Spring (Season 3)

            Damn Mari and her poisonous forked tongue.  His jaw clenched so tightly that his teeth were beginning to ache and his head was already pounding from his sister’s venom ricocheting and reverberating ad nauseam against the inside of his skull. 

When are you going to stop pretending that I’m the only one in our family people go out of their way to avoid?  Why did you marry some stranger as fast as you possibly could instead of properly courting your new wife?  It’s not like there was any risk of her getting snapped up by a better offer, not where you found her… What do you fucking expect from me?  Elation that you married some stranger … barely know anything about her, except that she knows how to play you like a piano…

He hated the twinge of frustration he felt at Taline for flinching when he touched her or spoke to her or even when he just looked at her or laughed at something someone else said, which only fueled his sister’s slings, his uncle’s poorly concealed concern, and his mother’s not even trying to be concealed disappointment in him.  This visit was supposed to be a vacation, not some crucible test of his choppily forged and still fragile relationship with Taline and the new life he was building himself.  But things were not progressing at all as planned, and, while he knew it wasn’t fair to blame Taline, the way his family and former students and colleagues looked at him every time she flinched or teared up or slipped away to vomit or cry or whatever hurt, and she wasn’t entirely blameless for that.  Navigating it all had seemed so much easier back at Alamūt.
            She hadn’t bothered to light any lamps in their room, so he cast a fire in the grate and used its flickering glow to locate her on their bed.  She was lying on her side, knees drawn up towards her chest and arms protectively wrapped around her abdomen, practically radiating misery.  Her exposed cheek was tacky with slowly drying tears and her wide, glassy eyes were vacantly staring at some distant point only she could see.  His heart wrenched with guilt and pity, tenderness and shame, at the sight.
            “Taline,” he murmured huskily as he settled his body behind hers, contorting himself to fit against her snugly.  She smelled like ashes and violets, mingled with his scents of hyssop and rosemary, all underlain with tangy hints of brine; he loved that he could smell himself, and the fading scent of their lovemaking, on her skin.  Mine.  Wholly and completely mine.  He settled his hand over hers, gently cradling her swelling belly.  My wife and my child.  It felt so right.  She flinched at the touch of his lips against the side of her throat, but offered no other acknowledgment of his presence beside her.  He hesitated at that, suddenly uncertain of how to open their conversation.  Mari’s been thorny since our wedding day, may as well start there.
            “Hey now, Mogliettina – you know how Mari is – no more crying, yeah?”
            Christ, she smells so fucking good.  He began to harden appreciatively, and could tell that she’d noticed his body’s reaction to hers by the way she tensed.
            “Yes, Varpet.”  Her voice was choked, hesitating between the words; uncertain.
            It hurt.
            “Is there something else that’s bothering you?” 
            Not that she’ll actually tell me, no matter how often or directly I ask her…  He forced himself to leave that thought unfinished; it would only hone his frustration, which wasn’t going to be remotely helpful that evening.  Or ever, really.
            “I’m tired, Ezio.  Is it too early to go to bed?”
            He felt a momentary rush of giddy delight that she wanted him to take her to bed before the logical voice of his brain – the part that kept him alive on contracts and had helped him make Master – chillingly reminded him that she’d just said she was tired, and presumably wanted to sleep, not sport with him between the sheets.
            “No,” he replied carefully.  “It’s not too early for bed, if that’s what you want.”
            She nodded and he reluctantly released her so that they could both sit up.  She looked delicate, frail, skin pale and eyes red-rimmed from crying.  Her lashes, clumped together from her tears, cast long, spiky shadows on her cheeks.  He exhaled slowly and focused on undressing her for bed, first removing her shoes before reaching up her skirt to unfasten her stockings.  He pressed kisses to the naked insteps of her feet, the hollows just below her ankles and behind her knees, before getting up to retrieve one of his kurtas for her to sleep in.  She sat on the edge of the bed, head bowed, eyes on her hands folded in her lap, picking at her cuticles.
            Something’s wrong.
            He set the kurta on the edge of the bed and squatted down in front of her, trying to catch her eyes.
            “Taline?  Mogliettina?  What’s the matter?” he asked gently, reaching up to caress her cheek, trying to draw her attention to himself.
            “I’m just tired, Varpet,” she whispered, still avoiding his eyes.
            No, you’re not just tired.
            He swallowed his simmering frustration and nodded.  “Okay then.  Let’s get you out of that dress and into something more comfortable, yeah?”
            She was unresisting as he pulled her to her feet and removed her light wool dress.  He slid the straps of her slip off her shoulders and she let the filmy fabric fall to the floor around her feet.  She was naked, save for her panties, and the sight of the physical changes his child was causing to her body sent the blood rushing to his loins.  Her breasts were plumper, nipples slightly darker, and her belly more softly rounded, swelling as his child grew inside her.  Sancta Maria, mater Dei.  He gently palmed one breast as he brought his lips to the other and drew her nipple into his mouth.  He heard her breath hitch as he hungrily sucked, his free hand sliding down her back to knead and squeeze her bottom.  He loved the feeling of her skin against his lips, her silky dark hair running through his fingers, and the wet welcoming warmth of her mouth opening to his.  She just stood there and let him touch her, completely passive and mostly unresponsive, except for a few soft sounds when his teeth accidentally scraped her or he squeezed a little too hard.  Down, Ezione!  She doesn’t want that yet, stronzo.  He dropped to his knees to kiss her abdomen and pressed his ear against her, hoping to hear their child’s heartbeat.
            “Hello little sparrow, Daddy loves you very much,” he murmured in Italian and pressed another kiss against the swell of her belly.  “Has he been kicking yet, Mogliettina?” he asked in Arabic as he caressed her, tracing the blue-green veins visible beneath her skin.  “The medics said we should be able to feel him soon.”
            “I’m not sure, Varpet,” she replied, still avoiding his eyes.  “Maybe he’s just a quiet baby.”
            “Then he must be taking after you – my mother says me and Mari were always moving around, that we never seemed to sleep while we were inside her.”  He flashed one of his best smiles at her, the one he used when he really wanted to charm someone.  Her mouth twisted briefly in response before she quickly looked away.
            “I wouldn’t know.  No one ever told me what I was like as a baby.”
            And now there’s no one left who can.  Because of me, he realized with a suddenly hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.  He hated the intrusive swell of guilt that accompanied that thought.  If I’d waited to get permission, we wouldn’t be having this child.  We might not have even been allowed to marry …  He wasn’t sorry for not waiting, for not seeking the Order’s permission first, not if doing so meant he might not have gotten Taline, that they might never have gotten to start a family together.  She’s worth it.
            “That’s because you were a perfect baby, and they didn’t want it going to your head,” he softly teased, rubbing the pad of his thumb along the sharp crest of her hipbone in a gentle, hopefully soothing, caress.
            “I think it’s because birthing me poisoned my mother’s body and my father couldn’t bear the memory of anything related to how she died,” she replied flatly.  “That seems a much more likely explanation than yours, Varpet.”
            He clenched his teeth, furious again at how Taline had been treated before she fled her family.  They earned their deaths by tainted blade.  He wondered if more of her relatives would have embraced their end like the old jeweler had if they had known why the Assassins came for them.  Clearly, Krikor had known something was amiss with his youngest brother, that he’d had at least suspicions as to what lay behind Taline’s sudden disappearance. 
            I see.  Old sins cast long shadows. 
            It made him even angrier, knowing that her family had, at least on some level, known, and yet still allowed that man to harm her.  He’d found him living alone on the edge of Yerevan, shunned by his neighbors, and apparently by his family as well.  Unlike the rest of Taline’s relatives, there were no cards or friendly family letters anywhere to be found, just a shrine of faded photographs, all taken before 1915.  It was eight days before the body – what was left of the body after rats and cats had gotten to it – was discovered, on the floor in the middle of the living room.  He’d even opened the drapes before he left. 
            “Your father grieved deeply for years over losing you, until his death, I was told.  The parish priest told me that he called out for you on his deathbed,” he replied softly.  “Your father loved you, Mogliettina, he just wasn’t very good at showing you when it mattered.  That seems to be a common failing, of fathers,” he added, tone warping with unintended bitterness.
            “Perhaps all that you say is true,” she responded, still studiously avoiding even the briefest glance at him.  “But I was named for my mother.”
            He clenched his teeth and exhaled through his nose.  This isn’t the sort of argument you win, Ezione.  Let it go, drop it and move on.  He forced himself to smile up at her as he rose to his feet.  Just let it go – always easier said than done.
