A/N: I know just every word you would probably wish to say to me. It was inexcusable to leave this piece of fiction for such a long time! Believe me – I do feel guilty about that! But, as was mentioned earlier, I've got a little son (he's 1 year old by now:), and a little free time :) Lots of things have claimed my attention recently, but I never EVER forgot this story. It's always on my mind.
So. I'm back, and so is the MiW :D I'd appreciate a word or two from those of you, who stayed faithful to me, patiently waiting for the continuation. Just… it would be nice to know, that you guys are there, and still read it. I did my best while writing this chapter. Had a great time, actually. Hope you'll like it. Promise not to disappear again! I'm full of inspiration now :D
Warning: major game spoilers!
Mercy in White
Chapter 6 -----"Good news, bad news"-----
"Safety and peace, Malik A Sayf… It was a long journey…"
He felt as if some heavy weight that had been on his shoulders for a few years just vanished with the sound of that velvet voice from behind his back. His most desperate hopes came true.
She was alive.
Not able to resist any longer, he turned back to meet the piercing gaze of steel-colored eyes, and held his breath for a couple of heartbeats.
"How have you been?" - they whispered in unison, and then, hearing his question, she laughed softly, ruining the moment.
"I see... - she said with a slight amuse in her tone, eyeing his face suspiciously - my legend has been much better this time..."
"I thought you were really dead... This time..."- he breathed out, trying to make her hear the accusation.
She shook her head.
"I'm sorry, Malik. I could not let you know that I had escaped. You of all people should have known the best, how much was at stake..."
He nodded, trying to takehis emotions under control. As soon as it was easier for him to look calmly at her face, already free from the black mask, he immediately noticed the paleness, unusual even for her cream-colored skin, and an unhealthy redness in her cheeks.
"Are you..." - he began, but suddenly saw a grimace of pain changingthe familiar fine features of her face, as she shifted the weight from one leg to another.
"... wounded!"- he gasped and reached out his arm to touch her, to do anything to make this incredible, impossible evening last a little longer, as if the slender figure in black could disappear each time he closed his eyes to blink.
She smiled wearily and touched his hand with her slim fingers. Malik felt the heat, radiating from her skin, even through the thin silk of her glove, but before he could say a single word, she pulled him across the balcony, towards the pile of pillows on the stone floor.
"They look good enough for me. Come on. I've come a long way here, I haven't seen you for ages... I want to talk to you! That... That can wait... Besides..." - she winked - "I've got something to tell you..."
Malik sighed and gave up. He had definitely noticed the clumsiness in her movements, as she sat down and made herself comfortable, and a quiet sigh of relief, but that was not a subject for discussion.
That was her. Yes.
Only one woman of all the rest that Malik knew could make you feel guilty and ashamed of trying to be a man in her presence while actually being less strong and fast than her.
"Wine?"
She chuckled and looked at him with gratitude.
"So, you still do those little things, illegal for every honest Muslim, but not quite illegal for you? It's so good to hear that! Yes, please. I'd enjoy that."
"Oh, come on, don't provokeme! I can't see the point in denying myself a little pleasure like this, you know that. Besides, we don't have a religion, so, it's not quite right to call me an honest Muslim" - Malik smiled with his back turned to her, glass in his hand already.
"You do have a religion, and you do know that" - she retorted - "Besides, it sounds so exciting to me... To be involved in the intrigues of the Muslims, eternal opponents of the Christianity, conspiring against the Lion, and the Temple, and your own king... Much more exciting than just supporting a group of atheistic fanatics, whose only religion is the art of the murder... "
"We don't have a king! And..."
She took the glass with a wicked grin and interrupted Malik's emotional outburst.
"I know. I am sorry. So much time has passed since we talked the last time... I can't behave myself. But, I've really got something interesting to tell you..."
Malik decided he could save the time.
"Oh, Altaïr came back yesterday. He has told me everything about you running across him."
"He's being predictable. That's not what I wanted to tell you in the first place, though."
That was amusing.
"Predictable?"
"So, you did that on purpose, then? Knowing, that he would come to me to seek answers?"
She froze in astonishment, her glass in her hand, halfway to her lips.
