Another Borgia tower overtaken. He always gave a couple of days until he started looking for a new recruit, just because he didn't expect to find one right away. It was barely a day and a half, a star light night, when he heard someone cursing at guards. At first he assumed that this person was a mercenary, but there was something else, the person was a woman. Now he knows for a fact that there aren't any female mercenaries. That means a civilian must be taking her chances and fighting the guards.
So he picked up his pace and started towards the source, and of course he was right. A guard how a woman by the throat as he held a dagger to her abdomine. Things weren't looking good for her. He'd need to intervien. So he stabbed a guard in the throat.
All the others turn in responce, the one holding the woman stabbed her then went for him! But he made quick work of the guards. But it wasn't over yet. A patrol had seen this and joined the fight! What Ezio didn't know was that so had that woman who had just been stabbed. She was fighting a seeker as he swiped his pike at her. Then she screamed.
He only looked back a moment to see her holding her face with one hand and her wounded stomach with the other. The seeker was dead. It was a chilling sight, it almost looked like she had been cut right below her eye and her tears were mixing with the blood that was running down her wrist.
This fight didn't last long, he slashed the last guard in the face and impaled his heart before going straight to the woman.
"Signorina? Are you alright?" He knew it was a dumb question. But what else could he say?
The woman choked a sob as she looked up, a hand still covered her left side of her face, through one intense and beautiful eye. It was an icey blue, the edge ringed in dark gray, and a purplish colored ring around her shrinking pupil. Then she looked back down again, as if she couldn't bring herself to say a word.
Ezio crouched down in front of her. "Please, what is wrong? How badly have they hurt you?"
She wimpered a little more, but didn't answer.
So her gently took her wrist to pulled it away. And he found his stomach twist in knots and his heart sink to his feet.
The side of her face she had been covering. A short gash ran through it, but where it was was what startled him. Her eye was split open. Let me repeat that.
That gash was right through her eye!
"Dios mio!" He whispered half to himself. "I- Let me take you to a doctor."
She whimpered as he helped her up and let her lean against him, returning to holding her face and cradling her abdomine. Finding a doctor was easy. And Ezio was absolutely sure that he'd pay for the charges. In a way, it was partly his fault. He should have probably brought in his recruits to help, or he should have been right with her in order to prevent the startling injury.
Was it creepy how the eye injury made him think of his Uncle Mario?
He was going to leave soon after the doctor assured that she was going to live. But she took hold of his wrist before he could go. "Please stay?" Her voice was small and pleading. He knew that she was vunerable and fragile now. Hell, he was going to recruit her to the Brotherhood, now with the injuries, that would make things complicated.
Even if her left eye was bandaged, the good one shined like the moon, it was almost silver like it too. Her ebony hair black like the night. He decided on staying with her until he brought her home. And consitering the fact the doctor was almost done with stitching the wound on her stomach, he knew it wouldn't be long.
She only felt pain. Pain, humiliation, agony, horror, regret... just a mix of emotions that would make most people depressed. Her mother always said she was destined to be different. Why must she be right?
When the doctor finished fixing her up, he told her, "In three weeks, return to me so I can see how the eye is healing."
"Will I still be able to see out of it?" She asked, worried now.
He shook his beak masked face. "I'm sorry, the damage it too much. The eye itself is useless now."
"Then why will it heal?"
"Because that's what the body does." The doctor explained. "But that eye is blind forever."
The whole reality of this sank like a stone in her. And she forced herself to steel in her expression.
That man who brought her here, paid for her to be healed. She owed him. But how could she repay anything? She was half blind now. He was a fighter and she would be of no use to him. Her fate was sealed.