            “Mothers have a way of casting long shadows, don’t they?  Even longer still for daughters who share their names, I’d imagine,” he babbled inanely, trying to fill the uncomfortable silence between them with harmless words.  “No matter how far I go or how high I rise within the Order, it feels like I’ve always got at least one foot in my mother’s shade.  I can’t even imagine how much more pronounced that must feel for Mari-”
            He choked off that line of small talk when he noticed Taline’s expression warp slightly at his sister’s name.  Oh god, you stupid, stupid stronzo.  Stop Talking.  Distract her, make her feel better.  He hated feeling so off kilter and wrong footed.  It had never been difficult for him to chat up and charm women, and yet he just kept saying the wrong things to his wife – the woman he wanted to be charming for the most.  God really has a sick sense of humor sometimes. 
            “I suspect Mari has less difficulty making her own impression on people than you seem to credit her.  Her personality is quite, forceful, at times, and leaves a very different impression than your mother makes,” Taline murmured, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear and averting her face.
            He huffed a short laugh half under his breath and caressed the cheek she’d turned towards him.  That’s sure a nicer way to say it than Mari deserves.  God she’s beautiful.
            “I’m sure you’re right, Mogliettina.”  He stepped closer, nuzzling against her neck as he hooked his thumb in her underwear, pulling the last remaining garment on her body down her thighs and releasing it fall to floor around her ankles.  She was already wet when he slipped his fingers inside, her only resistance a faint mewl under her breath at his penetration.  Mine.
            “Please, Ezio,” she weakly protested.  “I feel unwell.”
            The simmering frustration he’d been working so hard to suppress roiled up his throat, sour and sulfuric.  Her body was clearly telling him that she desired him, that it was ready and eagerly anticipating his lovemaking.  She’d been begging him for it only that morning, crying and almost inconsolable because the purifying elixir he’d taken left him temporarily unable to perform that particular duty for her.  He didn’t understand what could have changed so suddenly, why she was denying them both the pleasure her body so clearly desired from him.  Hurt wasn’t emphatic enough to convey whatever it was that he was feeling.
            “You’d feel better if you ate properly.  You’ve been hardly eating enough to nourish yourself, much less our child,” he shot back before really considering his words, voice sharper than he’d intended.  He hated the way she flinched at his tone.
            “I’m trying, Varpet,” she whispered. 
            He hated how easily and frequently she made him feel like a brute.  Be kind Ezio.  It’s your child that’s making her sick.
            “Try harder then.”  Kinder, stronzo, be kinder.  He forced himself to take a deep breath, a pause to reset; he was expressing too much frustration and it was upsetting his wife.  Try harder,Ezione.
            “Taline-”
            “I’m sorry,” she whispered.  “I will try harder.  Please don’t be angry with me.”  Her voice wobbled a little as a tear rolled down her cheek.  He hated that the sight of her crying only fueled his frustration rather than evoking some softer, undoubtedly more helpful, emotional response.
            “We’ll both try harder, yeah?” he offered gruffly.  Kinder, you ass!  Jesus, Ezione.  “It’s been a long day, a long week, really, and it’s only half done.” 
            He peeled his shirt off and tossed it in the general direction of the bench at the foot of their bed.  Her eyes followed the trajectory of his shirt and she gave the slightest flinch when it landed on the floor before her lowered gaze slid back towards him.
            “Yes, Varpet.”
            He swallowed a sigh as he toed off his boots.  She wasn’t watching him, not directly, but he could tell she was following his every movement.  Jesus, her body is amazing.  His trousers felt so tight that there had to be an imprint of every button of his fly on the underside of his cock, and his whole body positively ached to be touched.  He suddenly noticed that he was actually salivating at the scent of her skin, which was a little weird and sort of embarrassing, and certainly not a physical response he could recall ever having to anyone else – not that he’d been thinking about any of his previous lovers lately, and he absolutelyhad not been thinking about another woman in particular.  That would just have been pathetic, and also kind of uncomfortably close to infidelity, which he absolutely wasn’t bringing into his marriage.  Mine.
            “D’you want a bowl of oatmeal, or something?” he forced himself to ask as he fumbled with his belt, desperately hoping she’d say no.
            “No, thank you,” she murmured, eyes demurely lowered as she crossed her arms across her breasts and rubbed her upper arms.  “May I get into bed?  Please?  It’s cold and I’m tired.”
            “Yeah,” he rasped, ripping his fly open.  One of the buttons plinked against the hardwood floor before rolling away to settle with a faint rattle.  “You’ll have to help me finish undressing first though, Mogliettina.”
            She hesitated before edging close enough to slid his trousers down his hips.  He sucked his bottom lip and mostly managed not to moan at the feeling of her hands skimming over his ass as she removed his underwear.  Jesus-Fucking-Christ.  Fuck me, yes.  She squeaked when he seized her and slung her onto their bed.  He quickly followed, using his knee to part her thighs and pulling one of her legs up onto his shoulder, eager to sheath himself deep inside her.  She was even tighter than usual, and made an incredibly unsettling sound when he tried to penetrate her.
            “Taline?” 
            Her face had visibly blanched and her breathing was uneven.  He was gripping the leg he’d drawn up over his shoulder – one hand just below her ankle, above the shapely swell of her calf, and the other just above her knee – and he suddenly realized that he was gripping her far too tightly from the tension he felt in his forearms.  Merda.
            “Taline?” he repeated after a moment when she still hadn’t responded.  “What’s the matter?  Are we okay, Mogliettina?”
            “Please, it hurts,” she finally whispered.  “That’s hurting me, Varpet.”
            He clenched his teeth and nodded as he released her leg and pulled himself away from her invitingly wet warmth.  You asked her something, and she more or less answered.  That counts as progress, Ezione, he reminded himself.  The crown of his glans was sticky and he could already tell his balls were going to ache if he didn’t empty them soon.  It didn’t feel like progress.
            “Okay, let’s start slower then,” he rasped, pressing a finger against the opening of her resistant body.  She made a soft, gut-wrenching sound before he’d inserted his finger even so far as his second knuckle.  “Does that hurt too?” 
            There was more frustration roughening his voice than he’d have liked, but, in all fairness, he felt really frustrated.  Sexually, emotionally, frustrated, and unfulfilled and even a little resentful of the miserly way Taline parceled out the physical and emotional affection he so desperately needed.  More than anything, he wanted that affection from her, and it hurt so much that she didn’t seem to want to be that special someone for him anymore.
            “Yes,” she hesitated, a fresh wave of tears spilling down her cheeks.  “It hurts inside.”
            He sighed and flopped back against the overstuffed feather mattress his mother had replaced his previous, and honestly more comfortable, mattress with.  So no lovemaking tonight then.  Fucking Awesome.  His erection had flagged, but not completely softened.  Ezione being stubbornly and uncomfortably optimistic, he wryly noted.  Fucking idiot.
            “How about a minet?” he tiredly asked into the sprawling silence that had fallen between them, purposefully using her word for what he wanted, although he wasn’t confident that he’d pronounced it right.  My pronunciation would be better if I actually had gone out whoring while I was in Yerevan.  The thought left a sour, almost rancid, taste at the back of his throat, and the less frustrated part of him knew that wasn’t the sort of man he ever wanted to be.
            “Yes, Varpet,” she murmured, using both hands to smooth her hair and hold it back as she leaned over to pleasure him.  She retched almost as soon as she opened her mouth.  Fortunately, she only dry-heaved, but he knew he wasn’t likely to be that lucky the next time.  Great, any sort of intimacy with me makes her want to vomit.  He couldn’t think of a word in any language that even remotely conveyed the full force of whatever it was that thought made him feel.
            “Never mind,” he snapped as he pushed her away.  “I don’t want you throwing up in our bed.”
            The covers tangled around his calves as he clambered off of the bed, nearly causing him to topple onto the floor when he finally reached the edge.  Taline had retreated to huddle against the headboard, where she watched his egress with saucer-like eyes while clasping one of the pillows against her chest, presumably to shield her body from his view.  He gritted his teeth and snatched his underwear off of the floor, pulling them mostly on before recovering his socks.
            “Where are you going?” she finally asked in a slightly tremorous voice just as he finished buttoning his trousers.  A quick glance confirmed that she had contorted more of her body behind the pillow she was still clutching.
            “Out.”
            “Out where?”
