asscreedkinkmeme (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
asscreedkinkmeme) wrote2010-09-13 08:44 pm
asscreedkinkmeme) wrote2010-09-13 08:44 pm
Entry tags:
Kink Meme - Assassin's Creed pt.2
Assassin's Creed Kink Meme pt.2
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Welcome to the Brotherhood
∆ Comment anonymously with a character/pairing and a kink/prompt.
∆ Comment is filled by another anonymous with fanfiction/art/or any other appropriate medium.
∆ One request per post, but fill the request as much as you want.
∆ The fill/request doesn't necessarily need to be smut.
∆ Don't flame, if you have nothing good to say, don't say anything.
∆ Have a question? Feel free to PM me.
∆ Last, but not least: HAVE FUN!
List of Kinks
(Livejorunal) Archive
#2 (Livejournal) Archive
(Delicious.com) Archive
(Dreamwidth) Archive <- Currently active
Part 1
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Fills Only
Discussion
In Name Alone 5/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-29 03:02 pm (UTC)(link)“Stay,” Lena commanded in Spanish. She gestured to the man in the bed. “Help me put him into the bath. Then go and ready more water.”
“More?” One asked, gasping for air.
“Yes, more. He will dirty the water as soon as he touches it. Now stop complaining, you little girl, and help me with him.”
The boys pitched in with no more complaints, apparently shamed by the woman half their size who was already swinging the bloodied soldier into her arms. Lena ducked down, hooking her hands under his armpits and knowing as soon as she touched his chest that he was deep in fever. Frowning, she grunted under his weight; he was unbelievably heavy. Her fingers tightened around him – muscle, sinew, the sort of physique that only came after many years of tireless training. Together, they heaved him into the tub, a tiny sound of pain or surprise pushing out between his bruised lips. The water droplets burned her wrists. It was hot enough.
“Now go,” she barked. “More water, quick as you can.”
The old woman watched, still wringing her hands, standing in the doorway like an anxious father-to-be overseeing a birth.
“I did not know,” she was saying, “I did not know, senora… perdóname, I did not know. I thought I was only to wait for his passing and keep him in comfort…”
“In comfort?” Lena sneered, shooting a glance over her shoulder at the Spaniard. She gestured to the limp body in the basin. “Would you call this comfort?”
“S-Senora, I…”
“You should be ashamed. I’ve seen mangy dogs treated with more respect.”
“But, he is, he’s practically de - ”
“Yes thank you. I know what he is.”
She could speak Spanish. She was a talented healer. But this was the real reason Ezio had chosen her for this mission. It was so plain now, so obvious… She, more than any of the other assassini, could separate a man from his identity. When she looked at the mess of wounds, of raw flesh and agony before her, she saw not a man who had brought unspeakable horrors down on her homeland and her family, but a patient, something that needed to be tended to, cared for, fixed. No stray blade of hers would "accidentally" find its way between his ribs.
Neighbors would joke that she grew up in casa del seraglio, a menagerie house, so called because her father allowed her to pick up all manner of injured stray dogs and cats until the yard resembled an unruly orphanage for injured animals. It was an instinct, and perhaps it was one she had received directly from her father. Gratitude is the gift of the sick and weary, her father liked to say, and Lena had never forgotten it.
As expected, the water in the basin turned the color of red clay. Brown and murky, it was ready to be drained almost as soon as the man went in. But Lena called on that elusive patience DaVinci had taught, and she waited, worrying her teeth along her bottom lip, exasperated and frustrated and then snapping back into immediate action when the boys returned. Again they helped her rearrange the man. The Spanish caretaker laid out a fresh linen sheet on the floor and they put him there until they could empty the basin and refill it with the steaming buckets brought over from the blacksmith’s house.
In Name Alone 6/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-29 03:28 pm (UTC)(link)Then she dismissed the boys and the old woman, vowing that she would call on them should the need arise. Left alone with her patient, Lena sat beside the basin and watched the map of his pain spring to life, the cleaned flesh exposing the livid mountains of welts and cuts, valleys of bruises, each one telling its own story. There, on his left bicep, he had taken a brutal sword swipe. Ezio’s handiwork, no doubt, clean and precise, a straight flap of skin, not jagged or hesitating, but confident. Lena had cleaned her share of wounds sustained after assassin duels and Ezio’s were easy to spot. His technique was flawless, as unique as his penned signature. The cut, thankfully, was not very deep and had most likely swiped through layers of leather and cloth. Then there were the marks on his hands, his fingertips worn to frayed nubs. The fingernails had broken, splintering, most likely from the fall - he had tried to scrabble at the wall on the way down. Perhaps an obliging beam had helped to slow his descent and delay his death; Lena spied a large bruise purpling across his ribcage, the size and shape of the sort of support struts that held up porticos or appeared in siege weaponry. His right cheek showed a rough patch, an abrasion that looked as if he had dragged his face along a city street. Lena leaned over with one of the clean linens and dabbed carefully at the raw spot, hoping to sponge up some of the grit that had transferred from the wall or ground or whatever other surface had kissed him so brutally.
And none of that hinted at the shocking state of his legs. Lena licked her lips, truth dawning; Ezio had set her an impossible task. This man might be living in the barest sense, but there was no hope of a life, a true life with walking and talking… No, he lay condemned to darkness, huddled in the shadow of Death’s ever-encroaching cloak.
