Author's Note: So I dared the depths of the kinkmeme, once, and there is not enough brain bleach for the horrors I have seen. I mean, no other place proves Sturgeon's Law as aptly as this. On a positive side, my inspiration got a little kick out of it. I'm not sure it was worth it. I would normally not post this, but I'm falling behind again on Above the Serpentine, so consider this an apology of sorts.

Original Prompt: I have a thing for types of interactions, and one of them is a captured, seasoned badass warrior interacting with a much younger enemy soldier. I am oddly specific.

Here's this short thing that I would write if my brain wasn't totally scattered and aasdj;lkjlasdfl (not in the good way) - just a little fix for my craving. The POV character should be 18 or so and is one of the mooks at Masyaf who is among those ordered to bring Ezio to CleftLipNooseDude.

Watching the revelations trailer I thought, "Which poor sap had to tie Ezio's wrists together? Hahah!" Understandably, none of the mooks wants to be the one who has to do it... so they draw straws for it, and the POV character loses.

I just want to see how that interaction goes down. I'm guessing the young Templar is Shit. Scared. as he saw Ezio single-handedly take down dozens of menbefore Altair distracted him and he got captured yeah thanks Brother . Does he hate Ezio and/or admire him, does he think this courageous warrior, although Assassin scum, deserves better than being beaten and left freezing on the stone floor without food or water? Does Ezio try anything? Maybe just a look that says "If I chose, I could kill you where you stand, bound or not"? Up to you... just tell me about the mooks at Masyaf and how Ezio scares the living piss out of them. Please? Sorry to be so ultra-specific and unsmutty, but my fiction-brain has gone AWOL and I just need this D:

Warning: Absolutely no smut, kink or sex whatsoever. Enjoy anyway?

EMBERS TO ASHES, ASHES TO FLAMES

by moondusted

This wasn't how Basil had pictured his life to go, back when he had been a miller's apprentice, sleeping on sacks in a shed. He was the fifth son of poor parents and he apprenticed off as soon as anyone would take him. Not that the miller cared much for his age, or for anything in fact, apart from where his liquor came from and how to pay Erma the Harlot. On those few sober occasions when the master was not drunk he was in a foul mood. No wonder that, when the recruiters had showed up in the village square on market-day, Basil had never looked back. He hadn't bothered to ask who they were recruiting for, it seemed an inconsequential and stupid question to ask. These were knights, in armour and with tall, proud horses. They carried a banner and they could read and write, they spoke English and French and Latin. Basil knew he would never be a knight, he was just a peasant and not a lord, nor did he fancy himself such, but he could still dream, he could still run away. Anything must be better than this, right?

He had not known where this road would take him. Looking back, maybe it had been a bad choice. Life had been rotten, but it had been life, but with the Templars it was just a long long journey into death, into oblivion and ignorance. He was dying, he knew, every day brought him closer to some unknown enemies' blade and there was nothing he could do.

The Templars had given him a sword and armour, sometimes a horse, when they needed to get somewhere fast. They showed him how to fight with sword and shield and dagger, handed him a spear and halberd, let him try his luck with a longbow, told him how to use a crossbow and, once, a gun. He wore their clothes now, their crest painted on his shield and he followed their orders. Maybe he was a Templar know, but sometimes he wondered if he understood them anymore than he had done the day they had come to his village.

You would expect the desert to be hot. Basil certainly had. He had not expected it to be winter, the landscape covered in snow and cold and emptiness. Approaching Masyaf for the first time, he had felt watched. Not by the lookouts, those were his comrades; no, watched by the abandoned village and the looming fortress. Watched by the ghosts of all these Assassins who had called this place home for so long. He was treading on ground either sacred of cursed and it filled him with unease at every step. He had no business walking here on these stones, intruding in this place. At the end of the day, he thought, he was just a miller's apprentice, dressed up like Erma at the country fair, pretending to be some nobler beast.

"Hey, Bas, come here!"

The yell tore him from his contemplation and he finally walked the rest of the steps down into the dungeon. In a large room, a crude table had been set up for those guarding the prisoner. It was laden with dice and cards, a pile of dirty dishes no one had bothered to clean. In a corner was a lone bottle of wine, hidden just enough to pass a quick inspection should one come.

"So, Sir Graham wants the prisoner tied up and brought to the tower, care to help us out?"

Basil frowned.

The prisoner. The Assassin. He had come to Masyaf over a week ago, all alone and Basil, up on the ramparts at the time, remembered the jokes his comrades had made. One man, just one man. Seems all the mighty Assassins have left is an old man. Shall we kill him or give him a cane?

Basil had watched them for a long moment, wondering whether it was bravado or stupidity or something else entirely. The ones who joked were young, like Basil himself, but the older ones, they had kept their silence, stoically watching the Assassin approach, wary and alert and Basil had followed the direction of their gazes and tried to see what they saw. Basil had been in a handful of skirmishes and one larger battle. He remembered it as a great infernal cacophony of chaos and noise, full of the stench of blood and intestines and death. He was hardly a veteran, Basil wasn't old enough, wasn't experienced enough to read an opponent. He knew nothing of warriors and wars, but he understood a little about skill by now and there was very little mistaking it here, in confident display in glow of a white winter sun.

