paradisalogs | (no subject)

Who: Ezio Auditore and youuu
What: Running about sadly.
When: Tonighhhttt.
Where: The roof!
Rating: PG idek

He’s been at a loss for days.

So many others make announcements –– so-and-so is gone, such-and-such has left the Castle. Ezio isn’t sure how to do that. He’s seen many people to their deaths and given them some fashion of last rites, but he’s never informed someone of a death personal to him. Not since his father or his brothers, but even then, it’d gone a little unsaid. It had been in a crisis, when he’d been awake for countless hours and been running non-stop and had blood on his hands.

This was a lazy afternoon, and it happened in utter silence.

He wonders what the last thing he said to them was –– surely for Stephanie it was a goodbye of some sort, a kiss on her cheek, a few wisps of blonde hair escaped from her ponytail and tickling his face. He’d surely grinned and teased her about something as he waved and headed off down the hall, back towards his room. Perhaps she’d left shortly after that, stretched out in bed for an afternoon nap after their lunch date.

Cassandra, he knows what he said to her last –– it was a cheery “a presto” and that pet name he’d started using for her, maialina. He’d finally peeled himself from bed after pressing one last kiss to the tip of her nose. She is different from Italian girls, in some ways, from the modest roundness of her nose to her softer cheeks, her larger eyes… everything about her is special, even her nickname. He’d picked one for her that he hadn’t used on any other girl before, too, because he thought the girl he’d committed himself to deserved that.

And now he’s alone again.

-x-

Ezio walks the line of the castle’s ramparts without even looking, as if he weren’t mere inches from tumbling off the edge and falling to his death. The leather soles of his boots are soft, so the occasional veer to the side isn’t any trouble — his toes just curl around the edge for an instant and he keeps going. It’s an unthinking gesture. He shifts his weight, he corrects himself, he walks.

He has to do something to keep himself busy, even if it’s scaling the castle unharnessed, even if it’s pacing the ramparts like some sort of deranged tightrope walker. If he doesn’t, he’ll drink or mourn or sleep, and right now he doesn’t fancy any. It’s been a long week of that, anyway.

So for now, he indulges in a bit of free-running.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She gives a mirthless chuckle as she takes a drag off her cigarette and exhales, looking back at him in the dark.

"You were that close together on Valentine's, and you still could not tell?"

Ezio just looks puzzled.

"Well, it was obvious he was one of... " A vague hand gesture. "Those."

(He figures any word from his time for the kind of man James was would be considered offensive in hers.)

She can't help it -- she laughs loudly, bending at the waist before coughing on her smoke, caught in her throat with the laughter.

With another swig of rum to clear it out, she wipes her mouth. "He wasn't one of anything, moron. James Kidd wasn't even James Kidd."

Ezio watches her laugh, even more puzzled... and it still doesn't quite click.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"I would think at your age, you would know what a vagina feels like," she mumbles, rolling her eye. She always thought grabbing someone's crotch was a good way to figure out their sex. "James Kidd was Mary Read. She was a pirate, an Assassin, and a woman. And she would have kicked your ass if you ever gave her half a chance."

Ezio doesn't say anything for a moment. He's somewhat speechless, actually, because none of it makes sense: James Kidd sounded exactly like a teenage boy. James Kidd looked exactly like a teenage boy. What did Molotov mean, a woman?

"It's not like I fondled him, for fuck's sake," Ezio replies, sounding more than a little thrown for a loop. Still, though, there's a thread of relief there. He hadn't pressed his cock up against another man in bed. Thank God. He knew his dick would never steer him wrong. "That does not make any sense, however. I would have noticed if James were really a woman."

Molotov just gives him a look, blinking. "Well, you did not notice, did you?" she asks, shrugging. "Mary was most definitely a woman. Just one dressed up as a man. Men have such a problem seeing beyond the end of their own nose, it is not a wonder she could fool you all so easily."

Ezio isn't sure if he should continue to argue for James' masculinity after spending so long deriding it, but here he is, trying to protect his own dignity. He struggles to phrase it for a moment, and then he tries one last deluded attempt to hold onto his .

"That is nonsense. I'm Ezio Auditore. No one knows women like I do."

This time, Molotov has to twist her mouth to keep from laughing. She just doesn't understand this protest against the truth!

"Other women do," she says. "I knew from the moment I met her. Maybe you've forgotten what we're like. These are breasts, Ezio, women have them."

She can't resist making a mockery of this anymore -- she gestures at her own chest, as if she's a teacher.