“Cursed,” Lena murmured. “He was right.”
His legs hooked over the end of the tub, his body too long to fit neatly into the basin. Lena shifted down toward his feet, dipping a cloth into the hot water and dragging it along the parts of him that were not submerged. More injuries emerged. And more. And more... Surely he would never walk again, and if he did, it would never happen without the use of a cane. She found where a field surgeon had set one of his broken bones. If she squinted, Leonardo’s drawings appeared, overlaying the living flesh, hovering there like chalky apparitions. Lena had experienced the great honor of attending one of Master DaVinci’s dissections. Held in darkness and in great secrecy, the penalty for being caught was not enough to hold her curiosity at bay. Leonardo’s knife revealed truths Lena had never even imagined. The artist laid bare the body and showed it to be the miraculous, complicated machine she had always hoped it might be. He taught her to recognize when a bone was merely fractured or when it was truly broken. He taught her how to set a bone, how to break one that had been badly healed and then re-set it properly. He showed her how the application of clay could reduce swelling, how honey could counteract the poisoning effects of abscesses in wounds… Lena flinched. Perhaps if DaVinci were here instead of her… Perhaps his skill could bring this man back from the brink…
No. That was no way to start out. She shook her head, determined to at least finish her overall examination. At least this broken bone had been set properly and would not require re-breaking. Lena possessed a strong stomach, but the idea of performing that particular procedure on a living person turned her guts.
She found two more spots where she was certain the bones must have broken, given the swelling and strange discoloration of the flesh. Those too seemed to have been skillfully set. The breaks, while grievous, were at least on the path to healing. The open wounds, however, were not.
“Boys! You two! Help me with him. And bring that useless old dolt.”
In Name Alone 7/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-29 03:30 pm (UTC)(link)The boys scattered, appeased by a few coins Lena found in the bottom of her satchel. She lit the buttery beeswax candles left on the bedside table and sill, and lowered the wrought iron chandelier to light the wicks there, too. Dusk had gotten away from her. Night arrived and Lena knew it would be dawn, perhaps later, before she rested.
Bread, cheese and a pungent salami arrived, though Lena hardly noticed, focused as she was on applying a thin layer of honey to the most swollen and fetid wounds on the man’s legs. It wasn’t until the woman nudged her and pointed to the ready tea pot that Lena thanked her and paused to nibble a bit of dinner.
As the hours disappeared and Lena became acquainted with every scrape and knick on her patient’s thighs, she had to ask herself why. Why bother? Why accept this task at all? Her arts were in great demand in Rome, and if not Rome, the assassins in Florence or Venice could certainly use her skills. Her knowledge of poisons was as extensive as her knowledge of helpful herbs. She could cure ague, prevent a crippling fever or create poisons of incredible potency and subtlety. But no, she was in Nowhere, España, trying to resurrect a dying enemy.
“In his last hours he might reveal important information. I cannot go myself. If he recognizes me then he will never confess.” Ezio never begged. He wasn’t the sort of man to threaten or coerce, but Lena had seen the desperation in his eyes. This was important to him. This was the last sputtering strain of the Borgia disease and it could not go ignored. This man was the last tumor and one way or another he would have to be excised.
“Do you know,” Lena began conversationally, knowing the man could not hear her but speaking anyway. “My papa was so excited to go to work for your father. I remember the day he left. ‘Everything is going to be better, flower,’ he said. ‘Everything will be different now.’ That’s what he told me. The next time he came home I could hardly recognize his face. He was right, in a way… Everything was different.”
Lena blinked away an unwelcome gush of emotion. Silly girls got worked up over the past, not assassins. It was a mistake to think about her father at a time like this. “He’s passed from us,” her mother would tell her in a haunted whisper. “We will not speak of death in his house. He has passed.”
Her food went mostly untouched. The honey dwindled, spread in even, glittering layers over his thighs and shins until he looked like a creature made of melted sugar. Then she turned to the clay, carefully lifting each one of his arms and packing the cold, wet sludge over his biceps, forearms, anywhere she found troublesome swelling. A cold, damp cloth went on his head for the fever. She became accustom to the strong, unpleasant smell of his worst wounds, the ones that reeked like a dead rat moldering in the eaves. Carefully, Lena tugged him up, shoving pillows behind his lower back until she could dribble lukewarm tea between his lips without fearing he might choke. He sputtered, flinched, but some of the tea made it down. Lena spent the boat trip and then the long, bumpy horse ride expecting to find her patient bawling and swearing; instead he had seemingly accepted the nearness of his demise, drifting toward mortality with nary a squeak of protest.
The tea would help that, she hoped, restoring some of his strength from the inside. It was a perk, she thought with a wry smirk, that her colleagues were sent on such far-reaching missions. They returned with all manner of delightful and exotic goodies.
In Name Alone 8/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-29 03:35 pm (UTC)(link)She described briefly what she had seen, asking for the artist’s help, his suggestions and ideas. He never did seem to lack for inspiration.
It is good, she wrote in closing, that he looks nothing like the man I remember. That day before the gates, when we saw him arrested, it felt too good, too right. I live even now ashamed of how much joy his downfall brought to my restless heart. When I look at him tonight I see skin and blood, not the madman cut down by reason and hope.
