A/N: Apart from the characters invented for the game, Emilio Russo (whom I'd probably call John Smith if I wrote him in an English setting) is actually the only fully original, named character in the story. Everyone else are either from the game or had some kind of dealings with Leonardo. It does make one appreciate the AC team's dedication to detail - there are very few places where I actually have to shuffle around people and timelines. And not that anyone likely cares, but I shall dillegently note down those points where they do occur.

Also, you will notice a typographic change - underline will now be used for emphasis, while italics will be used for Italian phrases. While I generally dislike underlined text, then it will let me emphasise Italian rambles. Which I might end up gettin a lot of use out of, considering the shitstorm I'm dropping onto the story in... 2 or 3 parts from now? Whoo! Only took just over two years to start approaching game canon! At this pace, I'll get to the point where I actually fill the prompt in six or so years.


Firenze, May 5th, 1476

Leonardo was half-napping, listening to the person he had mentally named 'the gibbering lunatic' screaming from somewhere down the hall. This time it sounded like he had moved on from the usual cries of damnation and curses to how bugs were eating him up from the inside of his skin.

Bugs were eating everyone, Leonardo dully thought, and fought the urge to scratch some of his own flea bites. Bugs, and filth, and a stench that he hoped he could scrub out of his nose at some point. Maybe copious amounts of potpurri and incense - or amputation.

From outside his cell, he heard a few passerbys gush in horrified fascination about how Leoanrdo's neighbouring cellmate had apparently hung himself. That was the second time in as many weeks - personally, he was starting to wonder if that neighbouring cell was cursed somehow. He would have to start keeping notes. He might have room on the wax tablet that a friend of a friend had been kind enough to bring - paper and ink was precious, and Leonardo reserved those luxuries to letters.

Not that there had been much luck thus far. But at least Leonardo had not yet been condemned to the pyre, and his collection of strikes counting his days was approaching the 30 marks that he could be legally kept in the cell. Every day made him ever more worried and relieved in the same breath; every morning that he awoke to the bakers trading worn insults - usually, in order, over bread; recipes; families; traditions; ovens; and clientel, with a rare barb levelled at the fat pigeons that thrived off forgotten crumbs - marked another day that he had survived.

Three more days, he realised when he glanced up and counted his marks. Three more days until the Ufficiali di Notte would present what evidence and witnesses they had gathered against the four men, or would be forced by the very laws of Firenze to let them go. Leonardo quietly hoped that Verrocchio or someone else would be kind enough and lend him enough money to pay for the prison stay - whatever little money he had managed to scrape together and not spend on supplies and interesting gears would probably not pay for more than the first week.

Perhaps he could ask Tournabuoni for a loan. The two Leonardos had kept in close contact; sending wax tablets back and forth with the help of Firenze's many, bored youngsters. Two girls (or at least so Leonardo assumed, as it was difficult to tell with the ill-fitted hand-me-down clothes and smeared dirt, even if the two had not been pre-adolecent) had taken a particular liking to the two men, and based on what giggled whispers Leonardo had caught, apparently thought that the carried messages were declarations of forbidden love.

Of course, if the ufficiali had managed to find any evidence of his sodomite ways and he ended up in the pyre or the gallows, then he was not entirely sure how the fee was paid. Next of kin, perhaps? Or perhaps his workshop and its contents would be sold off, and the fee substracted from that...

"Liono?" a soft voice called from the barred window, and Leonardo started, managing to dislodge the pile of hay he used as a footstool.

Scrambling to his feet, hands automatically trying to brush the worst filth from his hair and clothes, he took the three steps to the window and had to take a moment to boggle at the two women outside.

"Piera? Maria?" he asked, trying to act as if his voice did not break at the sight of his two sisters.

"Oh, Liono, what happened?" Maria, ever the sweet, curious child, asked, her dainty hands reaching through the bars to grasp his. "Mama heard it from ser Pietro, who said he'd heard it from Maestro Verocchio! Oh, Liono, but you couldn't even hurt a spider; why did they put you into this terrible place?"

Leonardo forced a smile in place, petting his youngest sister's hand. "Because sometimes, Maria, people... disagree about what others should do in the privacy of their homes."

Maria wrinkled the button-nose she alone had inherited from their shared mother. "That's stupid. Piera, tell Liono that it's stupid!"

Piera just laughed, reaching between the bars herself to curl their hands together as the three of them had when they were younger. "Maria has her eyes on the ragazzo working down at the banco de'Medici. Right now, she would take on even the Pope for the chance at true love."

"What?" Maria was blushing, her smile almost infectious in its happiness. "He's cute! And he has a really nice ass."

This time, Leonardo's smile was genuine.

"Ragazze, I'm glad to see you," he said, squeezing their joint hands. "How's Mama? How are you?"

"Mama is well. She complaints about all of us, and keeps telling us that we should do better like our fratello Leonardo," Piera said. "She's very proud of you, you know.
She keeps trying to get little Marcello to take up paints and stop playing soldier, as she says."

Leonardo frowned, mentally calculating. "Isn't Marcello a year older than you, Maria?"

