(no subject)

[assassino]

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.

Comments

s'all good B)

[assassino]

Maria. Ezio smiles out of habit, even as he wonders if she's settled in at all since arriving. She's so broody for a woman, and Ezio's never known a woman quite like that.

"You know, most men would hesitate to take a woman as critical as you as a wife," he says. It's meant to be teasing, a little ha-ha at the idea that neither of them would know something so obvious, but even as it leaves his mouth, he knows he's saying something stupid.

"I'll have you know it takes a lot of precision and grace to do such a thing. A single mistake and you would be dead."

[givetheslip]

The remark does not impress her, as is made immediately obvious by the way her mouth falls into a straight line, but she's at least more relaxed now than the first time they spoke, and less inclined to punch him.

"It's a good thing I'm not worried about becoming one again," she says brusquely, though there's no real steel in her tone. "You, on the other hand, must worry every time you jump. You won't be hiding in plain sight if you splash yourself over the landscape."

[assassino]

Ezio looks at her with that same smile almost frozen on his face, because Ezio being Ezio, he's a little bit more fixated on the way her mouth moves, the line of her jaw. He's thinking about what Molotov told him about James, and he's sure he'd notice if Maria ever tried to disguise herself as a man.

Of course he would, he tells himself.

"That's a pity," he says. "But you know, I don't. It is effortless, after all these years."

Sort of.

[givetheslip]

There's half a moment when something about his expression strikes her as odd—though why that is, she couldn't say—but Maria dismisses it. It's not as if she knows him all that well, after all.

"If it were effortless, more people would do it," she pointed out. "But the only ones I've known to go leaping off tall places are Assassins and little birds."

[assassino]

"It is effortless after years of practice," he says, pointedly, "And you've clearly never seen the birds who fly that high."

[givetheslip]

"Not often." She leaned over, resting her chin on her hand. "I suppose you must almost regard them as friends after so long."

[assassino]

"They're good company," he admits. "They're eagles, you know. Birds big enough that the could likely carry off a woman just a bit smaller than you."

Not that Maria is terribly small to begin with, but that's how Ezio rolls sometimes.

"They are what I am named for, anyway."

[givetheslip]

"I'd be more worried about them shitting on me than carrying me away. Unless they've grown much bigger by your time."

And she very much doubts that, though wouldn't it be interesting? Imagine the eggs.

"Is that an Assassin tradition?" she asks. "You, Altaïr...surely they'll run out of such names eventually."