            “Somewhere I can get a stiff drink and a woman who actually wants to fuck me,” he snarled as he yanked on his boots.  The missing button left a rather awkward gap in his fly when he bent over, but he didn’t really intend for anyone else to get close enough that evening to notice.  The elves would get it fixed before morning anyway; his mother would be furious if they didn’t. 
            Her expression would have absolutely gutted him under normal circumstances, but the awful feeling pumping hotly through his veins temporarily inured him as he stormed towards the door, swiping a hand at his shirt on the floor at the foot of their bed on his way out.  He missed and had to backtrack a step to grab it, slightly spoiling the effect of his exit.  It would have been satisfying to slam the bedroom door behind himself, for extra emphasis, but that brief satisfaction wasn’t worth incurring his mother’s wrath.

            He’d only intended to take a short walk, just long enough to settle his temper and clear his head, but he found himself in front of Cristina’s building and stopped to look up at her and Rosa’s flat.
            There was a light in her window; the curtains were only haphazardly closed and he could tell at she was still awake by the way the shadows shifted.  He knew she’d let him in and beg to be forgiven and taken back, or, at the very least, she clearly wanted him to thoroughly fuck her again, based on the way she’d looked at him in the street of the wizarding district earlier in the week.  All I have to do is knock.  It was so tempting, would be so easy.
            Except, Cristina had always cringed away from touching his scars and only told him he was handsome when he was wearing his clothes or they were alone in the dark.  She wouldn’t let him hold her hand or kiss him, even on the cheek, in public.  It hurt a little more each time she went to see her parents and didn’t invite him, when Rosa answered their door and awkwardly and apologetically told him Cristina wasn’t home, and then didn’t invite him in to wait.  It had felt special when he’d deflowered her in Lucca, deep and meaningful, but afterwards, afterwards he wished a little that they’d waited until their wedding night.  He got the impression, more and more frequently as time went by, that Cristina regretted not waiting as well.  He probably should have proposed to her sooner, taken her to Lucca to meet everyone with an engagement ring on her finger, but it hadn’t felt like the right time.  He couldn’t propose to her immediately after, not if he didn’t want her to feel pressured to say yes just because they’d had sex, and he wanted it to be clear that wasn’t the only reason he was asking.  Stop pretending you don’t know why she hasn’t taken you to meet her parents, Innocenzo had sneered.  That women don’t have to be paid to touch you.  He hated how easy it was for Innocenzo to know just what barbs to sling, how much it stung when they hit their mark, and how badly he wanted to deny that there was any truth in them, but his ready retorts weren’t even convincing to himself.  He hated that most of all.
            Taline soothed him back to sleep when his nightmares woke them both, instead of expressing annoyance that her sleep had been disrupted, as Cristina had.  She didn’t shy away from touching his scars, even after he told her she didn’t have to.  She kissed them and traced them, asked him to tell her how and when he’d gotten them.  She wanted to wash him when they bathed together and always offered to apply the salve for the scar on his thigh when he was exhausted from a hard day of training.  She clung to him in public and had been excited to show him off to her former coworkers at the cabaret, like being with him was an enviable prize and she was proud of being seen with him.  She desperately wanted to have his children, had been so excited when the medics confirmed her pregnancy that she’d gotten one of her students to show her to the training grounds so she wouldn’t have to wait for him to come home to share the news.  The hekim said I’m going to have your baby, Varpet.  You’re going to be a father.  She’d been so happy to have his child growing inside her.  We’re going to have a baby, the first of many.
            Taline may not have been a virgin, but it felt more right when she gave herself to him than it ever had with Cristina in so many ways.  Taline had known what he was, what that meant, before she knew his name, before she even approached their table at the cabaret when Cesare motioned her over.  She wasn’t frightened or repulsed by the Order, there was never even the specter of having to choose between her or his family.  She’d assimilated herself into his life within the Order and actively sought to establish and strengthen her own ties to those closest to him.  She wanted to belong where he belonged.
            What the fuck are you doing here, Ezione?
            The shadow shifted, the curtains twitched, and then Cristina was looking down at him, her expression warping strangely between emotions he hesitated to name – regret, excitement, confusion, desire – but he didn’t feel how he expected to feel seeing her.  Even knowing that she regretted her decision, that he only had to indicate that he was coming up and she’d let him in, through the front door he’d never been allowed to use because her downstairs neighbor, the widowed Mrs. Bianchi, might see and be horrified that she and Rosa were entertaining young men without a chaperone in their apartment.  Rosa hadn’t seemed to share Cristina’s concern; Karl always knocked at the front door, whereas he’d had to go around to the kitchen door at the back of the building, where no one would see him.  Stop pretending you don’t know why she hasn’t taken you to meet her parents.  The thing was, on some level, he’d known all along that his otherness was an obstacle with Cristina, that his dark skin and mixed parentage were off-putting to her.  He’d told himself, time and time again, that her reluctance to be seen with him was because of the leggi razziali, and not any prejudices held by her or her family, but there had always been that voice in the back of his mind whispering otherwise, wondering what she called people like him when he wasn’t around to hear her.  Tizzone, ominide.  That she had left him for a fascist seemed to confirm what that voice had whispered all along.
            Taline, whose almost translucently pale skin might have made her actually lighter than Cristina, had never shown the slightest indication that his complexion or mixed blood bothered her.  I want him to have your skin, she insisted when he’d expressed the desire that their child share her coloring.  It would be a greater disadvantage to not look like his handsome father than any he might gain from looking more like me.  He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been aware that he was slightly darker than Federico, and that their mother, aunts and cousins – except Kadija – were all significantly lighter than he and his siblings.  In art it’s called chiaroscuro, Mario had told him once when he was younger, after he’d made a comment to his uncle on how much darker he was than his mother.  People have always seen strong contrasts between light and dark as beautiful, nipote.  Chiaroscuro can be seen in an individual, like your mother, between a couple, or within a family, but it always creates something striking.  Never forget that, Ezio.  He’d reminded himself of Mario’s words when he was with Cristina, like armor against each sting when she hesitated to take his arm or suggested an alternative route that avoided crowded streets.  He thought of chiaroscuro differently when he was with Taline, not as a defense, but as a way of explaining to himself why they seemed so right together.  People have always seen strong contrasts as beautiful.  He hesitated to share these thoughts with Taline though; he didn’t want her to think her pale skin, her softness and her slender frame, were the only reasons why he wanted her.
            What the fuck am I doing here?
            Cristina was still watching him, lips slightly parted as though on the cusp of either calling him in or shooing him away, and he realized he didn’t want her feeling like she still had that power over him anymore.  He made a point of meeting and holding her gaze for a long moment before he continued on his way.  The urge to look back, to confirm she was still watching him and what her expression reflected, was nearly overwhelming, but he resisted.  It seemed like such a shame that he couldn’t boast to anyone about that particular display of discipline and fortitude.
            Several blocks from Cristina’s flat he encountered a policeman out on patrol, enforcing the district’s compliance with the blackout order in effect.  The officer’s initially suspicious attitude towards him was almost immediately replaced with a fraternal sympathy when he explained that he was taking a long walk after having had arguments with his wife, his sister, and his mother that evening.  He adjusted his posture carefully to belie his size and seem less threatening, while also maintaining the suggestion of military training.  He’d found agents of the State, whatever their rank, were generally more receptive towards servicemen.
            “Women,” the officer sighed with a shake of his head as he offered Ezio a cigarette.
            He shrugged in response as he accepted it and then halfheartedly checked his pockets for a lighter or match, since he couldn’t use his magic in front of a kāfir without prompting unwelcomed questions.
            “Go home,” the officer instructed, handing him a half used book of matches before shaking another cigarette out of the pack for himself.  “Loiter on your back porch and look at the sky.  You can see so many more stars now with the City dark.  Enjoy it while it lasts.”
            “Yes, I will,” he replied, returning the matches with a smile calibrated to read as docile and ever so slightly embarrassed.  “Thank you for the cigarette, and the advice.”  He touched two fingers just above his temple in a quick and casual salute, which was immediately returned, and then continued on his way at a carefully calibrated pace, mindful of the officer’s watchful gaze and a little relieved that his clothing had passed as Italian enough to avoid any inconvenient questions.  Or maybe Roma has bigger things to worry about right now than some nobody in clothes that look a little too foreign.  He paused after a safe distance to crush the cigarette out against the sole of his boot before drawing on his cloak and slipping deep into the shadows; the next policeman whose patrol he crossed on his way back probably wouldn’t be so amenable and understanding.

            Filomena, usually such a staunch ally, was decidedly not in the mood to be amenable and understanding when he slouched into the brothel’s salon in search of a bottle of Armagnac to take with him upstairs.
