Leonardo spent the rest of that day—and most of the following night—searching for Ezio. Once his legs had regained a sense of mobility, once the clashing of guards had faded into the pattering of chase to the remaining thieves, he was gradually able to compute the scenario into a rational structure that allowed for the end of his horror-struck stagnation. All through the first day the artist pursued relentlessly. The whole of Venezia reverberated with bleakness and anxiety; it was as though someone had bleached the city of natural light and bathed it instead with some sick, draining pallor. And Leonardo had everywhere to look. One of the many troubles of befriending the assassin was his innate ability to remain unseen. Where most people would be narrrowed to a collection of likely hiding places, it remained entirely possible that Ezio could be anywhere at all. Leonardo had little hope that the assassin's grave condition would prove very limiting.
It was misting dawn on his return to the bottega. Having been thoroughly harassed by guards further from the scene (Leonardo appeared anything but innocent, running frantic with a wealth of red stains to his blouse) and having gained nothing valuable from everyone he had become panicked enough to ask, it was with solemn bereavement that Leonardo stepped over the threshold. It was still dark inside. He thought about lighting a lamp, indeed he located one with his eyes across the way, but he merely fixated on it a moment before lumbering over to his workbench instead. He felt tired. No, he felt exhausted, in more ways than one. But the idea that he might go occupy his clean, downy bed... It was the same reason that the bed was used so rarely on other occasions: it was plainly wrong for him to enjoy its comforts when something far more important was left undone. And Leonardo always had important work to do. Here, especially, the thought was repulsive. The one person that was able to answer his imperative demands for Ezio's location was one highly distressed-looking courtesan, who was so rattled that she insisted upon recounting to Leonardo the assassin's appearance rather than his direction. "Era incatenato!" she kept repeating. Infuriating as she was at the time, her terrified descriptions were now singeing the artist's mind, forcing him to relive the picture he received at the wreckage of this demolished animal, more red than white, and yes, his wrists bound tightly behind him.
He'd spent the last eight hours envisioning this form and every unspeakable death it could have endured since that moment, at any time, without Leonardo's knowing. As such, while the effect had now settled down to something like a continuous hollow shiver inside his chest, it also froze him into a quiet mental state of loss and defeat. If he has not found refuge by now, I know that he is dead, he thought to himself, but without much feeling. He stared blankly at pages of ratio calculations. And in the state he was in, he continued somberly, it is most likely he did not run long. It was surprisingly easy for him to follow this logic now. Perhaps fueled by his grief, he concluded, Ezio is most likely dead.
It was factual, the way it sounded in the artist's mind. He absently scuffled parchment this way and that with his fingers, imagining life without that subtle anticipation he always contained so well, that Ezio would appear unexpectedly at his doorstep with a fresh puzzle and his handsome grin. He calmly, emptily scolded himself for being so hesitant to advance on his affections, though he was still quite certain they would not have amounted to anything significant, anyway. Now that possibility was gone completely. If he had been more sympathetic, maybe... If he had somehow altered the past such that this would not have happened... As he silently rambled, he was brought to the point yesterday where their brief argument ended in threat. Even now it seemed strange. It was true that Leonardo had never so directly criticized the Order before, but still, he'd confidently considered it well beneath Ezio to use threat—weaponized threat, at that—in response. The event was not exactly sudden, though; the artist had picked up on the air of intimidation only minutes before the pair's exit from the studio. I punched him, Leonardo remembered. Ironic, that the first strike I credit myself in so long would be my final goodbye to a man so accustomed to pain. Drifting, he brought his head gently to the face of his desk, thinking himself asleep with the thought that the last touch he gave to his love was one of violence.
. . . . . .
A full month passed since the date of Ezio's disappearance. For the first week of it, Leonardo damned his commissions to hell and kept on his investigation, though his diligence and enthusiasm whittled away after that first night of failure. Anyone who knew anything simply repeated the same story, the same story that Leonardo needed no help in assuming in the first place: each interrogatee—well, each that could count as mildly successful—recounted fleeting images of the blood-drenched, staggering assassin with hands bound behind his back. Any directions recalled were essentially useless, Leonardo knew, but he always followed them, if not simply to keep himself going somewhere, even under plainly false hope. Several of this scant population of witnesses described the same sound of fireworks in the distance, oddly enough, and the artist so wished he could remember how to laugh, because the only possible inference to be made was that Ezio had somehow managed to fire the gun affixed to his vambrace. But who will be brash enough to test my inventions now?
