Kink Meme - Assassin's Creed pt.2

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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.

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List of Kinks
(Livejorunal) Archive
#2 (Livejournal) Archive
(Delicious.com) Archive
(Dreamwidth) Archive <- Currently active
Part 1
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
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In Name Alone 23/?

[(Anonymous)]

She dressed carefully, choosing a clean chemise and gown, lacing herself in tightly with the corseting running up the sides. Then she put on a fresh apron and nipped outside to splash her face with the water that had collected in the buckets left on the porch. Rain and dew accumulated there, a quicker solution than bothering with the well. Her hair and face were still shiny with moisture as she veered into the kitchen. Silvia was not there, but evidence of her presence lay everywhere – red-brown, steaming loaves waited in a row on the table, four mugs arranged right beside them and the floor had been newly swept. The old Spanish woman’s voice floated back to her from the front door.

“I will see that she gets it, lad. What did you say your name was again? Ah, yes, gracias.”

Lena tore off a hunk of the hot bread and chewed it thoughtfully as she went to meet Silvia at the door.

“Something for me?” she asked, mouth still half-full.

“You greedy child!” Silvia slapped her wrist. “Must you eat like a savage?”

A duo of masculine laughter followed from the adjoining room.

“He’s up?” Lena squashed the urge to peer around Silvia and into the patient’s room. She wasn’t quite ready to face him again, especially after… Well, it didn’t matter now, did it?

“He is,” Silvia said. She shoved a single magenta rose into Lena’s free hand. “This came for you.”

“For me?” She twirled the rose. Its bright, sweet fragrance was almost overpowering.

“Someone called Lucio,” Silvia said with a wink. “Italian by the look of it. Funny accent. Handsome, though, mm?”

“I…” Lena stalled, staring at the rose as if she’d never seen one before. “Hmm.”

Silvia snorted and pushed by into the kitchen, leaving Lena waiting in the doorway. This opened up her view into the next room, where two men wearing identical expressions watched her. She cleared her throat and crammed the rest of the bread into her mouth.

“Ah, here she is, the very vision of feminine beauty,” Michelangelo teased with a dry laugh. He glanced at Cesare, who did nothing but raise a single, dark eyebrow.

“It appears our doctor has an admirer,” Cesare observed softly.

“Your doctor,” the artist corrected. “I wouldn’t let her prod me if she were the last healer on earth and I bleeding from the brain.”

From the kitchen, Silvia cried, “Hush, you brute!”

Lena narrowed her eyes at the smirking Michelangelo. “Good morning to you too, dolce mio.” She thought of saying something to Cesare, but could not think of an appropriate greeting.

Michelangelo pulled a face. A series of sketches sat in his lap. From where Lena stood, they looked like a collection of saints and angels.

“We are testing his memory,” Michelangelo explained. He held up a drawing, aiming it toward Cesare.

“St. John,” Cesare replied immediately. “I do not see how this will help…”

“We learn these things as children, but we do not learn them alone. Perhaps a particular image will remind you of something else… something more. We see saints everywhere - they populate our churches and our homes. It is entirely possible that you may associate a single saint with a more recent event. I warn you - it will not be easy, signore, to restore your mind.”

Or advisable, Lena added silently.

“Do not exhaust him!” Again, this from the kitchen in a shrill cry.

“No, no,” Cesare replied, nodding his head once. “I want to go on.”
Lena waited a few feet from the end of the bed. Cesare sat up, his eyes focused intently on the sketches Michelangelo shuffled through. St. Mark, St. Peter, Madonna and Child, David and Goliath…

He stopped abruptly, his mouth hanging open around the end of a word. His eyes slowly shut, clenched, and his entire face tightened. Lena held her breath, holding the rose in her hand too tightly and yelping when a thorn dug into her thumb.

“Magnificent,” Cesare murmured, opening his eyes and yet… He did not look at Lena but through her. “She’s telling me it is magnificent, so lifelike, but I cannot focus I feel… ill, very ill, like my insides are churning…”

“What else?” Michelangelo prompted in a whisper. “What do you see?”

“A building… tall, with a tower and a man, no, a statue… Yes, a statue of a man.”

Re: In Name Alone 23/?

[(Anonymous)]

Anon, I pray I see you in print one day. This is magnificent.

In Name Alone 24/?

[(Anonymous)]

“Il Davide,” Lena murmured. She had never seen it for herself, but Michelangelo’s masterpiece was the talk of Florence and news of its awe-inspiring beauty spread at once to Rome. Whatever amazement she felt at his having remembered this was immediately overtaken by a pervasive sense of dread. “Padrone,” she said, her mouth going bone dry. “But he was only finished…”

“Indeed,” Michelangelo finished for her, “four years ago.”

Cesare ignored them, continuing, “I cannot… why cannot recognize her? She’s hold my hand and it… She wears a ring, it’s sharp, cutting into my palm…” His gaze shifted, focusing once more, settling on the rose in Lena’s hand. “I’ve lost it. I can’t… It’s gone.” Then he scowled, pulling his lower lip between his teeth. “If I could just be alone… I find I’m rather tired now.”

It was not exhaustion pulling him down, she could see that, but frustration. Cesare looked resolutely out the window, relaxing his face until she could read nothing there. She never expected in a thousand years to see Cesare Borgia in such a vulnerable state. How would she act, she wondered, if she were trapped in a broken mind, cut off at every angle by questions and uncertainties. Lena couldn’t say with any confidence that she would behave better.

Michelangelo escorted her to the porch. Lena dropped the rose on her bed as they went, utterly perplexed as to what to do with the strange gift.

“Do you ever bathe?” she muttered, pulling her arm out of the artist’s grasp when they at last stood in the sunshine.

“No time for it,” he replied brusquely. At once he began combing through his beard, lost in thought. He paced, his loose smock swirling out about his frame like bat wings when he turned. “He will remember almost everything in time, I’m sure of it. The memories are locked up in there, but the keys will appear. Do you have a plan?”

“I never had one. This is not my battle,” Lena replied. If only Ezio were here, then she might know better how to proceed…

“Oh? Isn’t it? It certainly seemed like it was yours last night.”

Lena froze.

“I have no idea what you mean, sir.”

“Wise up, girl. I see everything that goes on in this house.” He whirled again, this time to face her and advance. Day’s old sweat rolled off of him in dizzying waves. Lena took a step back, wishing she had tucked a knife into her corset.

“Perhaps you should have gone through with it,” he said, grinning crookedly. “It’s only a matter of time before he realizes something is out of place. If your man Ezio isn’t here to make the call, will you have the coglioni to do it yourself?”

“Stop!” Lena cried. “Just stop! You’re giving me a headache! It’s been one day. One! Can you not let him be for fucking day?”

She lowered her voice at the last minute, remembering that the walls were not exactly castle-thick.

The sculptor straightened up, crossing his arms over his chest and sweeping his beady eyes from her head to her shoes. “You were prepared to off him last night. What changed?”