            “Mena,” he groaned, trying to wrestle the bottle away from her as gently as he possibly could.  “I thought you said I was your favorite.”
            “You don’t need a whole bottle,” she insisted pertinaciously, slapping his hand away.  “We can’t get it delivered by the case anymore.  Go cage a bottle of your uncle’s slosh if you want to drink yourself to oblivion.”
            In the end he managed to secure a fairly generous carafe of Armagnac, and quickly retreated upstairs before Filomena had a chance to rescind his hard-won prize.
            He noted the feeble but still burning fire in the grate as he kicked the door of the family parlor more or less closed behind himself with the back of his heel.  It didn’t latch, but he’d already flopped onto the most comfortable of his mother’s couches and was occupied with deciding if he felt like summoning an elf to get him a glass, or just drinking straight from the carafe.  Using a glass is probably the very least Mother expects of me, he reasoned as he stamped for an elf.  And drinking from the carafe feels a little too close to sad and lonely alcoholic.  The elf responded promptly to his summons, but took long enough to return that he’d started to reevaluate his position on drinking from the carafe.
            “Took you long enough,” he muttered as he accepted the proffered snifter.  “Did you have to go all the way to Venezia to fetch it?”
            The elf scraped a low bow, but otherwise offered no response.
            He sighed and poured himself a drink.  It wasn’t really fair of him to blame the elf, and he knew it.
            “Were you reporting to my mother, or Filomena?  Both?  Maybe my uncle too?” he asked tiredly as he toed off his boots and half-heartedly kicked them under the coffee table.  “No, probably not all three of them.  You weren’t gone quite long enough for that, were you?”
            The elf, which had still not risen from its bow, offered no response.
            He took a deep drink and then sighed again as he regarded the prostrate house elf.
            “Whoever your spymasters are, you’ve been instructed not to tell me anything about it, haven’t you?”
            Still no response, not even the slightest twitch.
            “Of course,” he sighed and poured himself another drink.  “Thank you for your service.  Dismissed.”
            The elf finally rose from its bow, tipped its chin to him, and signed, Apologies,peace upon you, before it vanished.
            He swirled the brandy in his glass, watching the way the liquid reflected the firelight with a slight frown.  It bothered him a little that someone in Roma was keeping tabs on him, possibly several someones, and although his mother, Filomena, and his uncle seemed the most likely, it could be any of a number of individuals within the Order, all for different reasons.  It probably wouldn’t even occur to Altaïr to use the elves, that’s a little too smoke and mirrors for him, and Mari wouldn’t have asked nicely enough for them to not tell me it was her, so that’s two ruled out.  He set his glass down and shifted his scowl to the fire glowing in the grate.
            “Ezio?  What are you doing in here, alone?”
            His mother was standing in the doorway, watching him with an expectant look.  Her hair was loose, spilling down over her shoulders in dark waves, still kinked from the pins that had held it all day, and she’d taken off her corset and all her makeup.  He realized how late it must be and immediately felt guilty for disturbing her.
            “I’m just having a digestif before bed,” he responded, motioning to his glass of Armagnac.  “Taline isn’t feeling very well, and I wanted to give her some space before we head to Lucca for the holiday.”
            “Why does your wife need space, mio tesoro?” she asked as she glided into the room to alight on the edge of the settee beside the loveseat he occupied. 
            Merda!  Look what you stirred up, stronzo.  The last thing he needed that evening was to further pique his mother’s interest in his relationship with Taline.
            “It’s just been a lot of stress on her,” he responded carefully, girding himself for another round of interrogation.  “And Taline’s shy-”
            “Cabaret dancers can’t afford to be shy,” she frostily interjected, eyes narrowing.  “It’s insulting when you expend so little effort trying to lie to me, mio tesoro.  Your wife puts on an impressive façade, but we both know it’s merely a pretense.”
            Porca puttana.
            “It isn’t just a pretense,” he protested as he refilled his glass.
            “You disappoint me deeply if you’re foolish enough to actually believe that.”
            He hated how deeply her saying that managed to cut, how even the suggestion of her disapproval could hurt him so much.
            “You don’t know everything, Mother,” he retorted before he could stop himself as he sloshed more Armagnac into his glass.  “And you don’t know Taline, or anything about our relationship, for that matter either.”
            “I know how a mistreated woman looks, Ezio,” she replied severely, wresting the carafe from his grasp and setting it down on the table with far more force than she habitually would have used.  “Anyone with eyes can see how much you frighten your wife, and I will know the reason why.”  She paused to draw a long breath and the emotion animating her expression evaporated almost as suddenly as it had appeared.  “Begin.”
            Honestly, I don’t see how it’s any of your fucking busine-”
            The entire side of his face was stinging before he even saw her move.  He somehow always managed to forget that his mother had the reflexes of a viper until it was too late.
            “I didn’t raise you to swear at women,” she seethed.  “I am your mother, and after everything I have sacrificed for you, you will honor and obey me.  Have I made myself clear?”
            “Yes, Mother.”  The taste of iron and salt bloomed inside his mouth; he’d must have bitten the side of his tongue when she’d struck him.  He watched her massaging the hand she’d used to slap him and it was some small consolation that she might have hurt herself striking him as hard as she had.  Sort of.  Mostly it was just embarrassing that he was still terrible at anticipating, and dodging, when his mother chose to lash out.
            “Good.  Now, why don’t you start at the beginning, mio tesoro?” she hummed, helping herself to his glass of Armagnac.  “How you met Taline, and why you felt you had to be so quickly wed.  Why you took the time to inform Alamūt’s majordomo of your plans, but not Al Mualim, or even your cousins.”
            He scowled down at his folded hands, elbows propped against his knees.  He really needed a drink in his hand for this conversation, something he could sip and use to play for time while he deciphered the careful micro expressions of his mother’s responses.  Unfortunately, the elf had only brought the one glass – which his mother now held – and he very well couldn’t just ask for it back.  You knew this was coming, stronzo.  Man up already and get on with it.
            “Altaïr suggested going to dinner at the cabaret one night after training, me, him, and Kadija.  I invited Asad along, to help keep everything friendly.” 
            His mother arched a brow at that and he shrugged in response; she perfectly understood what he’d left unsaid, even if she feigned otherwise.
            “Sirocco and Cesare were there as well – I’m not sure if they joined us, or if we joined them.  They hunted together while Cesare’s shoulder was still healing after, well, you know.”
            “Go on.”
            He gritted his teeth as he watched his mother take a leisurely sip of his Armagnac.  Fuck I need a drink.
            “Taline was dancing.  She was so delicate and beautiful, the way she moved-”  He could feel his skin burning and gulped a quick breath before forcing himself to continue.  Stick to the evening’s main narrative, you stupid stronzo.  Mother doesn’t need to know all the little details.  “Cesare caught me watching and called her over.  Said the best way to get over someone was to get under someone else.”  He uncomfortably scraped one thumbnail along the edge of the other and slid his eyes over to the dying fire in the grate.  “He whispered something in her ear, when she came to the table, and she invited me up to her room.  I didn’t realize she was under his compulsion until we were already in bed.  It wasn’t right, to take advantage of her like that, so I tried to leave, but she didn’t want me to go.  That’s when I found out she’s Cathari.”  He allowed himself a quick grimace at the memory of how it had all unfolded, how poorly he had handled himself.  “I didn’t want to hurt her, so I agreed to stay.”
            “I’m sure that’s the entire reason you stayed in the bed of beautiful girl compulsed to provide whatever sexual pleasures you desired,” his mother interjected with a disbelieving sound at the back of her throat and his skin burned even hotter.
            “We didn’t have sex that night,” he retorted.  “I only do things with willing women, and I don’t need Cesare’s help getting them that way.”
            “Of course, mio tesoro,” she hummed.  “Continue.”
            He hesitated, scratched the back of his neck, adjusted the Ferrymen’s Ring on his finger.  I want you… Be with me.  Another unwelcomed flush of heat flooded his face at the memory of Taline saying those words to him, clawing off his clothes and begging him to stay.  Down, Ezione.
            “The compulsion made Taline act like she really wanted it, but it seemed off.  I could tell something wasn’t right,” he continued, hating how unsteady his voice had become.  “That’s when I found out she’d run away from home when she was younger… and why.”
            He was my father’s youngest brother.  It started when I was twelve.  His blood still boiled at the thought, even killing all those people had barely dampened the rage.  His mother was watching him in expectant silence and he wanted to just squirm away and hide.  Preferably somewhere dark, with good brandy and a soft bed, and very far away from his mother and these questions he didn’t want to answer.