"What? Who do you think I... Are you..." - she swallowed, put the glass down, and began again - "Of course, not! Honestly, of all the people in Damascus, on the streets, above and under them, he was the least expected man for me... It's just..." - she sighed - "Not that I expected that he would disappear somehow... I knew that I would meet him when I decided to go back to the Holy Land... Just... Not so soon, maybe..."
It was hard for Malik to watch her like that. To see, how hard it was for her to speak about Altaïr... To watch the expressions on her face shift from weariness to frustration, then to pain, and then - again to weariness. She had wounds, probably more than one, probably infected, judging by the fever he felt...
And yet - there she was, sitting beside him, absently nibbling at a piece of juicy pear, with some news for him, more important than her condition.
"Forget about him. You said that you've got some news..."
And again he saw gratitude in her steel-grey, weary eyes, as she patted his hand softly, burning him with her feverish touch.
"You're not going to like it, but it's extremely important" - and, after a quiet sigh, she added - "And it's going to be a long story..."
-----
It was not quite that he felt haunted by memories, even some particular ones... He could never call himself an impressive, emotional man, though he was a hell of emotional if next to that stone bastard, who didn't have much care for anyone, that was for sure.
He had long forgotten the nightmares with mutilated, sometimes decapitated, corpses, lying alone, sometimes in heaps, on the ground, sometimes grass, sometimes stone, covered in crimson sticky substance, sometimes still warm... That kind of things was unavoidable. That was his job. One of the best things he could do. His conscience, buried under the heaps of those lifeless corpses,had come back to life once again, the first time after his initiation, a few years ago, that autumn of 1191, when everything had turned upside down for him and some of his most faithful allies. That was even worse than he could've expected. Deception, foul play, betrayal… He'd thought he'd seen it all by then… But still, it struck him just as hard as it could, and the only strength he could find to bring together the shattered pieces of once proud and unshakable Creed was given to him by those few people who had made it through that hell with him, and seen just the same things as he did, and stayed by his side. Those were hard times, but they had changed even more than could seem at first sight.
For instance, he'd never thought he could ever overcome those overwhelming feelings of hatred, and anger, and his desire for revenge on a person responsible for his brother's death and his transformation into a cripple. He'd never thought that he would ever be able to look at this man again without thinking about tearing his beating heart from his white-clad chest and watch him suffer just as he himself had suffered without Kadar. As much as he was surprised by his extremely violent fantasies, no less was he surprised when the red veil before his eyes had disappeared and he was able to see that the real Altaïr had suffered just as hard through all that time. It felt like a breath of fresh air, to discover the true friendship after losing any hope Malik had.
So, feeling complete again, with things in Brotherhood running more or less successfully, the least thing Malik had expected was another flash-back of forgotten memories, more pleasant this time, but no less bitter.
He silently watched her face as she spoke unpleasant things to him, things about the unfaithfulness of their allies among the people of the English King, about the well-laid secret plans that could make his hair stand on end, things that promised a new round of war to them, just after regaining some peace… Her face certainly had a new layer of hardness and weariness lying over its fine features. A crease between her brows never seemed to relax, indicating just how much had she undertaken this time, bringing him those urgent news, setting her feet on Holy Land again.
Those eyesthe color of cloudy sky were red-rimmed now, and Malik didn't want to know how many sleepless hours exactly did it take her to make it to Masyaf with the news. He doubted it was worthy of that price, watching her flinch now and then, just like every other human in pain would.
He was there. He heard every word and some part of his mind already stirred, combining the knowledge from different sources, trying to work out a strategy, a plan to deal with the new problem.
Sadly, but the Brotherhood would need her, in the light of the discovered facts. She was one of those few, who knew about the existence of the damned Piece of Eden… And one of those even less few, who were aware, that the artifact had not been destroyed after the death of Al Mualim and re-establishment of the Order, as was known from a thoroughly planned information leak.
His scanning gaze returned to her eyes, as he remembered for a brief moment, how those eyes looked like when there was no misery to cloud them.
Why did it always have to be so complicated? Even he knew nothing about that woman except for what she herself was willing to let him know. And that equaled to almost nothing.
Even though she had let him as close as to share the bed with her for what seemed like centuries ago, she was still a mystery. She would come and go when she wished, helpful, needed, and only God knew, if he really existed, where she spent her time when she was nowhere to be found, and what her real name was, for he long ago began suspecting that the one he knew could be as fake as the others.