“Nothing… Nothing changed. Look, he has no idea who he is and we cannot predict how long that will last. For now, I say we let him rest and find out for himself. If we push him too hard he will become suspicious and then we will get nowhere.”

“A sound idea at last,” Michelangelo replied. He stroked his beard once and began plodding back toward the house, his strange green shoes whispering across the flattened grass. “Da Vinci claims that Apple has divine properties. We will see soon, girl, if that is true or not.”

“And what do you mean by that!?” No answer, just the back of a billowing smock. Lena picked up the closest rock and hurled it in his wake. “Figlio di puttana!”

Michelangelo was gone when she reentered the house. Silvia was hard at work in the kitchen, curled up in a chair by the hearth, sewing furiously, her needle flashing in and out, trailing brilliant blue thread.

“Has everyone in this house lost their minds? Are you sewing?”

“And why is that so strange?” Silvia didn’t look up from her needlework, her font of silvery hair spilling down across lap.

~ach~

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry for the ridiculous typo. Should read "Can you not let him be for one fucking day?"

Apologies.

In Name Alone 25/?

[(Anonymous)]

“You hate sweeping and you hate scouring pots. I think it’s fair to guess that you dislike sewing, too.” Lena fussed with the kettle hanging over the hearth, peering inside to find there was no water there for her to boil.

“I find this rather soothing, actually.”

“And where has that infernal sculptor gotten to?” Lena stood, eager for something to occupy her hands. She settled on arranging the tins of tea on shelves above the basin.

“He mentioned a walk and something about the barber. Hopefully he doesn’t get into any trouble.”

Lena nodded, falling silent as she lost interest in the tea and began watching Silvia’s deft hands handle the needle and cloth. It looked like a trimmed piece of worn velvet and Lena couldn’t help but wonder what that bit of old fabric belonged to. She remembered he rose in her room. She ought to have put it in water; surely it would be slightly withered by now.

“Silvia,” she said quietly. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

“Mm?”

“It’s extremely serious.”

“Go on, go on. I’m listening.” Her needle pricked through, appearing just beside the thimble over her thumb.

“That man in the next room… He’s not some random soldier. He’s a Borgia.”

Silvia nodded, not slowing her work at all. A long moment drifted by, Lena waiting anxiously for some kind of reaction.

“Did you hear what I said, Silvia?”

“He’s a Borgia. What of it? He seems a calm sort of man to me, sad, but hardly scary.”

“No… no… everyone in this house really is going mad.” Lena threw up her hands. What a disaster. She would write Leonardo that afternoon, that minute, and tell him force Michelangelo to leave. Silvia she could handle, but that infuriating artist was no longer needed. He could take his sketches and his bad temper and his horrid smells and go back to Rome. Perhaps some solitude would do her good, a chance to clear her head, calm down, call on the training that had saved her life so many times before…

“That Lucio is pleasing on the eyes, Lena.” Behind her curtain of silver hair, Lena saw the old woman smile down at her needlework. “You should take a walk with him tonight, do something fun for yourself. Forget about the Borgia boy. He’s not going anywhere.”

“I can’t just forget about him, Silvia. It’s not that simple.”

“Ah yes,” she nodded, giving one of her throaty laughs. “He too is striking.”

“God above, that is not what I meant.” Lena nearly tossed her hands in the air again and then realized how infantile that would make her look. “Maybe you’re right. I’ve been cooped up in this house too much. I think I’ll nap outside for an hour or two…”

“There is a blanket for just such a purpose in the pantry.” Silvia nodded toward the shelves. “I’ll see to it you’re not bothered. You’ve earned a good long rest.”

-~-

The barber was waiting for him, he knew that, but Cesare took his time with the little handheld mirror. Who was he looking at? This was his face? Those were his eyes? He studied the prominent, straight nose, the heavy brow and steeply angled jaw covered in a now-neatly trimmed beard… The only parts he remembered clearly were the eyes, glossy, dark, at once solemn and mischievous, and the freckles that played across the bridge of his nose. Someone, his mother perhaps or an aunt, would tease him about those freckles. “Spot” they called him, especially in the summer months when time spent out of doors brought out even more dots on his cheeks.

“Thank you,” he said, handing the mirror back to the barber. “You may go.”

The way he said that… instinctively, with so much confidence. A command. He did that easily… gave orders. Had he been a captain? A general? Perhaps a man of God… but no, that seemed wrong. The barber, with his squat frame and balding pate, bowed quickly and left, paid by the smelly artist in the too-big smock.

Cesare stared out the window, watching the barber pass by as he toddled off to his shop. The glass had been propped open, letting in a faint, floral breeze from outside. His legs ached, his right thigh pulsing uncomfortably with the beat of his heart.

“I feel much improved,” he lied. “I think I’ll sleep for a while.”

In Name Alone 26/?

[(Anonymous)]

That was only partially true. He wanted to be alone. Answering questions and realizing the depths of his ignorance sparked a flare in his temper. The artist, who called himself Michelangelo, nodded curtly and ducked out through a curtained doorway. He wondered about the dimensions of the cottage… Where did those passages lead? How many rooms lay beyond that doorway? And more importantly, would he ever have the strength to stand and find out for himself?

He blew a bit of stray hair from his shoulder. The Spanish woman had brought him a shirt, coarse but of decent quality. He knew something about these things. Fine clothes felt a certain way, caressed the skin differently than muslin and scratchy wools. He left the strings on the deep V of the shirt open, heedless of propriety. These people, these strangers, had already seen him in far less. It didn’t embarrass him. Why should it? They only wanted to help, heal, and they had done so.

Curious, he pulled the blanket up and over his leg. Except for his drawers, he was bare from the waist down. No point covering up what had to be tended so often. He stared at the odd marks on his upper right thigh. The hair was sparser there and he could easily make out a fading red line pulled taut with crisscrossed thread. Marvelous, this technique, pretty and precise. He wondered if that small woman with the lovely yellow hair had made those marks. They looked indelibly like the work of a feminine hand.

He readjusted the covers. Someone could walk in at any moment to check on him and he didn’t relish the idea of flashing them his bare leg. That blonde woman had looked completely confused by the thought of receiving a rose, how might she react to seeing him half-naked? Cesare grinned at the idea, wondering vaguely if many women had seen him that way in more pleasant circumstances. Try as he might, he failed to drum up even the dullest memory of another’s touch. He had seen a woman in his memory of the statue, but her face was simply a tortured blur. Somehow, the feel of her hand in his with that horrid ring cutting into his skin did not bring him comfort. Whoever she was, Cesare got the distinct impression he wasn’t terribly fond of her.

Which was rather becoming a theme, he decided, if any conclusions were to be drawn from the way the blonde woman looked at him. Like he was diseased. Like he was a plague-bearer.

“What did I do,” he murmured aloud, “to have her look at me that way?”