            “One of her uncles had abused her as a child, forcing himself on her.  It went on for years before she ran away.”  His tongue was tingling where he’d bit it; the bleeding had stopped, but the taste still lingered.  “She was beautiful and vulnerable and she needed me, Mother.  She made me feel like a man again.  I wanted it to be right when she gave herself to me, but I also needed her so badly that I knew I couldn’t wait, and I didn’t want to make the same mistake I had with Cristina.  I didn’t want to have her before she was really mine…”  He could tell from his mother’s expression that he was explaining himself poorly, but he resisted the urge to keep babbling on defensively.  It was embarrassing how much willpower that decision required.
            “So you brought her into the fortress, behind everyone’s back, and married her in the Assassin way,” she summarized with a sigh.  “Oh passerotto, what a mess you made trying to do things right.”  She tsked him softly beneath her breath before continuing.  “What atonement did Al Mualim demand before he agreed to accept your illegally acquired wife?”
            He winced at the dryness of her tone.  Fuck, this isn’t going well…
            “I had promised Taline that I would kill the man who hurt her, and the people who had allowed that harm to happen.  I wanted to punish the ones responsible for-”
            “Was that a promise made at her suggestion, or yours?”
            “Mine.”  He grimaced at her tone.  “I pledged the dowry I planned to get from her family, when I went to Armenia to give mercy to that man and his accomplices, to the Order.  Al Mualim took my promise further, made it an official contract, and upped the body count, significantly.” 
            “How significantly?”
            He scraped his nails along the underside of his jaw and down the side of his throat, adjusted his ring again, brushed some imaginary dust off the knee of his trousers.  The ceiling wasn’t that interesting, really, but he studied it anyway.
            “Ezio…”
            He sighed.  “The contract was for all of them.”
            “All of whom?”
            “The entire family, down to the last child,” he finally admitted, now inspecting the plaster cast amaranthus and ivy molding that ran around the top of the walls.  The silence billowing up between them thick with something he didn’t like the feeling of.
            “And she signed that contract?”
            “She didn’t read it.”  His eyes drifted down the wall to watch the glowing embers in the fireplace.  He could usually make them flare, slightly, if he concentrated hard enough.  “She didn’t want to make any more trouble for me – she was really worried about that – so she just signed where I told her.  She trusted me.”  The past tense hurt.
            “Trust is an essential ingredient to make a marriage to work.”  She tapped one of her nails against the edge of the snifter.  “When did you tell her the true extent of the contract she signed?”
            “She found out.  While I was away.”  One of the embers he was watching popped with a burst of bright sparks; he couldn’t tell if it was accidental or incidental.  “We don’t talk about it much.”  Or at all, really.
            His mother’s responding hmm felt as caustic as the chemical weapons Italy had used on Abyssinia.
            “Why is she so anxious about carrying your child?”
            The abrupt shift in his mother’s line of questioning caught him off guard and he betrayed himself by meeting her cool, calculating gaze.  He cursed himself for his misstep before deciding to lean into it.  Tell her the truth, and tell it brutally.  It might shame her a bit, if nothing else, and hopefully it’ll discourage future prying.  He wasn’t sure he even really believed any of his own reasoning, but at least it would get the conversation his mother seemed so intent on having over with faster.
            “We made a baby right after we were married, in the first week or so, but she miscarried.  She was still bleeding when I returned from the contract.  She hadn’t said anything in her letters, it was supposed to be a happy surpri-” his voice cracked and throat spasmed shut and his eyes were suddenly blurry and burning.  It hurt so much to say it aloud, so much more than he’d expected, and he suddenly realized that she was the first person that he’d actually had to tell about their loss.  He’d been so resentful of everyone already knowing when he found out, but that seemed more like a blessing in disguise now that he was faced with how painful having to tell someone about it actually was.  My god Taline, why didn’t you tell me it hurt this much?
            “Do they know why she miscarried?” she finally asked him, in a tone far more gentle than any she’d used with him in a while.  He hated how much he both resented and appreciated her attempt to be understanding.
            He shrugged and reached for the snifter still resting in her hand.  She let him take it.
            “They said she was very unhappy while I was away, that the stress from being that unhappy was probably a major factor why it happened.”  He hitched his shoulder in an awkward half shrug and then knocked back the remainder of the glass.  The brandy burned as he swallowed and he swiped his eyes with the hand not holding the now empty glass and carefully cleared his throat.  “These things happen, they said.”  He coughed a bitter laugh.  “Sounds like the sort of shit medics say when they don’t really have an answer, doesn’t it?”
            “We have all been lessened by this loss,” his mother replied, and while he hated that she offered the Order’s most trite platitude to him in response to something so deeply personal, there was a rawness in her voice as she said it that imbued the hollow words with some more salient meaning.
            “Yeah,” he croaked, reaching for the carafe to refill his glass.  “Sure.  Are we done here?”
            “No.” 
            She moved the carafe out of his reach with a subtle movement of her fingers.  His mother’s command of her magic, as always, impressed him by how effortless she made it look.  He could do magic like that too, if he put enough effort into it, but not as beautifully as his mother did.  Doing shit like that is actually pretty fucking hard.  Although she’d never admit it, and would resent him even suggesting it, her skills were far more valuable to the Order as a Shadowbroker than had she been allowed to continue serving as a fidā'ī; anyone could kill on contract, but the sorts of things Madonna Maria now accomplished took a far more rare and special touch.
            “This conversation is finished when I am satisfied,” she continued, the softness to her tone having completely evaporated.  “And not a moment before, regardless of your feelings on the subject.”
            “Yeah?  Well, I’m pretty fucking done,” he retorted, plunking the empty snifter down on the coffee table in front of him.  “So any further discussion you decide to force is going to be pretty one sided.”
            She studied him with disapprovingly narrowed eyes for a long moment before her expression shifted into her opaque Madonna smile.  It was never a promising sign.
            “We can finish this conversation tonight, between ourselves, or in Lucca; with your grandmother.  Your choice.”
            “Maybe I won’t go to Lucca then,” he snapped, spreading his thighs wider and leaning forward to brace his elbows against his knees.  “Not with that threat hanging over my head.”
            “Threat?” she lilted with an exaggerated arch of her eyebrows as though surprised.  He’d seen more convincing displays from street performers, which, he suspected, was exactly the tone his mother had intended.
            “Yes, Mother, a threat.  An act of coercion, often deployed by people like you, to avoid using more forceful methods that may be damaging to their own interests.”  He leaned back and crossed his arms across his chest, leveling his shoulders to minimize any defensiveness in his posture.  His mother had an uncanny ability to sense uncertainty, any unease or hesitation, and exploited it ruthlessly.  Like how a shark is drawn by just a few drops of blood in the water.  He loved his mother, really, but he was tired of living under her iron fist, of being expected to obey every command as promptly and unquestioningly as one of her house elves.  His mother liked to feel her power was absolute and maintained it accordingly.
            “How very strange that you characterize my concern over your wife’s health and well-being as a threat, mio tesoro,” she hummed.  “When I am merely performing the duty expected of any mother towards her family.”
            “Oh is that what you’re doing?  Your duty?”  He scowled at the surprisingly unadorned toes of her white velvet pāpūš, just barely visible beneath the hem of the richly woven silk dressing gown she was wearing.  “How beneficial was Nana Claudia performing her duty to your marriage, Mother?”
            “Our situations are hardly comparable-”
            “Yeah?  Why’s that?”
            “Because, unlike La Donna Claudia, my sole intention is to ensure the success and happiness of your union,” she responded frostily, eyes narrowed slightly.  “Not to punish or cow your wife.”
            “You can’t know what her intent actually was back then,” he sighed, trying to ignore his rekindling resentment at being forced, yet again, to play the role of family peacemaker.
            After all these years you’d think they’d have worked out at least some way to make family gatherings slightly more tolerable for everyone, but nooo.  Why would anyone want that?
            “Your grandmother’s greatest virtue and fault is her consistency, despite all efforts or forces that may alter her,” she replied.
            She’s not wrong…
            “She has never approved of me,” his mother continued calmly, as though that understated observation didn’t sum up over thirty years of animosity and conflict with her mother-in-law.  “And, for the same baseless and racist reasons, she will not approve of your wife.  Your desire to avoid that, unpleasantness, is the real reason why you didn’t bring your wife to Italy for Christmas, not the nonsensical excuse you sent in your place, isn’t it, Ezio?”
