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Another life, another him. It figures.
This one is as normal as can be. It is the year 1994, and he is twelve when he first meets her. There is nothing to tear them apart this time.
His parents aren’t Death Eaters. Petruccio is still sick, but there are things called hospitals and antibiotics and although his little brother sometimes gets rushed into hospital — which frightens Ezio more than anything in the world — he’s mostly okay, and he goes to school mostly every day and does English and maths and moans about geography. Claudia plays football, and Ezio is amused by both this little game and the way his Claudia would’ve reacted to it. (Although he can’t admit it, since in this world there is no such thing as Hogwarts or magic, he misses playing Quidditch.)
He grows up. Cristina grows up. She studies medicine in university, and after a life of being an assassin, he is glad to study something calm and less life-threatening.
They marry, which is mostly inevitable. His mother cries at the wedding. His father has never been prouder. Federico claps him on the back and says some crude statement. Petruccio takes off his tie halfway through his speech. Claudia twirls in her bridesmaid dress. Ezio’s eyes grow misty several times that night, and Cristina comforts him because she knows. Finally, he is experiencing the things he never experienced the first time around.
When she is with child — because Ezio will never get used to the new-fangled phrase being pregnant — it is the happiest moment of his life. Fate has given them a chance.
But they are uneasy. Cristina confesses how she doesn’t feel settled. There is something moving in their stomachs that tells them it isn’t over.
Eight and a half months passes. The hospital busies with doctors and nurses and midwives hurrying to help her. He is numb and his father passes him a watery, vending-machine coffee.
‘She’ll be fine, trust me,’ says Giovanni. ‘Your mother did this four times.’
‘I love you,’ says Ezio softly. ‘I don’t think I’ve said that enough.’ He isn’t sure whether he’s talking about this life, or he’s trying to make up for all the time he spent without a father in Firenze.
And then the doctor appears, and he’s talking, but Ezio hears none of it.
Dead. He has lost her again.
And to think he truly believed that he could have had a life with her.
It seems he is destined to be forever chasing his tail.