Maria laughed at that; a loudy, whinnying noise that caused the horse at the other side of the street to look up in wonder. "Si! That is what makes it so funny! He'll always be her piccolo bambino, no matter how old he gets or how much armour the guard gives him. It's hilarious! Oh, and Sofia sends her blessings - she's gotten a job cleaning out the bottega of il fratelli Pollaiuolo! She says that they make such a mess and wants to know if you want a maid, because she thinks paint is much easier to clean than stone dust!"

"Well, perhaps Pietro Perugino needs a helping hand," Leonardo said, recalling the other man's permanent scowl and tendency to smell paints to check them. "But, no, wait, he moved back to Perugia... Perhaps Sandro Botticelli? I could write a letter."

"Cleaning up stone dust is good for her," Peira said with the dismissive tone of someone without high hopes for her older sister. "Besides, I dread to think of how that place would collapse without her. Every time I meet her, she complains about how she knows more of where the Maestri last left their tools than they do!"

"Definitely go for a banker," Leonardo said, thumbs stroking the top of his sisters' hands in lieu of being able to pull them into a hug like he used to, and gave Maria a wry grin. "Certainly better than an artista and our tendency to misplace everything including our homes."

Piera sighed and shook her head while Maria just laughed. "We must be going, Liono. Write when you come out of that horrible place. We'll throw you a party," she said.

Relunctantly, Leonardo released the hands of his sisters, and put on an assuring smile that he did not quite feel, himself. "Next week," he replied. "They cannot legally keep me beyond that. Take care of yourselves, and say hello to Mama for me."



Firenze, May 9th, 1476

Leonardo paced nervosly, tracking the time by the shadows cast from La Stinche across what little of the city he could see from his cell. The walls felt more oppressive than they had in the past month, stifling and foul and screaming at him. He was supposed to have been out yesterday, and had sat up far into the night with all of his papers and few belongings neatly stacked, hair combed with his fingers until it had frizzled, and one leg bouncing for hours on end as he had waited.

He longed for fresh air, to stretch his legs on more than the short visits to the too-tiny chapel in the courtyard of the prison, where the walls loomed frightfully high and reminded everyone that there was no escape. He wanted to sleep in a proper bed instead of a pile of stale hay with only a treadbare blanket for company. He longed for soft pillows, fresh greens, and water. Soap, too, and Leonardo was determined to ignore the advice that just about every dottore in the city preached more than they praised their self-invented panaceas, swearing to himself that once he got out, he would be scrubbing himself down with enough soap and water to squeak when he walked - even if he left himself suspendible to sickness, he wanted to get the stench out of his skin.

It was already well past midday, and it had been at least two hours since the prison guards had been by with the food bucket for lunch. There was a tiny, though ever-growing, voice nagging at the back of his mind, needling him about how he had been forgotten; that he was to be made an example of; that they were waiting until night so that the pyre would burn even brighter; that they only still fed because the cell was there; that no one remembered he was there.

By the time the heavy bolt was pulled aside and the door pushed open by a gruff guard inforing him that the gonfaloniere would see him, Leonardo had worked himself into enough of a standing panic that he was a hair's breadth from spontanously bursting into tears and hugging the scowling, broody guard. The guard in question was utterly oblivious to Leonardo's mental dilemma, and merely grumbled under his breath about the weather and idiotic employers and even more idiotic prisoners, leading the way through the broad hallway towards the exit.

Stepping outside, forcing himself to keep putting one foot in front of the other, lest the two guardi flanking him took offense, Leonardo wanted to sing. Or dance. Or perhaps just scream for a day straight. Or dance and scream - it was a quite conflicting emotion, really. People went about their day on the street, perfectly oblivious to Leonardo and his escort, all too busy with their own doings. The air was fresh, smelling of the first wisps of spring above the scent of the city, and Leonardo took the opportunity to suck in several large gulps of air on the path to the Palazzo della Signoria. It had been a month - it stood to reason that if he had been found guilty, they would not have kept him for the whole month, would they? No, most likely he would be a free man by the end of the day. And then, Leonardo would go home and sleep. After a long bath. Did he even have any soap?

As seemed to be usual, the anteroom was filled with people waiting for their cases to be dealt with, and one man, apparently drunk, was stomping back and forth and yelling about pigs and donkeys and sheep and how everything had been willing, and, really, it was not his fault. Leonardo spotted one notary in the corner, furiously scribbling down notes as the man rambled.

He did, however, quickly realise that there was no sign of Tornabuoni, Bartholomeo, or Bacconi's easily-recognised shoulders. Leonardo wondered if that meant the other three had already gone free. Or, the tiny voice whispered, if they had gone free as a group, but Leonardo had been detained to be tried and executed for repeated sodomy... He mentally hushed the voice and focused on counting the scruffmarks on his boots instead - it would do him no good to be a shivering, nervous wreck. Or at least a bigger nervous wreck than he already was.

The shouty man had by now moved on to, in great detail, describe the exact nature of the pony that had caught his eye, and the notary in the corner was desperately waving at an assistant for more paper. At least, Leonardo thought to himself, he had been more discreet than that... He hoped.