Lena tied the letters and left them in a discretely shadowy spot on the outside sill. She lingered by the window, her fingers resting on the uneven, bubbled glass. Outside the night was purple and still, filled with cricket song. In the city it never sounded quite like that. Night came and the sound of the world fell away, drowned by the thick walls enclosing their underground dormitories. Sometimes she sneaked out to slumber beneath the stars, tucked behind a ragged bit of canvas, her head pillowed on her hands while the sounds of city life droned on below.
There was nowhere in the room for her to sleep. Next door, perhaps, there would be a little room set aside for her. But Lena persisted, checking and rechecking her work, displaying the kind of impatient worrying she found unbearable in other doctors.
She lost track of everything, of time, of location, drifting down suddenly, plopping into sleep like a stone dropped into a river. One moment she hovered over a bad scrape on the man’s wrist and the next she was lost do dreams.
“Well aren’t you a pretty sight.”
Lena jerked awake, gasping, blinking the sleep out of her eyes only to find a tall, slender woman leaning over her chair. She rubbed at her jaw, aware of an unfortunate crick in her neck and needles and pins in her wrists. The woman laughed, tossing a head of full, long gray hair over her shoulders. She looked about forty, with small eyes and the kind of face that aged but never looked old. Her wide mouth was mischievous but not necessarily friendly.
“I’m… who are you?” Lena asked, remembering last minute to use Spanish and not Italian.
“Silvia,” the woman replied. Her bony arms were crossed in front of her chest, the sleeves there hanging loose on her beanstalk frame. “I told my aunt to go home. She’s not so good with blood. Me? I can handle anything. Ah! And this must be our fallen angel.”
Lena pulled herself fully upright, groaning as she realized she had fallen asleep in her chair, her head resting on her arms. It was one thing to fall asleep at a desk, but she had dropped off with her head and arms on the bed beside her patient. Silvia shuffled around to the other side of the bed, leaning over to inspect the man more closely.
“Poor, lucky fool,” Silvia said with a sigh. “How many deals with the Devil did he make to survive, eh? Makes you wonder.”
“Yes it does,” Lena replied quietly. “I’m sorry… Your sister was?”
Re: In Name Alone 8/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-29 09:10 pm (UTC)(link)Re: In Name Alone 8/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-30 12:33 am (UTC)(link)But this? It makes me want more, screaming MOREEEE.
I love your writing, please do continueeee<3<3
Re: In Name Alone 8/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-30 07:32 am (UTC)(link)I adore the way you've written the OC, from her strength and cunning, to her absolutely human reactions to Cesare's state. And most of all? I love the fact that you didn't go the typical route and make her even remotely attracted to Ezio, making it a brother/sister, student/teacher relationship. It's a wonderful way to go. Anyway, PLEASE DON'T ABANDON THIS :-)
I know this meme is anon, but I'd love to read more of your writing if you have any...
Re: In Name Alone 8/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-30 03:42 pm (UTC)(link)And I promise romance and smut to come with some possible implied slash from a few unexpected characters. :D
Thanks for the kind words!
In Name Alone 9/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-30 05:19 pm (UTC)(link)“Certainly.” Lena stood, stretching, listening to the quiet pops in her spine as she lifted her arms overhead. “Is it early?”
“Very. You should still be abed. There is another room through there.” She pointed to a curtained doorway to the north. “You will need all your strength, little doctor.”
“Don’t call me that,” Lena said softly. “Call me Lena. It’s my name.”
“So sensitive. One would never get the impression you have a chip on your shoulder about it…”
Silvia laughed again, throaty and rough, and turned to go.
“About what exactly?”
“Doing a man’s job. I should start breakfast. Call when you’re hungry... Lena.”
He swam.
His bones ached, his muscles protested, but blind madness drove him forward. It was not water, this vast sea, but fog, dark and confusing, the color of old rusted blood stains. Everywhere the mist swirled, terrifying because it did not look as if it could support his weight… but it did and he pressed through, pushing arms and legs that did not want to cooperate. Rest. He only wanted to rest. An infernal clanging persisted in his brain, too loud to ignore and too ringing to understand.
Golden threads floated here and there, illuminated by unseen lights. Some were much too far to touch, but a few strands lingered nearby, taunting him, coaxing him forward. He reached for the ends of the golden ribbons, cursing inwardly when his fingers failed to touch them. It was a long thread and he could not see the other end of it but it looked, or maybe felt, like a promise. Follow me, it seemed to say, and everything will become clear.
The golden ribbons, the aching, terrible sea… there was nothing else to be found, not around him or in his head. He felt a dull throbbing everywhere, as if his skin no longer worked to protect him, as if the slightest bump or nudge would feel like a horse running him down. And inside he was empty, grasping. Without the ribbon to follow he would have nothing. He would be alone and forgotten, drowning in a mist born of blood.
Forward, forward… if for no other reason to escape his own dread.
Silvia proved a comfort, if a small one, in the weeks to come. Lucio came to the door four days after Lena’s arrival at the cottage. He was a short, strong man with the swarthy, sun-bronzed looks of a Sicilian. In the nondescript peasant clothes he looked absurdly out of place, like a lion stuffed into a gown. His black, black hair stuck up in every direction, as if protesting the loss of his concealing assassin’s hood. But he was friendly and boisterous, perhaps conspicuously so, showing Lena great kindness to compensate for the misery going on inside the house.