It was the last day of the first week when he received finality from a group of thieves. While Leonardo had before asked all the thieves he could (unwisely) corner, they would all deny they knew anything, or provide information Leonardo knew to be false, in the interest of taking payment. This time, however, it was a bluish, foggy morning and the gang of five, when approached, merely shuffled in discomfort at the question. Enlivened by this new reaction, the artist immediately offered them an overly-reasonable sum to stay and talk. Such was the way to motivate thieves, he learned. But even more strangely, the thief in front, dressed in a long scarf that served to wrap its way into a makeshift hood, refused the offer completely. Instead, he trod ahead a few steps, quiet steps, then spoke somberly, hands out, as if explaining a difficult concept to a young child. "The assassin is dead, my brother. I'm sorry."
The week after that, Leonardo slowly, emotionlessly resumed a portion of his regular tasks. He confided his despondency with no one, but sought solace in his life's purpose: to learn. Advance. Create. Sometimes he sketched, sometimes he added calculations to unfinished designs, sometimes he read old things he'd promised himself to when time permitted. He could not, though, produce ideas anew. He'd satisfied the couriers sent by patrons, haughty about their late commissions, by explaining concisely that someone dear to him had recently died. Each courier set off with full confidence in this account, for everything about Leonardo was convincing. He imagined he might take the news more elaborately, but instead of being filled with emotion—grief, rage, hatred, anything—he found himself quite thoroughly devoid. It should be said, though, that to say that Ezio's death was "news" would be rather kind, as up until the thief's confirmation, Leonardo was already expecting, but denying this conclusion.
By the third week, the artist's days were nearer to resuming a normal structure—well, normal for Leonardo, consisting of sporadic days-and-a-half dedicated to fleshing out some fantastical theory that dawned on him during some mundane event. He began leaving the studio occasionally for non-essential reasons, and even picked up an amount of progress on two of his five overdue portraits (out of frustration with finicky details of his much more exciting work, to be sure, but this was the only reason Leonardo ever actually completed these awful things). Correspondence was eventually resumed with the hospital-church in Florence where most of his human biological work was sadly left. By the end of the week, there was a definite gradual renewal in Leonardo's spirit, like life precariously returning to the decimated scene of natural disaster, determined to regenerate.
But despite all this, blood stains still tarnished the rolled-up rug leaning against the corner of the studio's farthest wall. A cut still existed jagged in the work desk where an assassin expected to lose a finger for a blade. Prototype weapon designs were still tucked away, drawn with precise measurements fitting Ezio's body alone. Pages of the codex were still, and probably would always be, missing. In an eventual attempt to remove himself from these constant reminders, Leonardo started preparations for a stay in Milan, where he always found inspiration in its purest form. It was past midnight and the air outside had chilled considerably from the muggy heat of daytime. A lightweight chest by the fireplace was half packed with supplies that no one but their owner would think necessary for a trip, and Leonardo had forgotten about them after realizing what was wrong with his idea of torsional stress as a motor source for automated movement. He was recording these musings in the corresponding backward-script sheaf of papers, when a soft, familiar sound rang from the cramped upper room used both for sleeping and storage. Gentle though it was, it resounded in him with such vivid memory that it seemed to echo above the cracking of the fire in the hearth. He would have liked to ignore it, but it was so characteristic, so exact to the sound he used to hear, that the turmoil it stirred inside him physically prevented him from resuming another line of thought. It was the subtle, finely tuned thumping pattern on top of his roof that used to warn Leonardo of a coming visit from the only person who could manage such steps. The sound was one in the special collection of signals to the assassin's presence undetectable by anyone—anyone except Leonardo, whose senses were trained above the rest to pinpoint inarticulable detail. Leonardo often wondered if the assassin was so skilled that he could mute even these slightest clues, and that he was purposefully adjusting himself to a level he knew only Leonardo would perceive. Involuntarily drifting in reminiscence, the artist recalled opposite scenarios, when he would hear thundering treads from overhead. These he took to mean, "Don't go outside."