If that mirror showed true, then he was, at the very least, objectively handsome. No hideous scars or deformities, just a few wrinkles from age here and there, a tiny knick running vertically down his cheek and the fading bruises from his latest injuries. He couldn’t remember falling. He couldn’t remember if he was pushed or fell on his own… Maddening… Cruel… And it all felt bizarrely deliberate, as if someone had taken the book of his life and ripped pages clean from the binding. The way she looked at him… Perhaps that was for the best. He reached up with his sore arms and touched his hair, his beard. No, he was not ugly, so why that tremor in her chin when her eyes swept his, why that wariness in her gaze?

Cesare ran through the saints again in his head but… nothing, not even a whisper of that image he had seen before. He remembered his brother Giovanni, handsome and strong, striding through the courtyard of a home he could only see parts of. His brother had a loud, boisterous laugh, something Cesare could never master. There was no mother Cesare could picture, and no father, just his brother and a hazy mirage of a house. A dog… perhaps a dog? Big and snuffling, following him everywhere, upsetting people… servants, perhaps?

It was hopeless. There was nothing to do but wait, wait and hope that his life returned to him when God felt ready to allow it.

-~-

Lena slept through dinner. When she woke, dusk was just beginning to darken into night. Already, frogs and crickets struck up their riotous song, hidden among the fringes of the forest to the north. She rolled onto her back, staring up at the sky as stars winked into view, white diamonds studded against deep purple velvet.

In Name Alone 27/?

[(Anonymous)]

Silvia was on to something – just a few hours of uninterrupted sleep in the fresh air and she felt reinvigorated.

Peckish, she folded the blanket over her arms and wandered into the kitchen. Michelangelo slept in the rocking chair near the hearth, his shoes off and warming on the stones. Lena rustled up a bit of salted ham and bread and ducked down to the lower shelves of the pantry, choosing at random an unmarked bottle of wine. Michelangelo had brought it with him from Rome. He never drank, but Leonardo had insisted he bring it along as a gift. Lena quietly sneaked by the snoring artist and back around the porch to her room. The rose was not where she had left it. Silvia had saved it and dropped it into a clay vase on the dressing table. She crossed to the vase and rustled the rose petals with her fingers, leaning down to indulge in another quick sniff of the flower.

Buttery orange light glowed through the curtain in the next room but no sound came from within. Cesare was either sleeping or maybe looking through Michelangelo’s drawings. Either way, she had no intention of disturbing him. She intended to stick to the plan she had given to Michelangelo – they would let him recuperate and see if his mind improved. If not, they could inform Ezio that the man was indeed permanently a child and should be given to an abbey to live out his days.

For now, she could enjoy a quiet evening with a bottle of wine. She would not read the Borgia history. She would find something else to occupy her time, something that didn’t make her want to tear her hair out in fury.

The cork on the wine popped and a hushed rustling came from behind the curtain. Lena paused and then gently set the freed cork down onto the dressing table. She had forgotten to get a cup, but ah, what did it matter? There was no one there to see her swig like a pirate.

“I do hope you intend to share.”

It was the strange lilt to his voice, the lyrical mixture of his Italian upbringing and Spanish roots that did… something to his voice. It was dark, smoked, living in a register low and gravelly enough to be completely unique. She shook off the tiny shiver of fear that accompanied the sound.

Lena brushed the curtain aside, poking her head through the doorway to find him sitting up against the headboard, his lips pursed and quirked to the side.

“You’re still recovering,” she replied evenly. “Your humors could overbalance and - ”

“All I know, signorina, heart lifted at the sound of that cork,” Cesare interrupted gently. “I must have been a drinking man.” He paused, his head canting to the side. “Or am I mistaken, and it is signora?”

“No,” Lena said, stepping more firmly into the room. “Signorina is fine… Or Lena. You… you could call me Lena.”

“Maddalena?”

“Adelena.”

“Ah.”

She ought to turn right around and bolt. A spot of drink might not hurt him, but it was risky, especially given how recently he had come back to his senses. But refusing him seemed… harsh. Lena knew the signs of a man in pain – the tightness in the face, the thrust back shoulders and instinctive fists. She was loathed to give him any more of the poppy syrup, it was rare and must be rationed carefully.

“You would not deny a man his first of wine…”

Lena smirked, pulling a chair up next to his bed. The candles on the desk leapt as she walked by, broadening the halo that gleamed against his shiny, beetle-black hair. She tried the wine first for herself, forgetting her manners and drinking from the neck without first searching for a cup. Cesare chuckled as she realized this and her cheeks warmed, suffused with unmistakable embarrassment.

“Can I dare to hope you’ve forgotten how a proper lady behaves?”

“Your secret is safe with me, la mia donna.”

The pinpricks of heat in her cheeks deepened. Lena couldn’t remember the last time a man had called her ‘my lady.’ The assassins sometimes joked with each other, overplaying their manners to impress the recruits or flirt to break the monotony. She handed him the wine bottle, her mouth full of the tart heaviness of the wine. Leonardo had chosen well. He always did. He favored Tuscan wine, claiming that the region’s beauty bled into her grapes.

In Name Alone 28/?

[(Anonymous)]

Lena watched him tip back the bottle. He stayed still for a second after drinking, holding the liquid in his cheeks before swallowing. A brightness, like an ember flaming on a wick, blossomed in his eyes.

“I think it is safe to assume,” Cesare said hoarsely, returning the bottle, “that I was indeed a drinking man.”

She nodded, finding that words didn’t come easily when he was there. For all the times she had felt along his legs and ribs and arms, for all the tenderness she had shown his body, that gentility just couldn’t extend to his person. Not that he had said or done anything wrong… not as he was now… but the past lingered, as vivid as a living being sitting at her side.

Cesare’s eyes pressed into her. Without looking, she could feel the acute pressure of his gaze. It was like being in the gallery all over again, shrinking under his penetrating stare. She drank, too heavily, trying to obliterate that naked feeling.

Quietly, sadly, he whispered, “I am not a very nice man, am I?”

Lena blinked back vacantly at what might have been the greatest understatement ever uttered by man.

“Why… why would you say that?” she asked, careful not to give away her sudden anxiety.

“If I were a much beloved man, would you not be scrambling to tell me so? There would be a wife here to shower you with gratitude and gifts, and children perhaps. But there is nobody. A motley collection of strangers… Unless… unless I know you and that too is something you’ve chosen to keep secret.”

The wine shot straight to her head.

“You’re a long way from home,” Lena said, handing him the bottle. Maybe if his head swam as badly as hers he’d stop making such clever observations. “Give your loved ones time…”

“None of you will tell me who I am… what I do… the quality of my character, or the apparent lack thereof.” Cesare shrugged, as if he neither cared about nor knew how to fix this. Perhaps he sensed, rightly, that it was out of his hands for the moment. “And I may be wounded, madam, but I still possess my eyes. One could not miss the very… unusual manner in which you regard me.”