“Everything is as you wanted,” Lucio said, gesturing to the tightly-packed crates on either side of him. His voice lowered, his square jaw jutting out as he added, “Could I come inside? Take a peek? I could use a memory to keep me warm at night on watch.”
Lena bit down on the nasty retort that leapt to her tongue. “I don’t think that would be wise,” she said instead. “He’s incredibly frail. The slightest disturbance might make him worse.”
Lucio shrugged and swept her a bow. “Your message is away on the wings of the swiftest bird I could find. Expect a hasty reply.”
At least that was a cheering thought. Any word from Leonardo might improve her mood and give her cause to hope. Lucio left, striding out of the back yard with a whistled tune on his lips. The nerve of him. Truly her patient was no saint, not by any stretch of the imagination, but nor was he a freak show to be laughed at in his hour of greatest suffering. How would Lucio feel, she wondered, were he in that bed with Borgia swine in the courtyard waiting to view him like some kind of twisted sculpture? Which was not defending her patient, she insisted silently, merely providing a dying man his dignity.
In Name Alone 10/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-30 05:24 pm (UTC)(link)Which reminded her… She had a job to do and it did not include lingering in the sunny courtyard or enjoying the mild spring weather. Already, the obliging sunshine encouraged new plants to shoot up through the moistened ground.
And so she returned to the abattoir that had become her office. In some ways it was better than the day before. Silvia showed herself to be a remarkable woman, anticipating Lena’s needs without a word of communication. She brought tea just when Lena began feeling numb to her progress or arrived with a plate of fresh biscuits when hunger started gnawing at her insides. And never, never, did Silvia utter a word of complaint or despair.
“He looks better today,” she would say every morning, as regular as a church bell. And she did just then, with Lena unpacking her new supplies, counting the vials and putting them in order. “I see some color in his cheeks,” Silvia added, a tray of tea and porridge balanced on one bony forearm.
“Indeed? That’s from the fever,” Lena replied tartly.
“You could say that…” She deposited the tray on Lena’s desk and went to the bed. It never failed to amaze Lena how fearlessly the old woman acted, leaning down to look more closely at the man’s face. No grimace… No wince… Silvia nodded and murmured, “You might be thankful, mi hija, for the small miracles you seem to perform each day.”
“They are not miracles,” Lena replied. Again with God. The Order was, thankfully, usually free of such irritating talk. There were religious assassins, certainly, but they generally kept their praying and their exalting to themselves. Lena did not appreciate an unseen entity getting credit for her hard work and interminable hours. Expressing this to Leonardo once had elicited a stifled laugh. “God is in absolutely everything,” he had replied with a wink, “in your remedies, assassin, and in the good they bring about.”
Silvia stayed, undeterred by Lena’s bitten-off remark. She sat, calmly, on the edge of the bed and took the man’s still and bruised hand into her own.
“I think I will keep him company today,” Silvia announced. “Hand me a cup of tea, if you would please.”
They fell into an easy pattern. Silvia would arrive each morning with tea and food and hold their patient’s hand while Lena worked. At night she cooked soups and kept the house smelling sweet with baked breads and little twists of dough sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, washed with egg. Before turning in to sleep, Silvia helped clean the old honey and clay from the patient, and sometimes stayed to assist Lena with applying the new. Quiet days were spent simply trying various ways to bring down his fever, while others were spent keeping careful written logs of every observed change.
Day Six – The bad swelling in his right arm had lessened. General improvement. The bump on his right thigh refuses to go down. Honey, clay, a paste of strawberry leaves and an application of warm stones… nothing has helped that stubborn swelling.
Day Eight – From the disorder a man begins to emerge. That gives me no comfort and will, I suspect, only make my work more difficult.
Day Nine – His fever will not break. No matter what I try… If he does not wake soon and eat, he will waste away to nothingness. The tea and what little porridge I forced into his mouth are not enough to sustain life.
In Name Alone 11/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-30 06:11 pm (UTC)(link)Lena sat up in bed. Her room joined his, the only partition a single thin sheet. Sometimes, in the darkest reaches of sleep, she thought she heard his breathing. Often she started awake in a panic, swearing that he had exclaimed in pain, and, throwing on a dressing gown, rushed through the doorway to see… nothing. The same. The unchanged. It was embarrassing. The constant stress was driving her mad, or at least unbalancing her humors to the point where she hallucinated his voice in sleep.
Sighing, she rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hand, roughly, like a punishment, enjoying the little prickles of pain in her cheeks. Feeling more tired and bedraggled than usual, she slid into a loose cotton gown and tied a dressing gown over that, shuffling barefoot into the patient’s room. He slept, as he always did, on his back. She repeated their usual one-sided dance, sidling up to his bedside and dandling her finger in front of his nose. Breath, faint but warm, washed over her skin. It seemed vigorous, if a little labored, and Lena scolded herself for the pang of disappointment that tightened her stomach. If only he would die. She had tried her best… the swelling in his leg would not go down. The fever gripped him. Silently, she cursed whatever unnatural force kept him like this. It wasn’t fair to her… it wasn’t fair to him, either.
