began to dance with constellations and galaxies.

He sagged in the chair and looked over at the old skeleton of Altair, the Assassin who had really started it all. The true purpose of the order and the fight against what the Templars stood for, even though that fight had been going on for probably longer than time itself and would continue until rapture.

"Well brother I think it's time for one final journey that you can help me with" Ezio sighed, smiling and inhaling once more before he closed his eyes, leaning back in the seat that had become a hundred times more comfortable than it was a few minutes ago.

His mind became befuddled and after a few minutes he wasn't sure of anything, only the blissful feeling of sleep that overtook him as time, troubles and memories floated into the void along with him.

So died Ezio, probably the greatest Assassin in the history of the Creed and certainly a figure who would be remembered through the dark and unspoken pages of history that few knew of. The lover, the fighter and the thief who had built something out of nothing and made many a friend along the way.

But as he passed from the world the cursed Apple of Eden began to glow bright once more, not with golden light but white light, almost a holy light that engulfed the room, from the shelves to the stone rubble and Ezio and Altair's bones.

Then with a searing flash of heat it was all gone and then naught but darkness reigned.

UPDATED CHAPTER- This chapter has been heavily re-written… I really don't know why I'm doing this but I guess I'm feeling it... Also I'm not really bothering to check for grammar and spelling but considering my younger and earlier work I'd say it's improved.

EDITED CHAPTER- As of the end of 2016. Why am I still here? A: Christmas boredom and nostalgia.