“I… I cannot help my critical eye. I see wounds yet to heal, place where I might have done a better job - ”

“Truly?” He laughed, bitterly, tossing his dark shag of hair. “Because when you look at me I can’t help but feel as if there is mold growing over my face.”

Lena cursed the wine, her confusion, her inability to tell a convincing lie. This was what Machiavelli always spoke of… Ezio hated that the philosopher admired Cesare’s cunning, his charm and intelligence. This was exactly what Machiavelli meant, what drove him to begrudgingly compliment Cesare whenever Ezio left the room.

“Ask me,” she said, snatching the bottle out of his grasp and taking a fortifying gulp. “Ask me whatever you want then. Go on. I won’t lie. You have my word.”

Cesare looked at her intently, combing his eyes over the surface of her face. She kept extremely still, accepting his scrutiny with her mouth tightened into a firm line. Let him doubt her. Let him find out just what a miserable, conniving little prick he was…

In Name Alone 29/?

[(Anonymous)]

“Only one question,” he murmured at last. His voice… it pierced her skin, her ribcage, targeting the leaping, bounding heart that thudded out of control. This was what Machiavelli meant. “What did I do to you, just you… That is all I want to know.”

“But - ”

“That, madam, is all I want to know.”

Lena swallowed hard, finding a fist-sized lump of fear had lodged up in her throat. She held his gaze, determined not to cow to his intimidating presence. “It wasn’t you.”

“No?”

“It was your father. My papà went to work for him when I was twelve years old. He knew everything about herbs, about mixing potions to relieve suffering. His greatest joy was curing the unwell. But he had… dabbled in poisons. They were in demand what with… what with the unrest in the city.” Lena glanced down at the bottle in her hands. She couldn’t remember the last time she had told this story, and telling it now, to a Borgia, made her feel sick to her stomach. “When he came back the next summer I was just… I couldn’t wait to see him. He taught me, told me I could be a healer like him someday. But when he came home… He was so different. Pale… sickly…”

Lena, distracted as she was, hardly saw it happen. One moment the wine bottle was in her hands, the next it was gone, taken and set on the desk. Her palms were free for but an instant. A warm, dry hand slid into both of hers. Lena stared down at it, seeing the cuts, the scrapes, but not seeing, not really…

“Mamà told him it was wrong, that making poisons to kill innocent people was evil. He wouldn’t listen. He… he told us that he was working for the Pope, making a difference, that we just didn’t understand, that we were small-minded, not like him… not like the Borgia. Then they fought. He left a few days later.” At least, she thought with a dry half-smile, she had managed to keep from crying and humiliating herself further. “Mamà said that he had passed on from our lives, that he was dead to us. I never… saw him again. I heard rumors but… it was like he really did die that night.”

Cesare said nothing. Lena knew she ought to push his hand away but it was strangely comforting, big and secure, not squeezing or holding, just there.

“Your father took a good man, a healing man, and twisted him into something unspeakable.”

She had told him too much. Now he would think that his father was the Pope. She opened her mouth to correct that, to point out that Rodrigo Borgia was dead, poisoned, some said, by Cesare himself. And there she was, holding his hand like he was some sort of friend… Lena yanked her hands back into her lap, ignoring the way Cesare tried to hold on.

“You see?” Cesare murmured, his voice as ragged as Lena felt. “That was all I needed to know.” He took the wine bottle and drank deeply. “You’ve just told me everything I could possibly want to know.”

In Name Alone 30/?

[(Anonymous)]

Lena stood to go, leaving the wine behind with him. Let him drink it all. Let him get sick and feel it in the morning. She was nearly at the curtain when his voice rose up again behind her.

“If my family has hurt you so, then why help me? Why stay at all?”

“You don’t understand… It’s my job,” she said coolly. “I have no choice.”

“My father… Has my father threatened you? Forced you to do this? Send for him. I will see that it is made right.”

She shouldered the curtain aside, enjoying the slight hitch in his breathing as she murmured, “I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do. Your father is long dead.”

-~-

“Another flower? How imaginative.”

Lena turned away from the door, frowning, not at the fresh rose in her hands but at the Cesare’s snide little comment.

“And I suppose you could do better?” she replied, shoving her nose down into the petals and breathing deeply, exaggeratedly. Who was he to ridicule Lucio’s kind gesture?

“Of course I could.”

“What would a little boy know about courtship?” Lena humored him, sliding into the room, shifting her weight to lean against the doorway. Cesare shrugged. Silvia had been in to give him a fresh shirt. The mulberry color of the dyed linen suited the stark coloring of his hair and beard. Ivory thread danced up the side of his collar, chasing the loose strings that, were he less lazy, would have been pulled tight. As they were, they displayed a worrisome amount of chest hair. Not that Lena was looking.

“I haven’t forgotten how to breathe, have I? Or swallow… or chew?” Cesare fiddled idly with a bandage on his wrist.

“Those aren’t really the same as romance,” Lena replied. She wondered if Silvia had brought him a comb, too. His hair seemed glossier than usual, one side tucked rakishly behind his ear, while the rest glittered in the dusty morning light. “Unless of course gnashing your teeth is a sign of affection.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Well I don’t know! Children have strange ideas about love…”

“I am not a child.” Cesare grunted, crossing his arms and staring petulantly out the window, as if Lena had denied him a much-coveted sweet. “Two roses? Pah. Even a child, which – again, madam - I most certainly am not, could outdo such a… a cliché.”

“You’re baiting me,” she said gently. It was hard not to lift her nose into the air, the temptation was great, especially considering the way he had made her confess so inappropriately the night before. She shouldn’t have had that wine. She shouldn’t have let her guard down, not even for a moment. Ezio would be disappointed. No, it was better to remember what a dog this man was and to never, ever forget it. His sympathy was probably a ruse, a mask, to lull her into trusting him… and then… well, he could have all manner of horrid ideas brewing in his head.

“Hand me that parchment,” he said, extending his arm toward the desk. His reach was impressive, but not quite long enough to put his hand in proximity to Michelangelo’s papers. “If my word isn’t enough then I will prove it.”

“This is childish. There! I believe you. You are the greatest and best romantic to ever live. You shame the poets of old! Women are helpless in your presence.” Lena smirked, watching the way her sarcasm only deepened his scowl. It was too fun, dangerously fun, to rile him that way.

“Mocking me will only make the proving of my talents the sweeter. Now, hand me quill and parchment so that I may silence your taunting once and for all.” His hand opened and closed impatiently. She looked from his fingers to his face, from the bruises still mottling his knuckles to the cut healing on his forehead, right over the black smudge of his brow. Was it beyond callous to deny him a bit of diversion? He was the enemy, yes, but his intentions seemed innocent enough… a harmless way to distract him from his bedridden condition.