            “It wasn’t just an excuse,” he sputtered, catching himself before he blurted out anything that might tip his mother towards an even more unpleasant line of interrogation.  It had seemed entirely reasonable – and not only to him, just for the record – that he’d want to spend the first major holiday of his marriage with his wife, and Taline’s miscarriage had left her in no shape for the rigmarole a Christmas visit to Italy entailed.  Even Altaïr and Kadija had agreed that he needed to stay at Alamūt with Taline for Christmas, not that the holiday registered as important to them.
            “However,” she continued, as though he hadn’t spoken, “we both know that Taline’s pregnancy will appeal to her vanity and self-interest, and we both also know that if your wife was not pregnant you would have found or fabricated some other excuse to further delay subjecting her to your grandmother.”
            Also not wrong. 
            He clenched his teeth and resumed his study of the area immediately surrounding the fireplace.
            “Ezio,” she hesitated, long enough that he almost glanced at her, but didn’t.  “Your marriage, and the family you create together, will never be truly happy as long as your wife is frightened of you.  You know this already, better than most.”
            Not wrong again. 
            He continued his study of the room and its furnishings, lowering his gaze to the rug beneath his feet.  There were flowers set in serpentine arabesque, shades of bright arterial blood red, smokey aubergine and malachite greens, accented with stark splashes of cream set against a background of deep indigo.  It looked expensive, the sort of expensive that a bourgeois kāfir, like Cristina, would hang on the wall or drape over a couch, instead of putting on the floor.  If he had to guess, he’d hazard it was handmade and of an unusual, possibly even custom, design; the sort of rug a connoisseur like Kadija would select.  He’d wager serious coin that she was somehow involved in its acquisition.  I bet it feels nice against bare feet.  Kadija never selected anything just because it was beautiful.
            “Children always know when their parents’ marriage is unhappy, and it drives a wedge between the child and one, or both, of their parents,” she continued.
            She sounds… sad, or maybe just tired?  He wasn’t entirely sure.
            “Federico blamed me for the problems in my marriage with his father.  You always firmly sided with me, not that Giovanni gave you any reason to do otherwise – mādær kos-deh.[1]  And Mari…” she sighed.  “Mari blamed us both.  Your sister has always seen the world as stacked against her.”
            He could hear the weariness in her voice.  He was not entirely unsympathetic.  Dealing with Mari’s bullshit tends to have that effect.
            “And everything is always someone else’s fault,” he added, rubbing the bottom of his foot against the carpet’s nap.  It felt nice, even through his thick socks, plushy and soft.  He wondered if the rug would still be there the next time he and Taline visited.  It was hard for him to gauge how quickly his mother would grow bored of something sometimes.
            “Many view the world that way, kuffār and Assassin both,” she replied.
            He heard the scrape of glass against stone as she drew the empty snifter over to herself and then a gentle clink as she refilled it from the carafe.  He didn’t actually think she was pouring him another glass, not really, but he still felt a sharp sting of disappointment as she lifted the glass to her pale lips and took a long sip.  While she would never do anything so uncouth as to smack her lips, the soft sigh as she dabbed an errant drop of Armagnac from her bottom lip with the tip of her pinky was basically her version.  He clenched his teeth and worked his toes deeper into the carpet’s piles.
            Christ, I need another drink.
            “They’re not always wrong, you know,” he replied, absently itching his right palm against the knee of his trousers.  “Sometimes things happen that really are entirely not the fault of the affected individual, or individuals, you know.”
            “Sometimes… perhaps,” she hummed between sips of Armagnac, “but not to you, and certainly not regarding your troubles with your wife.  Those are entirely your own creation.”
            “Good to know that every bad thing that happens to me is still all my fault.  Some things never change, I guess,” he grumbled with a scowl at some overly ornate flower on the rug, which he’d interpreted as a tulip, since it clearly wasn’t a Madonna Lily.  At least he’d been reasonably sure it wasn’t supposed to be a lily, although the longer he looked at it the less certain he felt.  Maybe a poppy?  That’s the right color of red.  Stupid fucking flowers.
            “You’re too old to be hiding behind self-pity to avoid your responsibilities, mio tesoro,” she drawled as she swirled the brandy in her glass; it was the color redwood would be if it was translucent, a beautiful deep brown glazed with the ruddy warmth of a fire.  Fredo’s eyes had been that color – fireside Armagnac – so beautiful that calling them just brown had always seemed inadequate and misleading.  Filomena insisted that he and Mari had eyes the same color as Fredo’s, but he didn’t see it.  Mari’s eyes maybe looked like Fredo’s when they were lit with laughter and she’d momentarily forgotten her perpetual bitterness, but his had always been the B Grade version – nice looking enough until one saw, or remembered, the real deal.  No one had commented admiringly on his eye color when Fredo was alive.
            “Are you listening?” she demanded sharply, jolting him out of his reverie.
            He blinked and gave his head a slight shake before responding, “Yes Mother.”
            She sighed and set the glass down.  He forced his eyes not to follow the movement or linger over the glass, still one third full of his hard won brandy and close enough that he could almost taste its scent if he inhaled deeply.  She was watching him too closely to have missed any of that and he felt his cheeks warm under her scrutiny.
            “You must to be willing to grow and discard bad habits, unless you want an unhappy marriage?”
            “You know-” he caught himself and forced his voice lower, calmer “-that’s not what I want.”
            “Do I?”  She arched a rather sparse brow at him and reached over to tap a flawlessly manicured nail against the side of her – his – glass.  “I haven’t seen you acting like it.”
            “What’s that supposed to mean?”
            “Your drinking is getting out of hand, Ezio,” she responded with a slightly pained look.  “You drink too often and too much, and it’s starting to affect you.”
            “Some snap judgment you’ve made after a few days’ visit isn’t exactly compelling evidence that I’ve got a drinking problem, Mother,” he sighed, leaning over to collect his boots from beneath the coffee table.
            “The amount of damage that has already been inflicted on your marriage pains me, mio tesoro.  Your immediate infidelity was bad enough,” she sighed with a slow shake of her head.  “But, if you continue at this rate, your marriage may become even more unhappy than my own.”
            His skin burned with a fresh wave of shame at the reminder of his lapse last autumn after he’d finished the contract in Armenia.  The fact that Taline was in the infirmary, frightened and alone after having lost their child, while Lucia had been blowing him only made him feel that much worse about all of it.
            “It was just that once, and I haven’t strayed since,” he mumbled defensively as he ground the heels of his hands against his burning eyes, boots beneath the coffee table momentarily forgotten.
            “Am I supposed to congratulate you?” she inquired with another disapproving arch of her brows.
            He sighed.  “Mother…”
            “Your ego has gotten bloated from too much empty praise,” she finally commented after reclaiming the glass and taking another leisurely sip of Armagnac.
            He scoffed at that beneath his breath.  Hardly.
            “So you tell me that I’m a conceited alcoholic who beats his wife, doubt all my personal decisions, compare me unfavorably to Altaïr, and then chastise me for not visiting enough,” he retorted.  “I’m not stupid, Mother.  I don’t need to be reminded that I’m only second best, that I’ll always be only second best.”
            It was her turn to sigh. 
            “It’s late,” he stated as he got up from the couch.  “And I still need to bathe before I go to bed.  I’ve got an early day at the Motherhouse tomorrow.  Uncle is expecting my assistance first thing.
            “Ezio-”
            “Good night, Mother,” he interrupted her emphatically in Italian.
            Her lips thinned slightly with disapproval.  “Goodnight, my treasure.”
            He remembered that his boots were still under the coffee table when he was halfway through his shower and already drowsy from the soothing flow of hot water over his body.  They’ll still be there in the morning if the elves don’t find them first.  It’s fine, they don’t need another coat of polish yet anyway.

            “Taline?” he called as he stumbled through the door of the bedroom they shared in his mother’s house, mentally cursing himself for drinking so much earlier.  Maybe Mother has a point.  I should work on slowing down before I end up too much like Uncle Mario.  His wife wasn’t in bed, where he expected to find her.  “Taline?”
            One of the dresser drawers was ajar.  Her jewelry casket was on its side, empty, and there was an alarming amount of vacant space on the dresser’s top.  His shaving kit was on the bed.  Open.  His straight razor was gone.  Everything was going blurry and he’d forgotten how to breathe as he stumbled backwards and braced himself against the doorframe, abruptly wide awake and very much more sober.
            “Mother!” he shouted hoarsely as he stamped for an elf and scraped his blades.  “Mother!”