The Assassin was a tall man, hood drawn low into his face, dressed in what seemed a haphazard collection of leather and metal armour pieces above oriental robes and high-shafted boots. The fur on his shoulder had danced in the cold wind as he had walked into town like a king returned home after a long absence. A conqueror come to take back what had always been his.

"Bas? You still with us?" Jerott asked.

"Sorry, yes, just… What do you want?" Basil asked, angry at himself and how easily he allowed himself to be distracted.

Jerott leered. No one could actually leer like Jerott. "Someone has to pick up the assassin and I'm somewhat disinclined to go in that cell and get my ass kicked."

Basil growled at him. "So you'd rather have my ass kicked?"

And this time, they all knew it was bravado. It could not possibly have been anything else, not after the kind of fight the Assassin had given them. The other archers with Basil in the fortress, doomed to do nothing but watch - because the order was to take him alive - had fallen silent, watching. A single man tearing through their ranks as if they were nothing. As if these were not - unlike Basil - accomplished Templar Knights tested in battlefields everywhere. Men who had proven their worth so many times before before. The Assassin wasn't even fighting, he was dancing or flying into them, a eagle striking its prey from above. The Assassin was seemingly everywhere, faster than the eye could follow, untouchable and devastating. This was beyond human skill, this was what Basil imagined an ancient god of war to fight, arisen from antiquity somehow, summoned into this place by the blasphemy committed against it.

Basil had been convinced they would never bring him down. There was not a man among all of them who could hope to match this one Assassin's lethal skill. And then, something had changed. Just a second, so short Basil must have missed it, caught in the feel of his heart trying to beat its way out of his throat. A surprised yell had come over the archers on the ramparts when they saw a break in the rhythm and the Assassin - unbelievably - had gone down.

It still made no sense to Basil. What would surprise such a man? What could have felled him? It wasn't the Templars, although they kept assuring each other of that in the days that followed. Of course the Templars had bested him, in the end, do not be fooled by the dazzle. Basil didn't think any of them believed it. The Templars would never have brought down this man, not in a million years of victories won by this order. Basil knew it well enough and with the certainty of providence. Something else, then, but Basil had, perhaps justifiably, no real interest in finding out what it had been. Who knew what ghosts haunted this place? Who knew what would draw their attention?

Jerott laughed, slapped Basil's shoulder, but Basil still heard the trace of nervousness in his voice, the slight shiver in his hand. "You tie his hands."

They had nearly beaten the Assassin to death after he had fallen. Frustration and exhilaration boiling over in one frantic instant. All the anger over so many dead comrades, the fear and panic he had planted in their hearts in what had been just a few precious minutes. He had to pay for it, but even wounded and broken, the images of the fight still lingered. Basil had a feeling they would never be truly laid to rest for any of them.

The other soldiers drew closer and Basil saw they were armed with halberds and swords. Any other time, he would have laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of it. A wounded, old man, who had been given nothing but rank water for a week… But this one? No one laughed.

Basil forced his hands to be still on the rope when they unlocked the cell, let two swordsmen precede him. The cell was small and dark, just barely enough to see the body on the ground, stretched out long, asleep or unconscious or possibly merely pretending to be either. A resting wildcat might easily enough assume the same pasture, a serpent coiled in tall grass. One of the others gave the Assassin a kick to the side and Basil was almost disappointed when he did not uncoil from his place to retaliate. The Assassin offered no resistance as they dragged him to his feet and manhandled him around for Basil and the rope.

It took Basil a moment to react. This close to the Assassin he was too large and too small at the same time. He had looked taller outside, before, now they were almost of the same height. Still, to be so close to him, to reach out with his hands to grip the Assassin's wrists and Basil didn't know he had stopped breathing. He caught the Assassin's look from the shadow of the hood and was held in its power for a long, long instant. Dark and golden and awake. A tiny movement went through the Assassin's shoulders, visible only for Basil who was right in front of him. The moment passed, though and the Assassin did not spring, did not break loose with the deadliness they all knew him capable off. This wasn't a man broken and there were halberds levelled at him and swords ready to be drawn, countless blades just waiting to cut into his skin, to sever his head from his body, and still his was the only power here.

The hands under Basil's were solid, bone and muscles still protected by the stiff leather of exquisitely made vambraces. His knuckles were bruised, but it was all Basil could do not to flinch when the Assassin flexed his fingers, briefly, as if testing their strength.

Basil tied the rope around the Assassin's hands, pulled it tight and hard, made the best knot he could. He tried not to think of anything else, but it was no use. In his mind's eye, he saw it, he saw the Assassin shaking his bonds as if they were nothing. He was toying with them, perhaps, or maybe there was more to him even than that, more than the secretive dark of his eyes and the quick, razor-edged smile that vanished as fast as it had come.

Basil stepped back, put his hands back at the pommel of his sword. He fell in line with the others when Jerott motioned him to. Basil was too close. He wondered if he would get to see it, this moment when the Assassin spread his wings again. Wondered, with a slight measure of guilt, if he maybe wanted to see it.

The stone of the fortress whispered as they passed, shaken awake from its slumber like the bound predator they dragged through its halls. Basil was certain that, if he put his hand to the stone, he would feel the tension there, the expectation of something great yet to come.

The air was sharp and cold out in the open, as merciless as the desert of Basil's dreams.

He glanced up when they crossed the courtyard to catch sight of an eagle circling above them. It shrieked a greeting into the wind.

END