Silvia slipped into the room. At once, Lena smelled the strong, country tea, but unlike other days it did nothing to please her. She stared down at him, half-unseeing, relaxing her eyes to keep from sharpening his features into anything recognizably frightening. Whenever she strode through the Order’s gallery, none of the paintings hanging there made her shudder like his. It was the icy gaze, rendered so uncannily, so truly, that Lena actually felt it freeze her flesh. She hated that Ezio kept those paintings. Was it a reminder, she wondered, of the sacrifices they all made? Work hard, stay focused on the cause, or the country will fall to murderers and thieves like these?
“He looks better,” Silvia murmured. Even she sounded downtrodden.
“I don’t know what to do, Silvia.” Lena kept her hand in front of his face, transfixed by the even spurts of breath that came and went… the tiny stream of life that bound her like a chain. So long as he breathed, she could not leave. “All but one of his wounds shows signs of mending… yet his fever… What have I missed? What am I not seeing?”
“Calm yourself,” Silvia said gently. She crossed the dry, cool floorboards and pushed the mug of tea into Lena’s hands. Her thin fingers lifted, mussing Lena’s hair affectionately. “Go outside. Walk in the grass. Feel the sun on your face. I will watch him until you feel at peace again.”
“No.” Lena shook her head. “I should work. He needs new bandages. There is still one tea I’ve yet to try…”
“Stop… Stop.” It was mesmerizing, the way she combed her hair. Gently, like a mother… “Go. He will wait and I will wait with him.”
In Name Alone 12/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-30 06:14 pm (UTC)(link)She never bothered to look at the sunrise on those hectic mornings. Purpose blotted out all chance of enjoyment.
Now a thick silver band obscured the scarred flesh on her finger. Ridiculous, really, to take such precautions when he couldn’t even see. And if he did at last open his eyes, what would happen? Would he be grateful? Would she feel as if all this worry and anxiety were actually worthwhile?
Sometimes Lena believed in fate, but she never knew whether or not to trust that belief. Fate had made her cross paths with da Vinci. Fate had inspired him to alert Ezio that a young, female doctor was being harassed and threatened for practicing her art. Fate had helped her survive the ordeal of being recruited, allowed her to push through the fear and sacrifice to the other side. But could fate really be a force of good if it led her here, too? Had it not also taken her father away and much of her faith with him?
If this was all just some kind of test, she wanted it to be over.
Footsteps rustling in the grass behind her… Almost too quiet to be detected… Lucio.
“Good morning,” she greeted, taking another long sip from her tea.
He was out of breath and immediately thrust a rolled parchment toward her. “Just arrived,” he said. “The pigeon was half-dead with fatigue.”
“Birds cannot understand our urgency,” Lena replied mildly.
“This one did.”
She shifted her mug to one hand and unfurled the paper with the other. “Keep an eye on the house,” she said before reading. “I don’t want anyone seeing our meetings.”
“Certo.”
Lucio moved to where the grass was higher and crouched.
At once, Lena recognized Leonardo’s scrawling, unruly penmanship. Her spirits, at last, lifted. Quickly, she jogged back into the house and unearthed the tiny psalms from her bag. Then she sat heavily on the bed, setting down her tea to work out the cipher.
Vespina:
You mean to tell me that he is not already up and about, dancing and singing and playing the lute? For shame! Of course I jest, friend, and extend my sympathies. There is no sadder soul in the world than the doctor whose remedies do not take. I wish I could be of more assistance, but I’m afraid all that you have listed is precisely what I would have tried myself.
You will pardon me, I hope, for making arrangements without first consulting you or Ezio. He will rage, I’m sure of it, but at me, Vespina, and not you. Should he ask, tell him it was my doing and mine alone. When I first learned of his intentions to send you to Spain I asked if I might accompany you. I was denied, rather rudely I might add, on the grounds that he would recognize me. It’s true, I did work in his service and it is impossible to forget such a devilishly handsome face as I possess.
In Name Alone 13/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-30 06:35 pm (UTC)(link)I must warn you – at first you will not like him. He is not… his social graces leave much to be desired. If you can ignore the cursing and the bad temper, you will find a most brilliant mind. Having anticipated the extent of your difficulties, I dispatched him almost as soon as you left for your destination. Expect him soon, very soon; he is not one to tarry.
You can depend on his discretion and good sense – he is not one for politics, but he does associate quietly with our cause. I have instructed him to bring several items that may help and a few others that will only bring comfort.
Treat him well, friend, and show him the famous assassino hospitality. (The friendly variety, not the pointy kind.)
Good luck,
LDV
She could have kissed him. She could have kissed Lucio! Silvia! She could have kissed… well, no, she couldn’t have kissed him… but perhaps a friendly pat on the shoulder. Help. Help was coming! She would no longer have to shoulder the burden alone. Her mind raced… Who would Leonardo send? It sounded like a friend, but then why did he refuse to give a name? And who could possibly know more about anatomy than da Vinci himself?
Lena folded the letter and tucked it into her dressing gown. Such thrilling news deserved to be held close to the heart. She finished her tea and trotted back out to the field. Lucio’s dark head watched her from the grass. “Send a reply,” she said brightly.
“And what should it read?”
“Thank you. Just… thank you.”
“Damn him! Damn him!” Lena hurled her mug against the wall. As if to spite her, it didn’t break but thudded impotently to the floor.