            “Ezio?  What is it?” she hissed, pulling on one of her richly woven silk dressing gowns as she rushed down the hall, reaching him at nearly the same moment as the elf.
            “Get Altaïr,” he commanded it, and then turned to his mother.  “She’s gone!  Taline’s gone!”
            “You must be mistaken, mio tesoro,” she soothed, catching hold of his shoulders in her iron grip and forcing him to face her.  “She’s using the toilet, or getting something from the kitchen, Ezio.  She’ll be right back and you’ll have made all this fuss for nothing.”
            “Her things are all gone,” he gasped, swaying on his feet, suddenly lightheaded and dizzy.  “All her things are gone, Mamma.  She’s gone.  What will I do if something happens to her, or to the baby?  This is my fault.  What do I do?”
            “First,” his mother said sternly, “you stop this hysterical nonsense and start acting like an Assassin.  You’ve been trained to hunt your whole life.  Use your training, Ezio.  Where would she go?”
            He staggered backwards, out of her grip, and landed heavily on the edge of his bed, sucking in deep breaths as he tried to obey his mother’s command and quell his surging panic.
            “She, she wouldn’t go north,” he started slowly, mostly just thinking aloud.  “She doesn’t speak the languages.  Europe is a warzone, and she knows she’s the wrong shade of white to find much safety there…”  His mother tipped her chin in silent encouragement.  He sawed his teeth against his bottom lip as he tried to narrow down Taline’s possible routes. 
            “She’d probably want to get back to Turkey or Armenia,” he continued, digging the fingers of one hand into the muscle of his thigh and using the pain to ground himself.  “So, either south, through north Africa, or east, through the Balkans.  I don’t think she’s going south, though, it’s the long way around and there’s lots of active fighting in that whole area.”
            “She’s going to need help to even get out of Roma,” his mother commented, brows drawing together in a thoughtful frown.
            How did you survive after you ran away from your family? he’d asked her once, as they cuddled together on the bearskin rug before a dying fire.  His eyes stung with fresh tears remembering how beautiful Taline had looked in the embers’ ruddy glow, how perfectly their bodies seemed to fit together as they’d cuddled.
            A community of Romani took me in, just outside of Yerevan, she’d replied, snuggling her cheek against his chest and tracing his scars.  That’s where I learned to dance so well.  I’d learned some before I left my father’s house, but Vüsala polished my skill, pushed me to become a much better, more confident, dancer.  My dancing made them a lot of coin.
            Why didn’t you stay with them, Taline?  How did you end up at the cabaret in Alamūt town?
            We parted ways a few years later when their travels took them too close to Yerevan.  It wasn’t safe, for any of us, if I were to be discovered with them, she’d replied after a long moment with an awkward half shrug.  I travelled, briefly, with another community, but I never fit in with them as well as I had with Vüsala’s tribe, so I went my own way once we reached Iran.
            “She might seek help from the Romani, one or more groups of them are usually encamped along the Tevere on the outskirts of Roma,” he choked out, words catching in his throat on the thick gooey knot of guilt and shame and panic he kept trying to swallow down.  “She travelled with a tribe of them before, when she left Armenia.”
            His mother arched a brow and scrapped her thumbnail across the cushion of her bottom lip.
            “Well, that explains how she turned up in a cabaret.”
            “Mother,” he groaned.  “Please.  That’s not helpful right now.”
            His mother’s undoubtedly acidic response was forestalled by the reappearance of the house elf, presumably the one he’d sent to fetch Altaïr, looking alarmingly apologetic.
            Not here, it signed and scraped a bow so low it could have licked the floor.
            “What do you mean, not here?” Maria demanded in a low, ominously calm tone as her eyes narrowed and he felt a brief spark of sympathy for the now fully groveling elf.  “My nephew returned to this house only a few hours ago.  I saw him.  We spoke.  He wouldn’t just leave, with no explanation or message to me.  Find him.”
            “Find who?” his uncle’s voice rumbled from the doorway.
            Fucking kidding me. 
            Of course his uncle would just happen to show up – in the middle of the night – when everything was going wrong in his life and his mother had just been told something she didn’t like hearing and he couldn’t spare the energy to keep them from each other’s throats.  This is a nightmare.  Santo Dio, bringing Taline here was a mistake… he thought with a fresh surge of overwhelming self-loathing and panic.  Focus, Ezione, keep your focus and find your wife.  Mother and Uncle Mario can police themselves for a change.  He turned his attention to studying his uncle, desperate for a distraction from his panic to regain his footing.
            Mario’s clothing was disheveled and his face was flushed, color splashed high across his cheeks and down his throat to his chest, a large swath of which was visible due to his shirt being partially fastened and only somewhat tucked into his trousers, the fly of which was little more than half buttoned – not that he was judging his uncle on the state of his clothing or anything, they were above a brothel, after all.  Mario also seemed remarkably clear-eyed and sober, given his disheveled appearance and the late hour, which struck Ezio as decidedly odd.  He can’t have been fucking, not one of Mother’s girls, at least.  Years ago, and purely out of spite, his mother had decreed that Mario would be charged at least triple the kuffār rate for anything and everything under her roof by anyone in her employ.  Consequently, no matter how excellent his mother’s Armagnac was, his uncle wouldn’t even order so much as a drink in her salon, on personal principle.  Naturally, those principles didn’t stop him from drinking an entire bottle of it in one sitting whenever Ezio smuggled one out for him.  If he wasn’t fucking or drinking, what has that old rogue been doing?  Mother would charge him through the nose for even looking at her stock.
            “It seems that my son’s wife may have gone missing,” his mother tersely informed Mario.
            …may have gone missing.  His mother’s voice, and his uncle’s undoubted retort, were muffled and distant, like he was underwater, their exchange echoing unintelligibly inside his skull until the words were warped into nothing but disjointed sounds, and the pressure of the blood roaring through his veins felt dangerously close to exploding out of his eyes.
            …may have gone missing...  Not here, the elf had signed.  No, they can’t have left together.  He recoiled from the idea even as his brain finished the thought.
            “Ezio’s wife and your nephew are both missing, Maria,” Mario rumbled.  “You have to at least consider the possibility that-”
            “Altaïr can hardly stand being touched by anyone, Uncle,” he interrupted with an impatient shake of his head which he immediately regretted.  “I know my cousin, and he can’t tolerate any contact like that” – unless it’s with Sirocco – “so what you’re suggesting is impossible.  Besides, he wouldn’t just leave, not without some message for Mother.”
            “Bring my daughter,” Maria commanded the still groveling elf.  “Even she couldn’t sleep through this much noise.”
            Not here, the elf nervously signed after a moment’s hesitation.  Left during dinner.  Not returned.  It flinched at his mother’s frustrated sigh.
            “Out,” Mario commanded.  “Find better answers before you return, and do it quickly!”  The elf looked to his mother before disappearing with a sharp pop at a flick of her eyes.
            “You will temper your voice when speaking to my elves, Granmaestro,” Maria tersely informed his uncle.  “They are not yours to bully-”
            “They’re not yours either, Maria.  Least you forget, the elves are servants of the Order, and, as such, I am entitled to speak to them howsoever I choose.  It is not your place to command me, Madonna,” Mario rumbled. 
            Ezio watched the fingers of Mario’s right hand curl into a fist against the side of his thigh as he spoke and Maria narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin in response.
            Fan-fucking-tastic. 
            He shouldn’t have been surprised that they were picking petty fights with each other rather than focusing on helping him, not really.  After Cesare had pulled him out of the Tevere, the first thing he remembered was them fighting, while literally standing over his body, about who was more at fault for what had happened.  They eventually progressed to fighting over the treatment plan for his recovery and what they thought would be in his best interest.  His throat had been too raw from all the alcohol and river water he’d swallowed, not to mention god only knows what all else the medics had done while he was unconscious, to have gotten a word in edgewise, even if he’d wanted to.  It almost felt like it had then all over again, except that, while this time he could talk, it felt doubtful they were interested in listening to what he might have to say. 
            She’s slipping further away from me with each passing minute, and they’re fighting over house elves.  Fuck My Life.
            “The fuck does it matter about the elves?  Taline’s gone!” he burst out, slipping into Arabic in frustration.  “Can we please focus on that?  For once in my life, can’t you just stop fighting with each other long enough to actually help me when I need you?”  His hands were shaking and his legs felt rubbery, like they might buckle in unnatural ways when he tried to stand before immediately collapsing back on the edge of the bed he’d shared with Taline only that morning.  It felt like he’d been kicked really hard multiple places – his chest, his head, his throat – it was so difficult to focus, to breathe.