He scribbled unimportantly, his mind bloated with tenacity to forget, and with memories aching to be recalled. He was so absorbed, that the bird-like rapping on the upper floor window went unattended-to. The image of their first meeting came to the forefront of his recollection, perhaps out of intuitive habit, to understand complexities through their fundamental components. At the time he saw Ezio as a handsome, rich man's son, whining to his mother when he thought none else could hear. Nothing more. It was thus more intriguing than concerning, when the boy came to Leonardo's studio in Florence after the murder of his father and brothers. Come to think of it, Leonardo observed, the subject was never resumed after that night. He should have pursued it. Ezio was never one to talk at length of issues incapable of being resolved through action, but still, maybe if simply guided, gently, in the right directions of conversation... I should have done this, I should have said that, Leonardo mocked himself internally. It was a slippery slope that he discovered—years ago, it felt—was all-too-easy to fall down. His dreaming was cut short when the upstairs window-tapping abruptly turned into the rough, urgent sound of the window being forced open from the outside.
He broke from his scribbling with a start, accidentally snapping the thin, delicate tip of his pen as it pierced the paper and hit hard wood. The burglar had tapped before to test the occupancy of the abode, and seemingly decided the home was safe to enter. Leonardo doubted there would be anything upstairs of immediately recognizable value, especially buried as everything up there was in fragmented projects and useless gifts from old patrons he always felt too guilty to throw away. In fact, Leonardo secretly hoped the intruder would clear the room a bit for him, so he'd be spared the indecision about getting rid of things himself. Turning a deaf ear, he stood to recover a new nib for his pen upon realizing the former one's condition. Pens, quills and such related parts were generally kept in the drawer of his secondary work desk, and just as he slid his fingers through the ink-stained mess inside, he heard a crystalline shattering sound emanate from the upstairs room, followed by a disorderly series of dragging noises and a metallic clatter. Confrontation was the last thing that Leonardo would ask for out of the burglary, but he felt a twinge of impatience at the knowledge that his affects were being broken, unwanted even as they were.
But what to do? Most burglars would run on sight of the owner of an invaded home, but what if this one recognized the artist's firm refusal to fight? Would they take the advantage? A much worse situation sprang to Leonardo's imagination: this burglar could be no burglar at all, but someone with a goal. Someone who knew of the encrypted research strewn throughout the bottega, and was sent to retrieve it at any cost. Certainly, once the Templars learned of the great loss of the Assassins, their morale would swell to new heights. Suddenly Leonardo felt much more comfortable with allowing the upstairs contents to be done away with in whatever manner they would. Any worthwhile research was kept camouflaged among the clutter in the main room, anyway, but there was still the possibility that, should this person indeed have the interest, they might extend their search out from the upper room upon noticing its use as a store for cast-off ideas. He muddled through these predictive avenues while he located and attached another nib to his pen. With resolution then, setting the utensil down on top of his papers, he slinked up the hollow wooden stairs. Halfway there, he was stricken with a thought. After a silent journey back to the fire-lit main room, Leonardo returned to the staircase with the fire poker in hand—a last minute addition for the sake of trying on a more guarded appearance, just in case. How Ezio could create the illusion that these stairs were silent was yet another mystery that Leonardo knew, with a surge of affliction, he would never solve.
The sounds within the room became more pronounced the further the artist climbed. Mostly scuffing and shuffling noises, like some great tarp was scraping across all four walls. The accompanying grunts and the occasional seethe were consequently masked—that is, until just the moment when Leonardo reached the narrow door. The tarp-like sounds ceased with one final slump, and the stranger inside gave a husky sigh (a man, then, Leonardo surmised). It simply was not a function enabled within Leonardo's personality to react quick-wittedly in situations of hostility even at these low levels, and so he did nothing but stand by idly to infer more traits of the unwelcome visitor opposite the wall. But the doorknob suddenly turned. With a fright and a mental leap from nowhere, Leonardo struck out and locked the door before it could open in completion, fire poker held awkwardly as its wielder. Silence. A very uncomfortable hesitation. The knob gave two sharp, futile twists, and again became dormant. Well the burglar will obviously know I am here now, so I must choose my next actions carefully, Leonardo reasoned, but in truth did not execute any such actions.
"Apri-" the stranger started, calmly.