It all started the day he arrived.
A letter from Ezio came soon after Leonardo’s. Urgent matters in Rome meant he would have to go there directly without stopping to see her. She was to keep him apprised of any dramatic changes via carrier pigeon and not abandon her post unless the patient died. In the event of his passing, she was to see him buried with all due rights and return to the Order.
That was good, she decided. He might grow disappointed with her lack of progress if he visited and she had learned nothing from the prisoner – patient.
But now she too was a prisoner. Leonardo’s mysterious friend arrived two days after the announcement of his coming. He stomped in from the porch and into the patient’s room without so much as a muttered warning. The first words out of his mouth were, “Let’s see the little fucker then” and he shouted them so loudly that Lena dropped the precious vial in her hands.
“You nearly startled me to death!” she cried, whirling on the intruder.
“Well wouldn’t want that, would we?” the stranger grunted. “One corpse is all I can handle today.”
“He is not a corpse.”
“He damn well will be if you don’t let me get to work!”
Lena stared at him, outraged, experiencing that prickly feeling that told her she ought to recognize this man. He had a distinctive face, slender and almost equine, with dark, almost black eyes and a shaggy crop of chocolate-colored hair. Grey flecks started at his temples and were sprinkled down into his unkempt beard. He wore a nondescript smock over muddied trousers and funny green shoes. Whoever this was, he looked more like an errant hermit than a healer.
“A mutual friend sent you?” she asked, careful not to use Leonardo’s name.
“Yes, yes!” the man shouted, waving around his hand. The fingers, she saw, were stained with blue and purple, pigment of some kind, not bruises. “Did you hear me before? Move out of the bloody way, girl!”
Lena stood her ground. Until she was certain this man was competent and not completely crazy, she wouldn’t be letting him near her patient.
“Not until you give me a name,” she replied tartly.
“You give me yours.”
“No! I… I asked first.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake.” He rolled his eyes, shoving his sleeves up his narrow arms. “Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni – satisfied now?”
Re: In Name Alone 13/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-30 07:07 pm (UTC)(link)Re: In Name Alone 13/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-30 07:51 pm (UTC)(link)In Name Alone 14/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-30 10:45 pm (UTC)(link)On and on it went… She had done everything wrong, according to him, and now the great Michelangelo would sweep in to make it all better again. What was Leonardo thinking, sending her this gnarled little goblin? They were rivals! Everybody knew Michelangelo had no love for da Vinci and the other way around. She was beginning to wish that feud was far more vicious than it apparently was.
“Miserable, crabby, preposterous old…”
The curtain opened, light spilling in from the adjoining room, painting a bright streak onto the floor. Michelangelo’s scruffy head poked in, his mouth turned down in an almost permanent scowl. “Who are you talking to? Crazy woman… Get in here, I need your help.”
“Oh? You need my help now?” It was childish, of course, but she couldn’t help herself. “I thought I was too ignorant and clumsy to stand in your illustrious presence.”
“You are,” he mumbled, holding the curtain aside. Was that a twinkle of humor she spied in his beady eyes? No, just malice. “But that’s beside the point. Come on, we have work to do.”
The peaceful routine she had created with Silvia was immediately torn to pieces. Michelangelo was a one-man storm. He kept insane hours, babbled endlessly to himself in a voice too low and gravelly to be understood and he left his things wherever they happened to land. Silvia floated above the chaos, smiling privately as Lena fumed and took Michelangelo’s criticisms. At least someone was finding the situation amusing, Lena thought, glaring at Silvia as she snorted under her breath and left the room, her arms full of laundry and used bandages.
Worst, the absolute worst, was that after only one day of Michelangelo’s presence had a positive effect on the patient. Perhaps she had been going a bit overboard with the honey, and maybe she had, in her enthusiasm to do good, tied his bandages on the tight side, but that didn’t lessen the sting to her pride.
“I understand you’ve attended a dissection.”
This was another lovely facet of the master’s personality – despite Leonardo’s insistence that he knew what discretion was, he was tactless when it came to things like this. Dissection was considered an abomination, unnatural, and, if proven, could be penalized with public execution. Da Vinci referred to them only as “sessions” so as not to let even a single eavesdropper learn of their clandestine trips to the crypts.
“I have,” Lena replied. Michelangelo sat on a stool scooted right up to the bed. Lena stood beside him, worrying the edge of a dirtied cloth.
“You have some skill,” he added softly.
“Was that a compliment I just heard?”
“No. An observation.” He lifted the thin sheet covering their patient from the waist down. Silvia had gotten her hands on some acceptable undergarments and dressed him. Lena preferred handling wriggling leeches. When it came to the man’s hygiene and anything involving a slightly intimate touch, she left to get air or nap and Silvia intuited it was time to take his laundry or change sheets that he had soiled. He produced little waist, eating as little as he did, but Lena disliked the thought of treating him like some sort of infant. Silly, she knew, to be afraid of something as simple and straightforward as an unconscious person relieving themselves.
Michelangelo indicated the stubborn swollenness that Lena had as yet managed to heal
“This,” he said in a strangely reverent whisper, “is the cause of your frustrations.”
“I can see that.”
“No,” he replied with a bitter laugh, “you can’t.”
“Pardon?”
“Where is your husband? What does he think of all this?”
