Holy shit, would you look at the time!
Jesus guys, I really am sorry about being dormant for this long. I'm going to blame Doctor Who unequivocally for this one.
Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.
Ezio breathed silently for a moment, staring down at his Star Recruit's body. Her hood pooled on the ground underneath her head and her blond hair cascaded over Ezio's hand. Brown eyes stared up at the sky.
"Cazzo," he muttered to himself. This was his fault. Stupid, stupid Ezio.
He reached down to close Laura's eyes. "I am sorry oyou had to pay such a price. Requiescat in pace."
And so Ezio stood up, leaving Laura's body laid flat on the ground, blood beginning to soak onto the dirt. Oh shit Mino.
Ezio did a weird backwards hop for a few steps then turned around and ran into an adjacent alley. Mino was sitting on the ground, his back against the wall and a heavy dagger in his gut. He was nodding his head up and down until Ezio came within a few meters of him, and he looked up with a weak smile. "Hey."
"No..." Ezio shook his head and squatted next to Mino.
"Sorry Ezio. I tried my best." He patted his stomach just above the dagger and winced.
"It's alright, just... relax. Now you can be with your sister."
Mino forrowed his brow in confusion for a second, and then they went up his forehead. "Not... Laura?"
Ezio nodded and glanced away.
Closing his eyes, Mino mumbled, "No... No, she was the good one..."
"...Wait, do you really-" but Mino would never respond.
Their bodies were carried back to the hideout and placed on side by side tables. The other assassins gathered around to look at the bodies and pay their respects.
Ezio stood between the tables, turning around occasionally to feel a rush of guilt.
"Ser Ezio, what happened?" Raphael Marconi asked, gently touching his mentor's sleeve.
"I... made a mistake," Ezio mumbled. By now Machiavelli had made a rare appearance, and at the worst possible time. He stood across the room and shook his head. Ezio pushed Raphael aside and approached him.
"What mistake have you tumbled into this time, Ezio?" Machiavelli snapped quietly.
Lifting his hands in front of him, Ezio began his story."I was trying to kill a Borgia captain..."
"Let me guess. Things got rough, and you sent two of our finest students to their deaths." Machiavelli crossed his arms and lowered his head, glaring at Ezio.
"Niccolo, you don't understand how many soldiers there were."
"Regardless. Ezio, if you ever get into that much trouble, I would prefer you run away and hide until things cool down than cause the deaths of two fine young Assassins! I thought you were trained in enemy evasion."
"No, Machiavelli, I was in trouble and needed help! I would admit when I need help. If you ever spent time outside of the hideout and in the world you would understand." Ezio motioned broadly, punctuating his statement with a finger pointed at Machiavelli.
Machiavelli shoved his hand aside. "I spent time in the robes. Ezio, these recruits are here to extend our reach across the continent and to help fight the Templars. They are not your personal army."
Having enough, Ezio flung his hands up and walked away to the other room. The architect watched as he sat down at the bench table with his map of Europe on it.
"You know, when I had an arguement with my friends, which, let's face it, happens to all of us at time point or another, instead of thinking about why we were disagreeing, I would stop and think about all the ways we were similar, and all the reasons we were friends in the first place." Ezio looked up to see the architect walking across the room and sitting down at the table bench across from him.
"Go away," Ezio sneered. The architect stood up anand walked back to his place, where he proceeded to inspect the same scroll he'd been reading for the last three years.
Ezio mulled over the events of the aftenoon as he rested on a bench next to the Parthenon. By now the sun had set and the crescent moon was dimly illuminating the landmark. Ezio remembered the time he climbed through the roof and stolen the clothes of the banker's associate. That was the day he killed Juan Borgia.
He smiled in recollection. That had been a weird party. He'd had an interesting conversation with a courtesan shortly after escaping the party.
Courtesan. Rosa in Fiore. Laura. Adele. Who wawas Adele? Whoever she was Laura had loved her.
A thought occurred to Ezio. He quickly dismissed it, remissed it, then sat still for a couple of seconds and ordered his excitement to diminish.