“Very well,” Lena said with a sigh, grabbing the top sheet from Michelangelo’s stack of papers. She unearthed a quill in the warzone that had become the desk and poured a saucer of ink. When the supplies were delivered she went to the window, peering outside with the rose still in hand.

Re: In Name Alone 30/?

[(Anonymous)]

!! Like the clouds parting for a ray of sunshine, my inbox delivered this chapter to me. <3 The tension builds! :D

...also, forgive the purple prose. I'm stuck on a part in my fic and this is just the distraction I needed. Grazie.

Re: In Name Alone 30/?

[(Anonymous)]

No problem, I'll try to have more for y'all today. :)

In Name Alone 31/?

[(Anonymous)]

She spied a dark shape moving among the buildings opposite the cottage. Lucio. Would it amuse him to know the Scourge of Rome was currently trying to outdo his thoughtful gift? Lena grinned, squinting in the sunshine. Her smile soon faded, however, as Cesare ruined the moment by wagging his villainous tongue.

“I must apologize for last night,” he said quietly.

“It’s no - ”

“No, it’s not ‘nothing.’ It was wrong to pry. Clearly, I… Ma, I am sorry for your father.”

“Don’t speak of my father,” she replied in a hiss. “Don’t you dare.”

“As you wish.”

What did he expect? Friendship? Forgiveness? Such things were out of the question. He might have forgotten his numerous misdeeds but she had not, nor would she ever.

“I… hm.”

Lena turned, realizing then that there had been one sound noticeably absent from her reverie. Cesare’s pen had stilled over the page. He hadn’t managed to scratch out a single word.

“I could… dictate?” he suggested sheepishly.

Lena chuckled, then giggled, defenseless against his befuddled expression as he stared up at her. She’d seen that expression before on dogs that were meant to fetch a bone and came back with a shoe instead. She reached for the paper, setting the rose down on the sill.

“Dictation it is then.”

“Wait…” Cesare stopped her in mid-motion, both of them clutching the same piece of paper, she the top and he the bottom edge. His eyes scanned quickly from left to right. “There’s… something written here. The artist’s hand perhaps…”

Lena craned her neck, peering over the parchment to get a better look. He was right. Messy writing but all of it herded into neat columns. Anyone could recognize that formation.

“Poetry?” she muttered, shocked. She tugged the paper out of Cesare’s grasp and held it up to the light. “My God… my God.”

“What?” he asked, trying to snatch the paper back from her. “What is it?”

“Stop that, you pest! You can’t even read, remember?”

Cesare made a low, low sound in his throat, half-growl and half moan of protest. He sat back hard against the headboard, making a different sort of sound, one of surprise and pain. Impatient lout, he deserved it. Lena scanned the blocks of poetry, stymied at first by the incredibly disordered penmanship. Who else could write so poorly? It had to be Michelangelo. Her eyes widened as she read more and more and a certain theme, a certain scandalous, explicit theme began to emerge.

“Oh goodness.”

It didn’t quite make sense until she reached the bottom of the page and saw who was meant to receive the poems.

“Well? What are you waiting for? Read it aloud.”

“I really don’t think I can,” Lena mumbled, her cheeks exploding with heat. This was racy. She snorted to cover her embarrassment. “I didn’t know the old bag had it in him.”

“Read it now or I’ll call for the sculptor and you can explain to his face why you riffled through his private documents.” Her eyes slid slowly from the page to Cesare, his dark stare so steady and cool that she had no doubt he would do just as he threatened. Mangy cur.

“La carne terra, e qui l’ossa mia, prive,” she read, feeling the color in her cheeks spread and deepen until she was certain her flesh would burst into flame. “…de’ lor begli occhi, e del leggiadro aspetto, fan fede a quel ch’I’ fu grazia nel letto, che abbracciava, e’ n che l’anima vive.”

Lena couldn’t bring herself to look at Cesare after that. Come to think of it, she couldn’t do much of anything. She stared, blankly, at the parchment in her hands. “It’s addressed,” she said thickly, fixating on the paper and not his face, “to a… to a man.”

A man she knew quite well, in fact. Her eyes dropped to the initials at the bottom of the poem, initials she herself had seen in correspondence.

LPDV

“Read that last line again.”

“Hm?” Lena glanced up, finding that Cesare was staring at her intently. Again she felt the almost unearthly penetration of his eyes, the strength of it sapping the breath from her body. “Oh… Whom I embraced, in whom my soul now lives. That?”

“Yes,” he said, nodding slowly. “That.”

In Name Alone 32/?

[(Anonymous)]

Lena expected him to say something rude or crass about the fact that their mutual acquaintance was clearly in love with a man, one that Lena knew to be his greatest – professed - rival. But Cesare said nothing, staring into the middle distance as if put under a heavy enchantment by the poetry. Lena, against her will, felt it too. The sunshine could be blamed and the rolling, suggestive fragrance of the rose so close at hand… but then again, one could blame the soap Silvia had used in Cesare’s hair, the summery scent of beeswax and citrus clinging to the shifting jet liquid of his hair. Or one could point a finger at the way his shallow breathing ruffled the bottom of the parchment she held, or the thick tension humming in the little room. Whatever the culprit, Lena wished it a violent death.

She hated this man. There were not to be any touching, magical moments between them. Professional courtesy, a doctor’s stoic, platonic care and nothing more… Nothing like the intimate suggestions in Messere Buonarroti’s lyrics.

“I should put this back,” Lena said at last. She pushed herself away from the window, ignoring the awkward little cough Cesare gave. It was easy enough to slip the parchment back onto the desk, mimicking the chaotic disarray she’d found it in. Yes, it was easy to hide the paper among its peers, but it proved far less easy to forget the words she had read, as if some sorcery had burned them permanently into her eyelids. Fire and desperation, passion and eternity… She would never have guessed Michelangelo sought these things. Unfair then, judging a man by the outward, sometimes grim personality he projected.

It was an inopportune revelation to have just as Cesare chose to speak. “Do not forget your rose. Your admirer would be hurt.”

[A/N: This is a real poem written by Michelangelo for his male friend and - some suspect - lover, Cecchino dei Bracci. Translation: The flesh now earth, and here my bones, Bereft of handsome eyes, and jaunty air, Still loyal are to him I joyed in bed, Whom I embraced, in whom my soul now lives.]

-~-

Subtle hints began to coalesce, clues that even a disoriented, broken mind couldn’t miss. Cesare noticed them all – greater activity outside; an abundance of horse-drawn carts bustling down the road, stacked high with goods and fruits, vegetables and bundles of festive cloth; lanterns, some paper and some iron, going up outside and burning long into the night; warmer winds; looser smiles and laughter from Silvia… Something had changed or something was coming and it finally became clear on one unusually warm June morning.

Silvia, his regular morning companion, sat in a chair on the other side of the room, a folded garment on her lap, the center of it subject to the pricks and pulls of her needle. She had been working on the thing for weeks, tirelessly, and at last it was beginning to resemble something wearable.

