At first, Ezio tries to ignore the sense that something is wrong inside his head. In the weeks it takes him to fully recover from his injuries, he tells himself that he's just not feeling well. In the months after that, as he tracks down and eliminates Savanarola's followers in Firenze, he decides it must be stress.
But by the time he finally returns to Monteriggioni, he knows it's not in his head.
Well- it is in his head (that's the whole point). But he's not imagining it. It feels like there's someone else there, watching through his eyes, and he doesn't like it. It reminds him of days he'd rather forget- of his father's death, and the voice he heard in his head that told him to stop feeling sorry for himself and to get moving-
He's spent decades trying not to think about that day, and now he mostly feels annoyed that whoever (whatever?) is is in his head now is forcing these memories back up. And he feels worried, too, because this isn't the same person as the first time. It feels different in a way he can't describe.
He can't bring himself to mention the stranger in his head to anyone else- he doesn't want to hear them say he might be losing his mind, even if he's starting to think they might be right. So instead, the first chance he gets after arriving back at the villa, he heads below ground, to the sanctuary filled with statues of long dead assassins.
He sits himself down on the ground, leaning against the stone wall, and looks around the familiar room. He's spent countless hours down here over the years, whenever he needs to be alone, but now he abruptly feels something like shock or surprise crawl up from the back of his head, wash over him, and then just as abruptly vanish. Ezio jumps to his feet, cursing, because these are feelings that aren't coming from him- he knows it came from the... (he takes a second to grasp for a word, but the best he can come up with is spirit) the spirit that sits in the back of his mind.
"Alright," he says, because right now he's angry and worried, and he doesn't even care that he's yelling into empty space. "We need to talk about his, you- whoever you are, because I don't have time for whatever game you're playing right now! I'm having a bad year, and I can't lose my mind right now." He stops and then adds, "Or at all, actually," because it's probably better to be safe than sorry with strangers that live in your head. "So if you would just leave, that would be a really big help."
Nothing happens- the spirit doesn't retreat or grow stronger. It just sits there, in the back of his brain, somehow managing to seem like it's not even paying attention.
Ezio sits back down, all the anger suddenly gone, drained out by sheer helplessness. He was wrong, earlier- he's not having a bad year, he's just stuck in the middle of a life that's been going downhill since he was seventeen. And now the thing in his head is ignoring him.
He looks across the sanctuary to where the statue of Altair stands. Somehow, the spirit gets more agitated as he focuses his attention there, but Ezio ignores it. "I bet you never had to deal with problems like this when you were alive," he complains.
The statue doesn't answer, obviously, but the spirit in his head finally speaks.
"Idiot," it says.
-/-
So... not really happy with this one. Mostly because grumpy Ezio isn't a lot of fun to write, but at least it means the whole Minerva encounter thing is coming up soon. I'm looking forward to that bit a lot. Anyway, actual important announcement thing: depending on a bunch of factors (such as how lazy I feel, how many more chapters this story gets, blah blah blah), I might start going back and combining the earlier chapters in longer ones, because nineteen chapters is sort of ridiculous. Or I might not! I don't know. We'll find out. So I guess if you see this getting a bunch of updates but nothing's happening... that's why.