Claudia would know more. He needed to speak to Claudia. He stood up and walked with a stiff-legged gait for several meters before breaking into a run across the pavilion, scaring away a flock of Night Pigeons.
The Rosa in Fiore was open much later than its neighboring businesses due to the nature of its... product. Ezio pushed the door open and was assaulted by the heavy powdery odor of the establishment. How people spent very long in here eluded him.
One of the girls approached him and dipped her head briefly. "Ciao, Ser Ezio. Do you need to speak to Claudia?"
"Uh... Si. Thanks."
Claudia liked to pretend she was very busy being successful with the brothel and had her arms full all the time. However, most of the time the business ran itself and Claudia found herself in her office with nothing to do most of the time. At the moment, she was busy drawing herself being Queen of Italia and making Ezio be her servant. A knocking at her door disturbed her day dreaming (night dreaming? Fantasy.) and she slapped the drawing once before sitting up and announcing, "Come in."
Valerie opened the door and stepped aside as her brother thanked her and walked into her office. "Salute Claudia."
"Hello Ezio." Claudia leaned back. "What do you need now?"
"I need-" Ezio cut himself off in the middle of his sentence because he looked down and spotted the drawing Claudia had spent the last ten minutes doodling. He gingerly picked it up and inspected it while Claudia silently cursed herself for not hiding it under the stack of paper that was right next to it.
"Very... imaginative." Ezio set the picture back down and leaned in. "Right. Do you remember Laura, from this afternoon?"
Claudia squinted. She had indeed met some of Ezio's students. "A recruit of yours?"
"Yes. A very talented one. Well, this afternoon, she was killed by Borgia soldiers-"
"Wait a minute. That was Laura on the table in the hideout?" Claudia stiffened and grasped at the arms of her chair.
Ezio nodded. "Be-"
"Oh no." Claudia leaned into her chair at an angle and held her hand to her mouth.
Ezio frowned. "What's wrong?"
"Adele will be crushed," Claudia said to her fingertips.
"Adele! Who's Adele?"
Claudia leaned in slightly. "Adele is one of my girls. She was very close to Laura. Very... close." She fiddled with the pencil she was using a moment ago.
"How close?" Ezio was now deeply intrigued.
"Close enough for this news to hurt badly. Ezio, I think she should find this out from someone close to her."
Sitting up again, Ezio shook his head. "No. It is my fault. I should tell her." Then he stood up. "Where can I find her?"
"Well she's asleep if you insist on telling her. Buy tomorrow, you can find her... here." Claudia reached up with a scrap of paper in her palm. "She will be working there tomorrow. Take her aside. Ezio, please be gentle."
Ezio left.
Adele was familiar with the basics of assassinry. She knew that it often kept one out at hours past midnight, or tied up in Florence for three days (literally. Laura told about how she had been captured in Firense and kept for ransom). In fact, Adele didn't even suspect anything was wrong until Ezio pulled her away from her mates and told her the bad news.
Her job involved a lot of being sexy, and she was really good at that. All she did was stand along the road and hope that some horny man (or woman, as was more often than not the case) decides to stop and have a bite.
Just as a teenage boy smiled at them as he passed, a manly voice on her right asked, "Which one of you is Adele Algiere?" Adele herself spun around to see none other than Ezio Auditore himself standing just inside the circle of women.
"I am..." The other girls appeared to be struggling to contain themselves at Ezio's presence. Ezio looked to his right briefly.
"Come with me. We must speak." Ezio stepped away to allow Adele to walk out of the circle of women. Together he led her into another road where he spotted a bench and motioned for her to sit.
Adele watched Ezio look around for a little bit before sighing and sitting up straight. "You were... good friends with Laura Boccanera. Right?"
At the use of the word friend, Adele shifted her body on the seat. "S... Si." She herself was struggling to put a name to their relationship.
Ezio sighed again and leaned down, resting his elbows on his knees. "Yesterday afternoon I called Laura to help a fight I was having with Borgia men. She was injured, but fought bravely until she..."
"No."
"I am so sorry."
Shaking her head, Adele slid away from Ezio a few centimeters. "No. She couldn't."
