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Shaun reads about Ratonhnhaké:ton’s massive dark brown wings; about how Haytham and Shay’s wings were rotted beyond all recognition (there may have been some embellishment, but Shaun doubted there was a lot of it – all Assassins knew the price for abandoning the Creed); about the pirate-turned-Assassin whose wings Manifested as he swung in his gibbet – small and black and almost the death of him.
Ezio Auditore, Shaun reads, never showed his wings.
(When he’s watching Desmond playing at being Ezio, dancing his way through Florence he – and everyone else, really – stares as Ezio unfurls brown wings, mottled with white, and curls them around Petruccio.
“Which would you like, little brother?” he asks.
Petruccio takes his time deciding, before he finally points to a long primary, “This one, Ezio.”
“As you wish.” In the Animus, Desmond’s face flinches in pain as Ezio plucks the feather. “One day,” Ezio says, “you will have your own feathers and you won’t need mine.”
“Promise?” Petruccio asks, cradling his brother’s feather close to his chest.
Ezio stands, beating his wings once, twice, and then stretching them high before tucking them away. “I don’t see why not,” he says, ruffling his brother’s hair.
Then the memory fastforwards and everyone’s watching as the Auditore men swing then burn – and then Ezio is on the floor of his family’s too empty villa, rocking silently. Rebecca’s the first to notice the feathers, barely visible in the moonlight, and in such quantity—
“We’re pulling him,” Lucy cuts in suddenly and Rebecca doesn’t hesitate to start the shut-down process.
That night, everyone pretends they didn’t hear Desmond get up just to unfurl his wings – checking he still had all his feathers, that there was no blood on his hands, that his wings weren’t completely bare.)
It’s said that Altair’s wings filled the entire sky, blocking out the sun with just one tattered feather – luster lost first in his exile, then in his tragedies, then with age.
Shaun never believes a word, and keeps reading.
(As he’d seen it all those years ago: Lucy’s sending him and Rebecca footage of the man himself, taken from Subject 17, and Shaun is left only to bitterly wonder about it all because Subject 17 can’t figure out how to trigger Altair’s wings without completely desynchronizing. It’s a bug Rebecca says she can fix if and when their plan to pull Lucy and 17 out of Abstergo ever moves forward.)
He tries to go back further, but with so few records surviving – it’s impossible.
Shaun wants to know where the wings come from and who it was that gifted them to the Assassins – and why is it them alone who can Manifest? Was there a connection between the humans who could Manifest and the Isu? Was having Eagle Vision (Rebecca’s term for it) and thus strong Isu genes determining factors for those who Manifested?
The questions made Shaun want to pull his hair out.
Instead, he rubbed his eyes and stood, making his way to their makeshift kitchen to put a kettle on.
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Assassins caught with their wings out were oft mistaken for the biblical angel – Shaun snorts at the thought and glances at the stolen video playing, watching as the Frye twins bicker on a rooftop, and wonders what Evie would have to say about the label.
Later, when he’s set his book aside once again and he’s sipping his tea and watching Evie and Jacob, wings arced as they dart in and out of their battle with Starrick, Shaun can see how angels and Assassins could be confused – God Himself would be so lucky to have such a terrifying Host.
And, for now, that satisfies him.
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End.