            “You’re right, my treasure,” his mother soothed, alighting on the edge of the bed beside him and carding a hand through the tangled mess of his hair, gently smoothing it back from his face.  “Now is not the time for infighting.  Your uncle and I will have plenty of time for that after your wife has been safely returned to you.” 
            He wasn’t aware that he’d started crying until he felt his mother wipe something salty wet from his cheeks and press gentle kisses against his aching eyelids.
            “Mamma,” he croaked.  “What have I done?  What if-”
            “Shhh, Passerotto, my beautiful boy.  God will see you from the corner of her eye and everything will turn out right, you’ll see.”
            “God only helps those who don’t depend on him,” Mario rumbled.  “What’s our plan?  Where do we begin?”
            “We must find Altaïr,” Maria replied, tone calm and clipped and decisive, and it hurt like vinegar in an open wound that even now his cousin was her first priority.
            “Fuck Altaïr,” he snapped, pushing away his mother’s clinging hands.  “He’s more than capable of looking after himself.  We need to find Taline, not waste time-”
            “No,” Mario interrupted him suddenly.  “Your mother is right.  We need Altaïr for this.”
            He hated how his mother and uncle never agreed on anything unless it was something he really didn’t want to hear.  They must do it on purpose, it can’t just be coincidence.
            “Why are you agreeing with her?” he demanded.  “You’ve always hated Altaïr.”
            “Right now, he’s the best hunter in Roma,” Mario replied decisively.  “He knows Taline – what she looks like, what she is.  I can’t send any of my fidā'ī after a frightened and unstable Cathari and expect them to bring her back unharmed.  Besides, your wife seems to like him well enough and trust him, which is more than can be said for anyone else remotely qualified for this task.  Altaïr knows how to hunt Cathari; he’s completed contracts for Bards.  He’s also an excellent hunter, cold-blooded, meticulous-”
            “And he will not harm Taline, not even to protect himself,” his mother continued.  “She’s family, and she’s carrying your child – my grandchild – you know he would never jeopardize their safety.  He’s Aaliyah’s pearl, she raised him to protect our blood, no matter the cost.”
            Her expression twisted as she rubbed her upper arm, the place he knew was marred with shrapnel scars that she almost never let anyone see.  He remembered seeing them for the first time when the white sealed letter came from Alamūt, the one that informed his mother that her sister had fallen while on contract.  He remembered his mother screaming and tearing her clothes with grief before collapsing to floor and sobbing while rubbing those scars.  He didn’t see them again until Fredo died.  He remembered Kadija casting the glamour used to hide them when his mother was still too grief stricken to do it for herself.  He’d asked her once, before Fredo fell, how she’d gotten them, but she’d coldly rebuffed the question, and he’d never worked up the courage to ask her again.  Altaïr probably knew at least something about those scars, especially if they were connected in some way to Aaliyah, and Kadija, undoubtedly, would know more – details, specifics – but he always forgot to ask his cousins until after the opening to do so had passed.  Neither of his cousins ever liked being asked anything about Aaliyah.
            “But we don’t know where he is!  He could be running in the mirror roads again, and, if that’s the case, he might not turn up for hours,” he protested.  “I’ve already scraped my blades for him, and he hasn’t responded.”
            “That’s not like him,” his mother murmured.
            “Maria…” his uncle hummed, and there was something strange in his tone.  Under almost any other circumstances, the way Mario had said his mother’s name would have drawn his attention like iron shavings to a magnet, but the incessant droning buzz of panic and fear, echoing and amplifying inside his head, drown out everything that wasn’t immediately connected to finding Taline.
            “You know that’s not like him,” his mother insisted, eyes narrowed and jaw set.  “Either your summons couldn’t reach him, or he’s unable to respond for some reason.  He wouldn’t just ignore it.” 
            He recognized her expression as the opening gesture of the stance she adopted for non-physical confrontation, and it was directed squarely at his uncle.  Fucking Awesome.
            “Why d’you always take everyone’s side but mine?”  The words exploded from his mouth, completely unintended and wildly inappropriate and really, really unhelpful, skipping through the room like a stone across the river before he even realized that he’d picked anything up.  His uncle looked just as surprised by his outburst as he was; strangely, his mother did not.
            “There are no sides to this issue, my treasure,” she replied, a little more sharply than he was prepared to deflect.  “Unless you wanted Taline to flee from you, pregnant, unprotected, and alone in a land completely alien to her.  Then, yes, I suppose we would be on opposing sides.”
            “You know that’s not what I wanted!  I need my wife!  I want her here, with me, where I can keep her safe, make things right-”
            “You haven’t been acting like a man who cares much about doing right by his wife-”
            “Maria,” Mario interrupted her with a more pronounced edge to the end of her name than any tone he’d used previously.
            “What’s that supposed to mean?” he shot back, ignoring the warning look Mario leveled at him.  And while he knew he should probably obey his uncle’s unspoken command, it felt good to compress all the noise and static and emotion swirling inside him into solid cold fury, to have an outlet other than himself to direct it towards.
            “Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs,”[2] she replied, obviously quoting from something she expected him to recognize.  It wasn’t her sort of sentiment, and certainly not how she would have expressed it, even if it had been.
            “I’ve told you not to quote the Quran at me, Mother,” he snapped, staggering up from the bed to pace the length of his old room.
            “I was not quoting from the Quran,” she responded in a tone that could have frozen boiling water.  “Why is it that people who were raised as Christians can go through their lives without ever actually reading the bible, but an outsider like me has to commit the bulk of it to memory for the merest hope of physical safety in these most Christian lands?”
            He heard Mario’s responsive sigh from halfway across the room and he absolutely did not have time to referee that tired old argument, again, not when he had much bigger and more pressing issues that they should have been focused on fixing.  Fuck My Life.
            “Yes, yes, okay, fine.  I’m a terrible Catholic, not that that’s even slightly relevant right now.  Is that what you wanted to hear?  Happy now?”  He irritably scrubbed both hands across his face and through his hair, bare heels striking the wooden floor with teeth jarring force as he paced.
            “We’d all be happier if you stopped acting like a selfish child,” she snapped.  “Storming off and getting drunk has never solved any problems for anyone, and it has only been making things worse with your wife.  For shame, Ezio.  Taline is right to be frightened if her husband is becoming a violent drunk.”
            “I’m not-”
            “Based on how you act in public, your uncle and I have every reason to be concerned for how your wife is treated in private,” she continued severely, slowly and softly.  “There’s the flinching, and the bruises, the constant vomiting and fear in her eyes – Ezio, step back and look at it like an Assassin.” 
            “That’s-”  His jaw shut with a snap at the feeling of his uncle’s hand landing heavily on his shoulder before squeezing tightly.  He’d dreaded and envied that grip when he was younger.
            “Listen to your mother,” Mario urged him softly as his clavicle creaked under the older man’s fingers.  “Approach it like a contract recon, as Ezio the Master, not the man.  Find the eye of the hurricane, Bello, the stillness of the storm.  Tell me what you see.”
            He gritted his teeth.  Forced himself to stand still and exhale slowly.  To cram the emotions roiling inside him, all their distortions and static and roaring white noise, into neat little boxes at the back of his mind, to be unpacked and examined later, maybe, but probably not.  He recognized that the dropping inflection his mother and uncle had just purposefully deployed was a measure designed to deescalate the emotional charge he’d been building up around them, and part of him resented the manipulation – of course – but mostly he was grateful to be soothed, even if he would rather not admit it.  Find the eye of the hurricane…
            Mari had been accusing him of abusing Taline for weeks, using essentially the same points his mother and uncle had just made, Altaïr had also said it in not so many words only that morning.  Taline kept getting bruises, and he felt absolutely terrible about each and every one, but more and more frequently his memory of how or when or what had happened was blurry, disjointed, or just missing.  His mother was right; it looked bad, really bad, and his explanations sounded like nothing more than papier-mâché excuses.
            “Ezio?”  She sounded impossibly far away, like the physical space between them could be measured in kilo – rather than centi – meters, and the emotions he’d just packed away didn’t stay in the boxes where he’d put them.  There was too much pressure inside his head, too much noise and guilt and shame and his ears were ringing louder and louder and his throat kept getting tighter and tighter and his eyes were burning brighter and brighter until everything around him dissolved into blinding white light and humming silence.

[1] Farsi, son of a bitch

[2] 1 Corinthians 13:4-5