"I ask that you leave this place in the method that you came by, or I must warn you that I will fetch the guards," interrupted Leonardo.
"You shouldn't really-" retorted the disembodied voice with a definite air of humour this time, but Leonardo reinforced his authority:
"I have asked you politely. If you will not leave now, I will be forced to act against you. This- this will be your final warning."
He felt a degree of humiliation making threats, knowing how limp they must sound in his underconfident voice. He deeply wished that the ordeal would progress no further, that the burglar would simply give up and that he would not have to race into the streets for the guards while simultaneously abandoning his home and exposing himself to the vantage of the open window the burglar had made for himself. So Leonardo waited. The man behind the door waited. All again was still and silent, save for the healthy fire raging from across the way. But finally,
"Apri la porta, Leonardo."
Prior to this moment, Leonardo registered little more than the low tones of the intruder's voice, but upon hearing his name, the veil fell, and each clue of the evening fell into place. However, this epiphany was flawed: all signs pointed toward the miracle he so desperately, irrationally desired, yet it could not be true, for Ezio had died just over a month ago. Apparently the choking quiet of anticipation did not suit the voice, and so it continued.
"Leonardo, apri la porta." It now sounded distinctly more annoyed than entertained. "Please do not call the guards. It's me, Ezio. Don't you recognize my voice? Or shall I start guessing passwords?"
It took several more seconds, but with unthinking reaction, the artist unlocked the door.
Casual, striking, and remarkably clean, an utterly alive Ezio Auditore exited through the passageway. His immaculate, halo-like hood was drawn over his head, and as he was looking down while moving to close the door behind him, it was not until he was prevented from walking further ahead that he looked up, and Leonardo saw his face: warm. There was no trace of the frantic, white-flushed, gore-spattered appearance that had affixed itself to the forefront of the artist's mind for weeks, only the dazzling, energetic face that preceded such nightmares. The contrast was so violent that Leonardo distantly, but seriously, contemplated the possibility of hallucination.
Ezio was quick to note the stark disbelief in his oldest friend; it was as if some invisible demon had swept away his soul and forgotten to take the body along with it. The assassin looked on him with sudden concern.
"Leonardo? Leonardo what is wrong? What has happened while I was away?" He took hold of Leonardo's upper arm to shake him from his pale trance: meaningful, but undoubtedly gentle.
The weight of Ezio's touch helped to dispel a part of the postulated illusion, but the vastness of the grief, memories, self-reassurance and regret experienced through the past month could not so easily be overcome just yet. The concern in Ezio's dark eyes seemed to acclimate to something like fear. He took both Leonardo's arms in his grip, and advanced a step forward as if he believed he might break this curse if he just looked hard enough into the other man.
"Leonardo, you- Dimmi cos'è successo!" He released Leonardo's left arm just briefly enough to throw back the hood from his head, perhaps to more effectively pierce the artist's catalepsy with his gaze. It did not occur to him that Leonardo, of all people, would presume him dead for so long. He would have launched himself over the platform's railing in search of the nearest doctor, but to his relief, a roughened hand found movement and raised itself toward Ezio's face. It was quite odd to seek validation in this, but Leonardo's fingers stopped upon the long, old scar marred across the assassin's lips. It was not a reasoned choice of artifact, per se, but there was something acutely defining about this particular feature, during this particular moment. He had seen no other man or woman with such a scar, but surely Leonardo had considered most things about Ezio defiantly unique. Nonetheless, he brought his fingers down along its raised length, saw how it disappeared closer into the lips and reappeared in full force further out, how it tapered away with a blank, unpolished line where the stubble ought to be completed like the rest of it decorating Ezio's face. He felt himself internally admitting, at last, that he had been gravely misinformed.
Ezio, on the other hand, was rather taken aback. He of course knew nothing of the situation that Lenoardo did, and thought it very strange indeed that the man could be so frightening and confusing in so many different ways. This territory was most unfamiliar to him, and he was petrified with the idea that the artist was going to kiss him any second. Above all he just wanted answers, to know what exactly was producing this overall absurd behaviour, but at the same time he was positively rooted where he was, alert to the fact that Leonardo could kiss him, and that that could be... okay. Just okay. Ezio's emotional range would likely never be complex enough to sift a definite partisanship here from the sheer amount of every other abnormality going on now.