"Adele, I am so very sorry. She sustained heavy injury. She bled to her death."
"No. No, not my patatina..." Adele's face collapsed into her hands and she began to weep.
Feeling uncomfortable sitting next to a blubbering mass of a woman (I mean, um, no, not like that), Ezio reached out and began to caress Adele's shoulder. Almost immediately she collapsed into him and cried into his armor.
"Io l'amavo! E' impossibile, non poteva farmi una cosa del genere!"
Ezio was now looking directly down at Adele's head. In his hometown, Ezio had been quite experienced in comforting crying women. However, after carefully judging the circumstances, he decided that adding his penis to the situation could only make it worse. Instead he recalled Laura's words to him.
"Just before she..." Ezio paused, gesturing with his hands, "Laura spoke of you."
Adele made a weird gagging noise for a second before looking up; the sound of trying to breathe when crying too hard to breathe. "What did..." and then she started to choke up again.
"She told me that she loved you." Ezio thought that was a good start. Adele stopped making noise for a few seconds, resting her head on his chest plate. "She was worried she didn't say it enough though."
Bringing his left hand up to rub Adele's arm, Ezio began to wonder what other people were thinking. It didn't last very long though, because ten minutes later they were still in the same position. Her head on his chest, his arms on her back. She'd stopped shaking a while ago and Ezio wondered if she'd fallen asleep.
But Adele had not fallen asleep. Far from it. Her mind was awake with the sound of a billion words, most of them "No", "Not" ,and "True". Adele thought about the last time she'd seen Laura, the super dreary morning yesterday when Laura had kicked her toe off against the bed. A few minutes later she'd asked Laura if she was leaving. A few minutes after that she'd told Laura that she meant the world to her and that she loved her. That was when Laura surprised her by climbing on top of the bed and kissing her. And she opened her eyes and saw her dim silhouette and her blonde hair falling onto her face and then she turned around and left through the window.
She remembered the first time they met. In October of the previous year, a lot of the courtesans were being harrassed by some Borgia thugs. One evening in particular, Adele and her mates were being grilled by a man the size of a city block. Just as he reached out to grab her shirt, a figure in white robes dropped from the nearby rooftop, landing on the enormous man, apparently impaling him through the neck with some kind of blade attached to her wrist. She introduced herself as Laura while blushing heavily and left to do "Assassin things" as she'd put it.
Within a day they'd met again, this time as a group of three Borgia soldiers openly discussed which girl they would have their way with and then kill. Did I already mention that Borgia soldiers are sociopaths? Laura came behind one, assassinated him through the stomach, then cut the second one's throat open before he figured out what happened. The third one noticed her killing his coworkers though, and was quick to draw his sword. After a short swordfight, Laura dispatched him.
That night, on her way home, Adele found herself being followed. She'd called out to her stalker to show himself, only to see the blonde assassin from earlier climb down from the rooftop and apologize for following her like that. She'd said it was to make sure no one else gave her any trouble, but Adele could read her body language from a mile away.
Laura walked her back to the Rosa in Fiore and then disappeared into the night.
Adele was shaken back to reality by Ezio's voice. "I've lost people close to me." Opening her eye, she realized she was still under his chest and began to sit up.
She wiped her face off, then turned to Ezio. "Who?"
"Many years ago my family was betrayed by a friend. The Borgia promised him petty things in exchange for falsely accusing us of treason. The guards came to the house and took my father and brothers. I wasn't home at the time, but I returned shortly after they were taken."
"...What did you do?" Adele began to return to a coherent state.
Sitting up, Ezio sighed. "I put on these robes... and I hunted down the man responsible. And I began to work my way up, to find the men on top."
"And did you find them?"
Ezio sniffed and rubbed his nose. "Yes."
As time passed, Adele ran out of tears and became silent, mimicking Ezio's hunched over position on the bench. To passersby they appeared to be an Assassin and a courtesan sitting on a bench mirroring each other.
Adele turned to Ezio suddenly and opened her mouth. "Where... is her body?"
Surprised, Ezio turned to face her. "In the hideout." He sat back up. "Do you want to see her?"