Cesare picked up the leaflet in his lap. Michelangelo had painstakingly illustrated various saints and allowed Lena, with her superior penmanship, to write simplified descriptions of their history and miracles. It was a gentle prodding and meant to be helpful, but Cesare hated it. It made him feel unbelievably stupid. His brain proved sluggish, his intellect crippled by whatever force, good or otherwise, that had wiped out his memories. Reading, he thought, or re-learning to read, would be simple enough. It was not so. Worse, the doctor girl was not there to listen to him try and frown at him when he got something wrong.

Her insulting condescension was incentive enough to keep trying. A grown man, allegedly educated, and he couldn’t even read… or write… or sign his name. What a sad embarrassment he was proving to be. Silvia, and occasionally the doctor, when he did something well, showed any optimism.

“Will you show me,” Cesare began, shoving the annoying pamphlet aside, “when you’re finished?”

“I will show you now if you promise not to blab.”

“Ah, a gift… and not for me? What a shame.”

In Name Alone 33/?

[(Anonymous)]

Silvia smiled toothily at him. It was odd, he thought, how this old Spaniard with her funny mouth and big, fuzzy hair was becoming the closest thing to a mother he could recollect. He inferred, primarily from Lena’s guarded descriptions of his family, that he had not sprung from a joyful, affectionate clan. But even snakes could be mothers.

“I didn’t know you were interested,” Silvia replied with a wink. She held up the garment and as it dropped to the floor, Cesare couldn’t suppress a genuine smile.

“Bellissima, truly,” he murmured, “but a bit fancy for a woman who prefers poking wounds to attending parties.”

“I’m afraid she has no choice this time.” Silvia turned the gown this way and that. She had done a masterful job piecing together salvaged bits of velvets and brocades, mingling them in a manner that looked intentional. The front panel had been heavily embroidered and embellished, a pattern of tiny white flowers cascading across the hemline and up to the shoulders. The vivid teal blue would complement Lena’s cornflower hair. Which was fact, he decided, and not useless fancy.

“Everyone must attend the feast of Saint John. Three days of eating and dancing! Lanterns and wine... Who would want to skip such a thing?” Silvia chuckled, gathering the voluminous skirts and embroidered corset back into her lap. “Besides, it isn’t proper for a girl her age to live so colorless an existence, no? Sometimes it takes a stubborn old woman to teach the younger ones a lesson.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Cesare replied truthfully. “I remember only my youth, but not the lessons learned within.”

“Bah, nothing is ever really lost or hopeless. Not a crabapple like Michele. Not a stubborn grindstone like Lena, and not a sour-faced boy like you."

Cesare grunted, a tendon twitching unbidden in his jaw. “You speak as if this were my decision.”

“Isn’t it? Get out of bed, stop brooding!”

“And how exactly do you expect me to get up? My legs are - ”

“Yes, yes, they ache, I know!” Silvia stuck the needle in her mouth, the butt trailing a streamer of ivory and fixed him with a deadly glare. “My hips gives me trouble every day, boy, but you don’t hear me complaining, eh? Come now, you’re young and vigorous yet. Are you a man so easily ruled by misfortune?”

His eyebrows lifted, a laugh forming on his lips as Silvia jumped to her feet, gangly but certainly spry, and set down her work and needle on the chair.

“You,” she pointed right at his nose, “wait here.”

“Indeed, I had no intention of doing otherwise.”

“Hmph.” Her voice faded as she hobbled around to the kitchen. “And that is your problem. I will have you up and dancing at the Feast yet!”

“Cristo,” Cesare murmured, pushing both hands fretfully through his hair. “I cannot decide what is more shameful,” he added as Silvia returned, “not knowing who I am or dying at the hands of an old woman.”

“Watch your tongue, boy, I’m not so old that I can’t whip you soundly.” But she was laughing gleefully, walking right up to his bedside. Cesare paled as she reached for the blanket. “Lord in heaven, child! Where are your pantalones!?”

Cesare pushed at her bony, searching fingers, yanking the blanket over the bit of thigh she had exposed. “Un momento,” he muttered, then swore, leaning back heavily against the pillows. What a disgrace. “I don’t… have any.”

“Jesus Cristo.” Silvia crossed herself, leaving again briskly to rummage in the kitchen, praying and mumbling under her breath as she went. “Bueno, y que voy a hacer con usted? Loco, totalmente ridículo!”

On and on it went in a ceaseless stream of grandmotherly irritation. Cesare covered his eyes and laughed. He couldn't help it. He had to laugh or he'd evaporate from the shame. The laughter turned gradually into a groan of consternation as he realized just how stupid he must look to the old woman. Indeed, he was just lucky, he thought with a sigh, that it was kind old Silvia there to mark his stupidity and not the artist or Lena.

That girl would never let him live this down.

In Name Alone 34/?

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry for the delay - very busy weekend. On with the show!

Silvia rushed back into the room, her mumbling temporarily at an end, a sleek, wooden cane in one hand and a pair of loose trousers in the other. She hadn’t bothered with socks or boots apparently, but tossed the brown pants onto his lap.

“Go, go,” she said, gesturing with the cane. “I haven’t got all day, young man.”

“You might turn around,” Cesare grumbled. “Give me some privacy.”

“I have four boys of my own. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Besides, I just saw your thigh. You have nothing to be ashamed of, not little chicken legs like the sculptor.”

“And how would you know about his - ”

“Dress! Up now, I will help.”

His modesty would have to be forgotten. Bending his knees, let alone moving his legs at all, soon proved to be a chore. He was sweating – sweating! – simply from trying to maneuver his shins around to the edge of the bed. Silvia’s deceptively strong hands cupped around his knees, pulling gently, swiveling him in tiny, inch by inch increments until at last his feet brushed the floor. Cesare puffed out an enormous breath. Lord above – if just that had taken so much effort, how in God’s name did she expect him to stand?

“Is the pain very bad?” Silvia asked, moving her steadying hand to his lower back.

“Just my thigh,” Cesare replied. “But then… there are twinges everywhere. My legs feel as if they’re asleep… dead.”

“But you feel something? Pins and needles?” she asked.

“God, >yes.” A moment later and a white hot pain shot through his shins, up through his knees and into his groin. Pins and needles? More like the devil’s own talons piercing through flesh to the bone. Cesare grit his teeth, growling deep in his chest, clenching his eyes shut to keep traitorous tears from escaping.

“Then the feeling will pass. Here now, rest, and in a moment we will try to get you on your feet.”

Cesare nodded blindly, taking the cane that she nudged into his hands. Light exploded behind his eyelids and he hardly felt the wood head cradled in his palm. Silvia knelt, her knees cracking in the hollow silence, and went to work shimmying the trousers up over his calves. He flinched at each bump against his legs, biting on his tongue to keep from yelping like a fool. If he was not allowed his modesty, then he could at least salvage his masculine pride. The pain faded, gradually, but that didn’t make him wish for Lena’s poppy syrup any less.

