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When she begins this crusade it is for her father.
His death sent a ripple through MI6, a warning to every Assassin that was in the field, that we couldn't protect everything. That even Assassins could fall no matter how high they rised.It left her confused-This scared little girl that was being set on a path that she didn't quite understand just yet. She lives with Bellec for the majority of her life. The name pisspot might as well be marked on her, or rather him, with how much he says it. Though his insults and teasing words only make her skin thicker. Thick enough to learn of the truth of her father's death with a certain clarity. The clarity that a child would never understand.For a time she feels nothing.For a time she looks at the names upon her skin, the blood that already stains her hands, and she feels nothing.Then she feels everything; a sharp tidal wave of emotions, a dam that finally broke beneath the pressure. It leaves her heaving for air, clawing away at her brown eyes in hopes that the tears will stop, hoping that this pain will go away.Though it doesn't. Not really.Bellec introduces her to alcohol on her fourteenth birthday. They both get more than tipsy, and for the first time in years Arno ask about what happened to his soulmate. It is something that she later regrets asking but she remembers the answer far too much to forget.
Dead.
There is a chain around his neck and hanging from the end of it is a bullet that has already struck something. The old metal is bent, used, with an off coloring on some areas. Blood. Bellec says that this is what happens to Assassins who get emotional.They don't say anything after that; Arno cries later that night.
Then she does it for Bellec and the bullet around his neck.
When Arno is only sixteen she meets the MI6 Agents that she will be working with. Their from France, where she should be working if her national origins say anything, and they treate her like a child.It leaves her angry at everything around her.Even if she knows that it is true; that she is younger and has less experience in the field, less experience with life. They simply want to shield her from the world that she has thrown herself into. She understands that, but that doesn't mean that she has to like it. When she turns seventeen she is aloud to meet other agents from different parts of the world. A supposed 'honor' that most Assassins in training didn't get to do.Aveline de Grandpre is a nice woman from the Americas. Aguilar de Nerha and Maria de la Labed are an ideal duo from Spain. Shao Jun is another legend that she gets to meet, and her mentor Ezio Auditore is lethal for an old man.It gives her something to aspire too, because even she knows that most Agents, most Assassins, don't live past their thirties. She knows that her team wants to give her hope where she didn't know she needed. They need it too. When she turns eighteen their dead.It was her first mission: the Assassination of two opperatives that were turning tides in Berlin. It was a success on top of that, but in her moment of joy everything came crashing down.The holdout was silent.Far too silent for how it normally was and they were dead. Another team is sent in to grab her and the bodies. Everything after that is a blurr of crimson and small talk that doesn't make it into her ears. The world itself dulls, and it isn't until she is debriefed that she does anything.She pukes-most of it is stomach acid.She drinks-it pushes away the bile.She bends down over the table-the white powder of cocaine goes up her nose.They find her days later in her bathtub.Arno can't say a thing.
Then a list begins to form, a list of deaths that are not truly on her hands, but she feels like they are.
Arno invest herself in the life that she has made at the ripe age of twenty-two: kill, drink, wash away the blood, take a row of drugs, kill, drink, wash away the blood, take a row of drugs, kill, drink, wash away the blood, take a row of drugs.Then she looks down at one of the names upon her skin and not a day later she finds her.A beautiful french woman with hair of fire and eyes of the sea. They meet in a club of neon lights and music that is a hybrid of classics and trap. For a short time, Arno believes that this must be a dream, and it seems like one until she kisses her. Kisses her lips, her neck, her collarbone, the name on her thigh. It is a new high. It leaves her making promises to stop drinking, stop snorting, stop killing.
"You looked like you needed saving."
"You have saved me."
Arno stays in that club of neon lights and silk sheets until another agent finds her. They need her again, another agent dead, killed in the same manner that her team had been. It is a chance for revenge, but with that chance she knows that she will have to leave.
When she comes back, Élise de la Serre is dead.
The next time she goes out into the field her crusade has become even more personal.
It takes her years before she finally tracks down the one who took everything from her. The one who killed her team, killed her soulmate. The man is older than her by at least a decade, a native from Ireland who moved to America to work for Haytham Kenway.Shay Patrick Cormac; the second name upon her skin, her soulmate, it almost makes her want to laugh. The irony of it all, that her soulmate would damage her, take her other soulmate from her, a soulmate that had an eighty percent chance that she was on his skin too.Her hidden blade is pressed against his throat, digging into his vocal cords, while his rifle is pressed up underneath the middle of her breast. A perfect shot if he wants her to die a slow death in a hospital."Do it." He says, and in that moment of anger and revenge, Arno leans down and kisses rough lips with the thought of biting down.
He leaves her with bruised lips and a bullet in her thigh, but that's fine.
She'll hunt him.