Lena gaped at him. “What… what does that have to do with anything? We were discussing this man’s leg…”
In Name Alone 15/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-30 10:46 pm (UTC)(link)“I have no husband, sir, but I’ll slit your throat myself if you avoid the point much longer.”
“Great curiosity or great impatience,” Michelangelo said, turning away. He was speaking to himself again. “I can’t decide… I’m not sure I want to.”
“Get on with it.” Lena swiped her hand toward the leg in question. “Why won’t it heal?”
“His other wounds show promising signs,” Michelangelo said thoughtfully, pointing to some of the bandaged lacerations. “Why, his arms are almost to their former state. The cuts to his face will heal and may not even scar…”
“I know all of this,” she reminded him. “I can see it for myself.”
“Be silent. You look at these things but you do not see. No doubt this is the result of that meandering sissy and his teachings. You slap a bit of honey on something and expect Mother Nature to do the rest. That isn’t always the way, girl. Nature can heal but it hurts, too, and sometimes man must interfere where She will not go.” His tone turned angry, chiding, and Lena held her tongue. She flinched under his gaze when he lifted it to her. Leonardo looked like that sometimes… so driven and passionate, as if he had receded to another world, somewhere she could not follow.
“If all other injuries are healing as they should and this one will not, we can assume that it is also the cause of this stubborn fever.” Michelangelo pointed to the swelling on the man’s thigh, a wound Lena was unfortunately very familiar with. It refused her, like a shut up gate, and taunted her in waking and in sleep. “Look at it.”
“I am.”
“God above, look harder.”
She sighed. “What am I looking for?”
“Perhaps it is what you’re not seeing.” The tendons in his hand flexed and then relaxed as he extended his forefinger and thumb, making an L shape as if to give the swollen lump a frame. “At these dissections, he showed you how to cut through to the bone?”
“Y-Yes, of course.” Lena did not like where this was apparently going…
“On the surface this cut looks normal, yet it is slightly red, agitated, and distended. Since there are no signs of mischief on the outside, we must venture to look on the inside.” His head nodded toward the desk. “Bring me my case.”
“You’re… you’re going to cut him open? Just like that?”
“Did you vomit?” he asked, nonchalant as ever.
“What? When?”
“At the dissections. Did you?”
Lena could remember the strange cold smell, seeing her breath in the air, the waxy, lifeless body spread out on the slab. The sounds reminded her of her first kill, the short, serrated blade finding its way between the guard’s ribs as she pulled him into a deadly embrace from behind. A sound like cutting into salami. Like a boot skidding on ice. Leonardo had pulled open the ribcage and it reminded her of hands, great, spindly fingers reaching for the ceiling. She had felt her stomach go when he uncoiled the innards, slippery and unexpectedly vivid in color. But she held on, didn’t give in to the tugs on her throat…
“No, though I did feel a bit sick at times.” The truth… or as near as she wanted to come to it.
“Good, then I expect you to help.”
Lena grabbed the case off her desk, the leather warmed by nearby candelabra. It was late but Lena felt wide awake. She handed Michelangelo the case and followed him as he rose from the stool and lumbered over to the other side of the bed. She squeezed in beside him, checking the curtains to make certain they were tightly drawn. Someone might see this and call it witchcraft… violation… she didn’t need yet another strain on her mind.
In Name Alone 16/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-30 10:48 pm (UTC)(link)“How will we close it up when you’re done?” she asked, marveling at the candle’s glint over his slender knife.
With his eyes obscured by ruffled bangs, Michelangelo glanced over his shoulder at her, “With needle and thread. How else?”
Lena blanched.
“Cauterizing is effective,” Michelangelo ceded with a casual shrug. “But rather barbaric, don’t you think? Now watch closely and don’t get in my light.”
Instructive wasn’t quite the word for it. Intriguing perhaps… Harrowing. And just as Michelangelo had theorized, the problem was not in how Lena had dressed the wound, but in a stray piece of bone that had splintered in the fall, creating an abscess larger than a plum. She watched the needle-thin chip of bone come out and stared at it as Michelangelo wiped his hands and prepared to drain the abscess. Her breath flooded out, as if she too were being punctured and drained. Relief. They had solved the final riddle, and now there was a chance his fever might break. Just as quickly, trepidation replaced the relief… Their patient might recover quickly now, which meant soon, too soon, Lena would have to deal with the man. Hear his voice. Face his scorn or his gratitude. She couldn’t decide which she’d rather have from him.
“And now this.” Michelangelo lifted a sharply curved needle. “He’s far away. He won’t feel a thing if you screw up once or twice.”
“Are you certain? I’m not sure… Shouldn’t I practice first?”
“No.” He shook his head, making the needle dance impatiently in the candlelight. “You can practice now. On him. Many would pay handsomely for the opportunity to prick the prick.”
Lena smirked, kneeling and taking the needle and finding that her hand shook.
“Steady,” Michelangelo cautioned. “It’s not a pincushion.”
Under his careful guidance, Lena discovered the procedure was not terribly difficult. The metallic thread was fine, hard to maneuver sometimes, but the hooked needle made even stitches perfectly possible. In fact she found the process… not relaxing, exactly, but requiring the sort of precise concentration that always soothed her. She may not have been ready to cut into the man’s living flesh, but this felt like a final flourish, a finishing touch on a masterpiece long in the making.