“Up, just a little,” Silvia instructed, patting under his thigh until Cesare anchored one hand on the tick and hoisted his hips up. Another incredible flash of pain, this time in the muscles banded about his waist, and an accompanying, even stronger desire to collapse back into the bed… Silvia clucked her tongue at his wheezing as the trousers closed over his hips, the buttons slipped quickly and efficiently into place.

Cesare sighed, letting himself back down, only to find that he was trembling violently. He couldn’t quite trust the strength of his hand and switched to holding the cane with both palms. Wordlessly, Silvia began to massage life back into his legs. It was tempting to shove her off, but soon the needling, prickling sensation changed into a deep burn and finally, a soothing sort of pulsing. The muscles in his face relaxed and he exhaled the nervous breath that had puffed out his chest.

“Better?” Silvia asked, standing.

“Considerably.”

“Then let us continue when you feel ready.”

Persistent old biddy, Cesare thought, she was worse than that doctor and her millions of questions. He laughed, softly, wiping at the moisture that had leaked unbidden from the corners of his eyes. Then, bracing himself with the cane, Cesare shuffled his feet until they were comfortably spaced and pushed down with all of his weight.

Silvia caught him under the elbow, keeping him from tumbling back onto the mattress. She was far stronger than she appeared, possessing a wiry strength that he felt surge through her fingers.

“Yes?” she asked quietly.

“Yes.”

In Name Alone 35/?

[(Anonymous)]

Together, they inched him up off the bed, his hands clutching the head of the cane as he shifted his bulk from his feet to the stick. Without it, he would never have managed to stay upright. But he succeeded in staggering into a slumped standing position. Just that had taken the wind out of him.

“My body is scarred with battles untold and yet I’m soft as a maiden.” Cesare swore under his breath, trying to ignore the powerful twinge in his lower back. “A crueler punishment an executioner couldn’t devise.”

“I doubt that,” Silvia chided with a chuckle. “You could have the nails ripped from your fingers or your limbs stretched until they came apart at the seams…”

“Your point is plain enough,” Cesare interrupted in a dry whisper. “I will remember to stay my ungrateful tongue lest you find some way to elaborate my suffering.”

“One foot at a time,” Silvia said, ignoring him. “Perhaps we can have you on the porch by lunch time.”

“Ambitious? Why am I not surprised?”

They shifted about until Silvia could loop her left arm with his right, her free hand out and ready to grab his shoulder if he lost his balance. Again, her steely little frame surprised him, there to wedge a bony shoulder under his back when his footing faltered, fingers clamping around his wrist like a vice. Cesare slid forward, carefully, slowly, inching across the floor at a snail’s pace. Each tiny movement was a torment, a reminder of the battering he had forgotten. It was, in a way, like reliving each battering blow. Though his body had healed for the most part on the surface, there were internal discomforts ranging from the mildly annoying to the excruciating. His arms felt generally less awful than his legs, but that wasn’t saying much, considering just how badly his knees and thighs ached. But Silvia was patient and unfazed by his almost constant grumbles of pain. Minutes stretched by, his molasses-slow progress bringing on a furious sweat that wetted the hair at his temples and dampened a patch over his breastbone.

“Well done,” Silvia encouraged. “We’re nearly to the door.”

It was true. They had crossed the seemingly boundless gulf between his bed and the curtain covering the doorway into the next chamber. Silvia swept the curtain aside and waited until he had clumsily ambled through, his knee bumping the doorway edge roughly. Hellfire. This was just as frustrating as learning to read again. He felt utterly useless, a man of height and brawn reduced to a shambling, ungainly cripple. The agony in his legs was such that he simply stopped feeling the jabs that came on each uncertain step. That was a mercy and a curse, leading him to wonder if perhaps he would return to bed only to never rise again. They could be doing unseen damage. Lena would have a blistering earful for them if Silvia’s little challenge led to some sort of undoing of her healing work. Still, somehow it was better to continue and accept the ceaseless stinging, to make some kind of progress, however minimal, instead of staying in bed all day. For the first time in his limited memory, he was up and about, dressed, looking much more like a man of the world and not some doomed coward cowing to his unhappy fate.

Fuck fate. Fuck God. He could bloody well walk if he wanted to. Someday, he thought with a fierce tightening of his lips, he would jettison this annoying cane and be upright and unburdened. A real man. A normal man.

As they shuffled through Lena’s room, Cesare couldn’t help but inspect all that he saw. It was a welcome distraction - glancing at the unmade bed, the curtains thrown wide to let in the sunshine, the wilting roses weeping their petals onto her cabinet. Most striking of all was the way it all smelled so differently from his room. There was no medicinal tang, no reek of unwashed man or the funk of Michelangelo’s boots… It all smelled faintly feminine. The roses helped, of course, but there was something else, something uniquely sweet and fragrant rising from the bed linens. Cesare pulled his gaze from the tick, where he could swear he saw the imprint of a sleepy little body.

Silvia pushed open the door, letting them out into the fresh air. Cesare gulped it down, greedy for the fresh warmth.

Re: In Name Alone 35/?

[(Anonymous)]

Ohh, the return of this fic is like clear water. Just what I needed. <3

Re: In Name Alone 35/?

[(Anonymous)]

Yay yay! I was worried all the readers had gone away. >.

In Name Alone 36/?

[(Anonymous)]

“And she doesn’t believe in miracles,” Silvia muttered. “What’s this then? A stroke of luck?”

“Miracle, luck, skill…” Cesare shrugged. “All played a part, I wager.”

“Here.” Silvia led him with tremendous care to a stout wicker chair on the porch. It had been set up to have a wide view of the yard and the pastures and forest beyond. “You’ve made progress today. Rest.”

Cesare’s will to refuse her, to charge ahead and take advantage of their momentum, died down a little as he drank in the scenery surrounding them. He accepted her arm as he sat, gradually, grunting as he lowered himself into the chair. A goat grazed at the edge of the yard, bits of spiky greens sticking out of his mouth as he chewed and regarded Cesare with a lackadaisical stare.

“You have a goat?” he asked, amused.

“It’s not mine! He’s a horrid grump. He and the artist… bosom companions. I’ve tried to chase him off but he just keeps showing up…”

“Perhaps he enjoys vexing you.”

“As I said,” Silvia mumbled with a helpless grin. “He and Michelangelo… they could be twins.”

“But for the beard,” Cesare added gently. “The goat’s looks much cleaner.”

Silvia laughed, loudly, swatting his shoulder with no care for his injuries. That was fine. He didn’t appreciate being handled like an egg.

“Did you know me,” Cesare began, directing his gaze beyond the goat to the fields stretching out in every direction. “Before my fall… Had you seen me before?”

“Oh no,” Silvia replied. She dragged a rickety stool over and plopped down at his side. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason.” That wasn’t true. The reasons, however, were innumerable. “The girl… I was a villain in life.”