Adele nodded and they stood up and walked to Isola Tiberina.
When they'd gotten to the hideout Adele stopped cold and refused to go in. When Ezio told her that was fine and she didn't have to, she suddenly became adamant to enter. Ezio let her in, she raced to the bottom of the steps, and then she froze again.
Again, Ezio assured her she didn't need to go in if she didn't want to. She paced around the atrium for a moment, then agreed to see her body.
Together they walked into the mausoleum where Laura and Mino's bodies were. Adele's breath caught when she saw Laura, and she rushed to her side.
Almost immediately she was crying again, grabbing at Laura's clothes and slipping to her knees. Once again, Ezio stepped behind her and put a hand on her.
"Perché? Perch..."
Laura was placed in the mausoleum. Adele ran out of tears and became distant. Ezio was more careful with his recruits.
And the worst part? Life moved on. Adele had scowled in disgust as the sun rose the next morning, indifferent to her pain. Her work schedule had mysteriously cleared up for the next week, and she sat in bed staring at the ceiling and cursing everything in existence that dared to exist. She hated that lamp, and that windowframe, and that church steeple she could see out her window when she laid in bed. She hated Ezio for telling her, and she hated the Borgia for taking her Laura away from her. She hated herself for hating everything.
A week passed and she could no longer find the energy to hate everything. Instead, life was replaced with a dull disinterest.
She stood in the street, with her friends and coworkers, trying to sell themselves, and Adele simply couldn't find the motivation. It had been a week and it still hurt. It was like someone had punctured her chest and sucked her heart out throught a tube. Colors were dimmer, sounds were duller, and everything that happened around her seemed to either throw it in her face or act like it never happened.
So Adele stood in a sidestreet coming off of the busiest street in Rome and not a single thing interested her. Except, of course, a figure in red robes pushing his way through the throng of people.
Ezio.
Adele watched him move through the crowds. She watched him disappear around the corner of the street.
Follow.
Glancing back to her friends, Adele suddenly knew what to do. How to fill this hole.
Quickly, she stepped back towards where Ezio had gone. Slowly, a step at a time, until she turned around and broke into a run.
"Adele?" One of the girls behind her called. But she didn't stop. She ran until she rounded the corner, then searches the crowd. There he was, jumping up a stack of crates placed against the wall. Against her better judgement, she followed him up.
Awkwardly, she leapt onto the first crate, keeping her eyes on Ezio. Taking a breath, she shouted, "Ezio!"
But he didn't turn. He continued to climb with skill while Adele plodded behind him. She got on top of the next crate up, all while shouting Ezio's name.
Mustering her strength, she leapt from the top of the crates to a beam set into the wall, and with the same movement pushed herself higher and landed on a trellis thing. "Ezio!"
It was too late to stop. She grabbed the vertical part of the trellis and hauled herself up, arm over arm. The pain was excruciating, and she was mostly certain she wouldn't make it. But she didn't care.
Above her, she heard footsteps and rustling. Then, "Adele!" Ezio had heard someone calling and turned around to investigate. With pain in her eyes Adele shot up an arm towards Ezio. He knelt down and grabbed her wrist, pulling her with all his strength to the rooftop.
There she collapse onto her hands, gasping for breath. Ezio was standing above her with his arms crossed. "What are you doing, you could have hurt yourself!"
Adele raised her finger, still gasping for breath. A second or two later she looked up at Ezio. "A week ago my heart was broken. I thought I would die. I though I would die even today. I had nothing to live for with Laura gone.
"But Ser Ezio, I know there can be more to live for. I want to have more to live for. Please, Ser Ezio. Please train me to become an Assassin."
Four chapters and not a single reveiw. Thanks guys.
Initially when this was conceived I thought I could do it in one chapter. Then, once I wrote chapter one, I realized it needed to be two. Then when I wrote chapter two it needed to be three. Well now I'm done.
Credit for translations goes to... some random dude on 4chan. Thanks, Anon.
Hey, it's kind of funny that I'm using Italics to show where the dialogue is Italian.
Anyway thanks for reading, please review and favorite. Much love, Led Feynman M.D..