“There now, good enough,” Michelangelo said as she finished. A more or less even row of V’s held the long, vertical incision shut. “In several weeks you can remove the thread and leave behind nothing but a few dots. Much more refined than a nasty burn, mm? You take that needle back to your Florentine friend and grind it right in his nose.”
“Incredible,” she whispered. A feeling overcame her, giddiness that reminded her of childhood, of nursing a lamb back to health after a difficult birth or taking in a mangy mutt only to have a fine canine companion a few weeks later. Success. It was a victory that deserved a smile. Impulsively, she threw her arms around the grumbling artist and gave him a ferocious squeeze. He needed a bath, but just then she didn’t care.
“Alright, alright,” he said, pushing her off. She caught the tail-end of a harried smile. “I think some tea for this lucky bastardo and then a spot for myself. Then rest and sleep the sleep of the brilliant.”
“Did no one ever teach you humility?” Lena carefully wiped off the hooked needle and laid it on a tray to clean.
“Of course,” Michalengelo said, waving her off. “They tried. It didn’t take.”
In Name Alone 17/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-30 10:51 pm (UTC)(link)When the room was slightly tidier and they had forced a good measure of tea down the patient’s throat, Lena said goodnight to the sculptor. On the way out, she spied his case and the curled parchments tucked into the bottom. Sketches, dozens of them, scribbles of divine ideas. There were rumors that Michelangelo had been commissioned to create some sort of masterpiece in Rome. She wondered if the angels and men she saw on the edges of those pages would someday end up in that work, and if she would recognize them when it was finally done.
Silvia waited just outside the door. When Lena stepped out, the Spaniard pretended to be sweeping.
“You hate sweeping,” Lena said, covering a yawn.
Silvia’s eyes widened before narrowing dangerously. “Well? You wicked girl, tell me – is he… Is he any better? What did that madman have you do?”
“I believe we have reason to be hopeful,” Lena replied, touching her shoulder. “But only tomorrow will tell.”
The old woman’s shoulders eased at that and she quickly disappeared down the hall, muttering a prayer as she went. Lena followed as far as the cramped kitchen. She swiped a piece of crusty bread to end the growling in her stomach, and then she retired to her little room. Next door, Michelangelo’s charcoal pencils could be heard scratching across paper. Finishing her snack, she lit a pair of stubby candles and nestled down into the covers. It was a small bed but comfortable enough, with an over-stuffed tick that occasionally made her back sore. She had lived in worse conditions, and the sweet singing of the crickets outside was ample reward for a stiff spine.
Among the various odd tools and devices Michelangelo had brought were a few mundane items. Lena pulled one of them from beneath her pillow. It was nearly thick enough to be a proper book, but new, the ink still fragrant on the pages. One of the assassins had been charged with collecting a detailed history of the Borgias. They were not private people and there were many stories the family themselves were happy to verify. Other anecdotes were not so well documented. Leonardo enclosed a note explaining that knowing the enemy was important, and that she might find the family history useful. He also instructed her to keep it safely hidden; they didn’t need any snoops learning the man’s location and a heavy, custom tome on the Borgias would certainly give her away.
As she read, diving into intrigue and scandal that would make Lucifer himself blush, Lena began to wonder if Leonardo was subtly influencing her to destroy their patient. As a young man he had murdered his older brother in cold blood for position and title. His father’s list of crimes must have given the scribe a hand cramp… it went on for an entire chapter. Then of course there were the rumors of untoward relations with his sister, whispers of a marriage meant to solidify Borgia rule. What could she possibly take away from such a story but that the family was a blight, a stain? The more she read, the more desperate she became, panic clawing at her throat as she struggled to swallow bread and breath. These were despicable people, demons intent on nothing but selfish pursuits, heedless of how many bodies had to be piled to elevate their status.
Time. She had spent so much time trying to revive this man… The intensity of the work had blinded her, made her forget just who he was. And now Michelangelo had come and, as if the man were their sculpture and not their charge, the artist had chipped off the final flaw. He would live, either through her skill or the magic of the Apple, and it only made her feel like a traitor.
They were doing the Devil’s work. They were giving life to a monster.
Re: In Name Alone 17/?
(Anonymous) 2010-11-30 11:30 pm (UTC)(link)I am on the edge of my CHAIR, anon. Just saying.
<3
Re: In Name Alone 17/?
(Anonymous) 2010-12-01 12:27 am (UTC)(link)(this is also my first post in the AC fandom so I'm feeling a little shy, thanks for the warm welcome)
Re: In Name Alone 17/?
(Anonymous) 2010-12-01 12:58 am (UTC)(link)Lack of smut is not an issue when the rest of the story is so good. <3
(although smut is always APPRECIATED.) XD
Re: In Name Alone 17/?
(Anonymous) 2010-12-01 12:36 am (UTC)(link)You should already know, but this story is AWESOME.
I mean really REALLY awesome. I am reading this again and again,
burning with desires to see more. Fabulous job writer-anon.
With that said, please continue. I shall stalk this fic from now on<3
Re: In Name Alone 17/?
(Anonymous) 2010-12-01 12:49 am (UTC)(link)Re: In Name Alone 17/?
(Anonymous) 2011-01-05 10:04 pm (UTC)(link)