The woman in question rubbed her eyelids, her other hand absently toying with the edge of her silk robe, and looked at Malik.
"I think, you'll need me with that. This was not the main reason I came to the Holy Land, things have changed considerably during the past couple of weeks… But I would be willing to help…"
Malik shrugged, trying to cover his uneasiness at the thought of her in the middle of the conflict between the French and English armies, the Templar knights, and Saracen soldiers.
"I think, the situation is becoming serious…"
She snorted: "I think we're all soon going to be knee-deep in shit, stinking honest shit! And your good manners are just so irritating sometimes!"
He couldn't help laughing with her, relieved, that she was not that bad after all, if she had strength enough for her dry humor.
"So nice to see you back" – he responded sarcastically – "I've missed your low-class vocabulary, you know…"
Her smile faded, as a new strike of pain caught her off guard. Clenching her teeth, she held out a hand for him, and breathed out: "Now, would you mind helping me up? It's certainly a lovely place, but I'd prefer to have a rest under the roof, for variety's sake…"
Malik rushed to help her, his laughter washed away by the wave of concern for the wounded woman beside him.
It was worse than he had imagined at first sight, because he almost carried her all the way across the balcony to his bedroom. She would never ask for this much of a help, if she could walk herself.
Having her settled on the bed, he turned for his shelf with medicines and stripes of clean linen, picked up a couple of vials and a handful of cloth, and said with his back to her: "I'll go fetch some hot water. Be back in a minute. Ok with that?"
She mumbled something into a pillow, lying exactly how he'd left her.
"What?" – he asked, coming closer, putting all the stuff to the bed beside her.
"I said," – she lifted her head with visible effort – "I think I'm not going to last long. Was a hell of exhausting journey up to here… Can this wait until tomorrow?"
He smiled and allowed himself to run his only hand through her tangled raven black hair. She didn't seem to object, being just on the edge of consciousness.
"It's ok. Sleep. I'll tend to your wounds. They can't wait until tomorrow, because they seem to be infected. I'm not going to let you die of a wound infection right after making your way through all those Templars and Saracen soldiers and I don't know who else, but I'm sure there are ones, to here with such valuable and urgent information. That would be just ridiculous."
She smiled with her eyes closed. He guessed then that she'd had her limit of words for that night.
By the time he returned to the room with a basin of hot water, which was rather hard to arrange for a one-handed person, even a master assassin, in the middle of the night without waking up half of the stronghold, she was already asleep. He put the basin on the small cupboard and started with gently removing the black silk from her body, helping himself with a dagger, trying not to disturb his precious visitor when removing the crusted pieces of material, desperately missing his second arm.
He bit his lip after eyeing the first serious wound, on her right upper arm, swollen and unhealthy-looking. The skin around it was hot, marked with the angry red lines of spreading infection.
"That must be yours, Brother… She didn't have time to treat it properly…"
As he continued, he found another one, healing, twice stitched, on her left side. That was going to leave a rough-looking scar.
"Must've opened at least twice…"
And, yet, another one, on her right hip, the most recent one, judging by the color and the scab. It was a deep one either, with upper layer of muscles torn. The skin had started to swell with this one as well.
"That must've been on the way here. Wonder if the horse had survived that blow…"
He sighed and unrolled the first linen. It was painful, unbearable – to watch this stunning woman, smart and strong, and tender when she wanted to be, lying like that, unconscious, exhausted, covered in blood and dirt, with feverish blush staining her beautiful cheeks… World should not be like that…
It was a pleasure to distract his mind with an already familiar work of manipulating between a wet cloth and vials of medicine with one hand. Malik tried to be quiet and gentle, biting his lip even harder each time he was sure that his movements caused her pain.
When everything was over, he picked up the dirty shreds of black silk along with the blood-stained linen and got up, not wanting to disturb her further with another touch.
He couldn't help stealing a tender glance at her, regardless. She looked no healthier, but at least her wounds were clean and covered with a healing salve, and she was under a warm blanket. That was all he could do.
She was with him. Alive. But the last peaceful hours were slipping away like the last grains of sand in a large hourglass that was turned upside down at the moment of her emergence.
"Why do you always come only to bring the news of a gathering disaster?"
He shook his head and left his bedroom, shutting the door tightly behind him, all his intentions to sleep vanishing like smoke.