“And what are you now?” Silvia chuckled, tossing her mane of silvery hair. “A corpse stirring from the grave?”

“No, I only meant… This doesn’t feel like life. Should it?”

“Don’t be so dramatic, boy. Fortune indulged you once, but I wouldn’t taunt her.”

“Wouldn’t you be mistrustful, too, if you learned someone that disliked you intensely was now your nurse?” Cesare regarded the Spaniard out of the corner of his eye. She considered this for a long moment before turning to face him, her smile replaced with a grim, stubborn scowl.

“I watched that girl killing herself to tend to you. She hardly ate, hardly slept, slaving over your bed until she fell over from exhaustion. Whatever her feelings, you might consider what she went through to keep you breathing before accusing her of something foolish.” Silvia scoffed, looking away as if the sight of him was suddenly too disgusting to stand. “Why wait until your eyes opened to stab you in the back? She could have ended you whenever she pleased.”

Cesare paused. He hadn’t thought of it that way.

“Then she truly means me no harm…” It came out, unfortunately, like a question.

“So this is why the world is the way it is.” Silvia shook her head at him, standing and leveling an accusatory finger at his face. “She runs herself ragged looking after you and you don’t have a single kind word…”

“Peace,” Cesare held up his hand, exhausted. “I only wonder… If my memory does return - will all her kindness then turn to cruelty? My family caused her terrible suffering. If I were her, I would have taken my revenge when I could... Silently, and without remorse.”

“Then you should thank God that she is nothing like you.”

“Indeed.”

Cesare thought of the doctor’s warm hand in his, the way he could feel the tremors coursing through her body as he tried, in the only way he knew, to show a measure of sympathy. It gnawed at him, the fact that he had been part of something evil when he felt so far removed from such impulses. Sometimes he cursed the wretched pain in his legs and he was not immune to the occasional impure thought, but otherwise violence and villainy felt beyond him. It was all bound up with his family, he knew, though he could not remember them. The thought of his brother, the one relative he could picture, made him mournful. Why? Shouldn’t a sibling bring him a spasm of affection? But no… Giovanni, wherever he was, only made him sad. And the more answers that came… well, he was becoming more and more certain that he didn’t want them.

In Name Alone 37/?

[(Anonymous)]

Already he felt guilty for the actions of his dead father, how much pain might the full truth bring?

“You mentioned a festival.” Cesare was done with dwelling. His memories would return or they would not. If he had limited time to live in this blessed ignorance then it would be foolishness indeed to waste it moping. “There’s dancing?”

“They light lanterns from here to Tortosa,” Silvia said with a swoon, falling back onto her stool. Her eyes went wide with girlish delight as she smoothed her hands out across the horizon. “Little glowing stars everywhere… and the food! Blessed lord, the food! You eat until your stuffed and dance until you can eat some more.”

“That sounds like a strange combination,” Cesare observed with a half-smile. “Wouldn’t all that eating and dancing make one ill?”

“Oh the wine takes care of that!” Silvia laughed, freely, and it almost wiped away the darkness of their previous conversation. “A bottle or two and you hardly feel a thing.”

“It is customary to be acquainted with the local dances, is it not?”

Her eyes grew wider still and soon she was back on her feet, hopping up like a frightened hare. “It is,” she said, extending her hand with a fetching grin. “And we haven’t much time.”

-~-

The tall grasses snagged on her skirts as she chased down the fallen kite. Another one of Leonardo’s mad inventions. It flew like a dream, soaring, spinning, racing up with the wind and then dipping down before cart wheeling out of the sky. And now it was showing the wear of so many flights, its paper edges torn and ragged. Lena knelt, gingerly plucking the cream-colored kite from its weedy bed.

She didn’t hear Lucio – he was an assassin, after all – as he pounced from a hiding spot in the field. They tumbled in a heap, Lena cursing as she felt the kite crunch under their weight. She swore, pushing herself up and shoving Lucio aside.

“Cazzo,” she hissed. “He’s going to kill me.”

“No he won’t,” Lucio insisted, pawing at her hem. “It was made for such things.”

“A rip or two, yes, but this…” She held up the mangled mess of wood splints and paper. “This is not good.”

“Forget the kite,” Lucio whispered. His hands were on the move, frolicking up her skirt toward her knees. “I’m sick of running after it anyway.”

Lena wasn’t. She could have kept going, wanted to keep going. What she didn’t want was… well, whatever this was. Lucio’s hands caressed her legs through the heavy cotton of her skirts. Curse dresses, breeches and boots were so much more convenient for fending off unwanted suitors. Not that she had many of those, or many wanted ones either. No, Lucio was the first in a long time, but that didn’t mean she was desperate for a tumble in the grass. In fact, she felt her gorge rise sharply at the thought of him touching her bare skin.

“Stop,” she whispered. He did. “Please. Can we just sit for a moment?”

“What’s the matter?” Lucio asked. She despised these handsy Roman boys. They were always like this. Greedy. Impatient. The few men that had shown interest in her always leapt ahead too quickly, taking her tentative flirting for a boisterous invitation. It never seemed to match, her shy trepidation and their hungry pursuit. Was it wrong, she wondered, to want a poem? A song? The roses were nice but still… She could count on one hand their actual conversations. A rose was not some magic bar that pried her legs apart.

She thought of the poems she and Cesare had found in Michelangelo’s things. The aching sentiments were sad and a bit desperate, but wasn’t that real love? It didn’t need to hurt, necessarily, but it always seemed to. Her mother would tell her that love stories were three parts pain and one part pleasure. Maybe that had been a tactic to keep her daughter thinking chaste thoughts, but now the sentiment rang true. Michelangelo lusted and yearned with such incredible passion, his feelings so raw that Lena felt them herself when she spoke the words aloud. She looked at Lucio. The only raw thing in this case was her backside, which was sore from having been slammed into the ground.

“This was nice,” she said lamely. “Are you hungry?"

Re: In Name Alone 32/?

[(Anonymous)]

That poem is incredibly sad. It sounds like he wrote it as a eulogy. :(

Re: In Name Alone 32/?

[(Anonymous)]

He did actually, I'm sort of using it more as lost/forbidden love that can't be expressed.

Re: In Name Alone 32/?

[(Anonymous)]

That was a great usage, actually. I ended up just now on a half-hour tour of Wikipedia and read up on the poems. XD I totally should be writing but I keep seeing your updates coming to my inbox. And that means I have to drop everything because "OMG MUST READ RIGHT NOW" XD

Re: In Name Alone 32/?

[(Anonymous)]

Haha, thank you! Yeah, not a lot of people know how prolific he was when it came to poetry. And he and da Vinci were not by any means friends, but I love the idea of them carrying on a torrid affair while avoiding rumors by saying they're hated rivals. :3

I'll try to have more posted tonight. Thanks for the kind comments, they help me stay inspired!