Work Text
“I have decoded the page, and reconstructed your blade accordingly,” da Vinci says excitedly. “If you press this button on the palm, it will inject a deadly poison that will confuse your enemies.”
Ezio looks at the newly renovated blade. It was already a marvel of engineering, but it feels even lighter now, with a thin metal tube running down next to the blade leading to a small leather pouch full of poison that connects back to the base of the blade.
“It's beautiful,” Ezio says, and he means it. The mechanism is small and intricate but elegantly simple, and after wrapping the bracer back around his arm, he presses the button and flicks his wrist.
As the blade slides out, some of the poison pushes up from the leather pouch and out of the tip of the blade.
“Clever,” Ezio says, flicking the blade back into its mount.
“Yes! I wish it had been me to think of it… but I am happy to follow these designs.”
“Thank you.” Ezio flicks the blade out a few more times, listening to the quiet
thwp
of the metal clicking.
It doesn't flick back in.
Ezio looks up at da Vinci, who frowns. “That's not- hm,” he says. “Take the bracer off, carefully.”
“Of course,” Ezio says, carefully unbuckling the bracer as da Vinci looks back at the codex page, muttering to himself.
He registers the pain before he even realizes the blade is close to his arm.
“Merda,”
Ezio curses, panic building in his chest. He's the only Auditore left that knows what happened, but the tip of the blade is covered in poison and now, his blood.
da Vinci looks up. “What- oh. Oh-”
Ezio's heart is racing, whether from anxiety or poison he doesn't know. He can feel his face flushing with fever, and he-
He wants to
kill
Leonardo da Vinci.
If he'd just redone the blade correctly- yes, this is his fault. He hadn't upgraded the blade right… probably on purpose. Probably to keep Ezio from doing what
must
be done.
Blood drips down his arm, red streaked with poison. He clenches his hand, feeling the blood pooling between his fingers.
He lunges for da Vinci.
“Che diavolo!”
da Vinci jumps to the side, grabbing Ezio's arm and trying to rip the pouch of poison off the bracer. Ezio tries to get his other blade into da Vinci's stomach but only manages to hit his clothes, and da Vinci knees Ezio in the gut, sending him back half a foot and giving da Vinci time to grab a paperweight from the desk beside him.
Ezio lunges again, and da Vinci sidesteps, giving him enough of an opening to bring the paperweight down hard on the back of Ezio's neck.
In the split second before he loses consciousness, Ezio feels relief.
He's going to see his brothers and father.
He wakes up tied to a chair.
His head is pounding, his stomach churns with nausea, and he feels heavy with exhaustion. There's a throbbing pain in his arm. He's about to doze back off when da Vinci appears in his vision.
“Ezio!” he exclaims, an air of nervousness about him. “Mi dispiace for the bonds, I…” he pauses, searching for the words.
Ezio had been too dizzy to really see or process the bonds, but as da Vinci speaks his vision clears somewhat and he looks down at the ropes.
His right sleeve is pulled up to his bicep, and clean bandages are wound around his arm. He doesn't have either of his bracers and his sword is gone. It doesn't take long to see them piled on one of the workbenches, well out of his reach even if he weren't bound.
“What do you remember?” da Vinci finally asks.
“What do I-”
Why is he asking what he remembers? What had happened?
“Just you handing me the bracer, then pain, then…” he trails off, looking pointedly at the bonds and shifting his wrists.
da Vinci laughs nervously. “Right… ah. Well, you, ah… I remade the bracer, with the poison system… and in testing it, well, you accidentally injected the poison into yourself.”
That would explain the throbbing pain and bandages, and the tightness in his chest that presses against his lungs with every heartbeat.
“Why was I unconscious… and for how long?” Ezio asks.
“Well, that poison, it- it makes people go a little crazy. And so you started trying to attack me, and, well… I apologize for the pain I am sure you are experiencing right now.”
“Infatti…”
Ezio rolls his neck, but it sends a burst of pain down his neck and back from where it seems like da Vinci knocked him out. “Could you untie me?
Per favore?”
“Ah- you will not attack me?”
Ezio shifts in the bonds, trying to push down the pounding anxiety of being restrained. His body is wound up like a spring, taut with the now-familiar desperation to do
something,
to run, to fight, to make some, any, progress in unraveling the conspiracy that had resulted in-
He pushes the thought down.
“Of course not,” he says.
da Vinci unties him, and Ezio rolls his shoulders and wrists, but again there's a pulse of pain down his back and in his injured arm. He groans, deflating into the chair, bouncing his leg anxiously.
There's a long pause.
“You should rest,
mio amico,”
da Vinci finally says. “When was the last time you had a good meal? Slept in a proper bed?”
“... It has been a while.”
“I am sure it has. Spend the night here, let me get you some good food.”
“You do not need-”
“Mio amico,”
da Vinci interrupts, “please. You have been on the road so long- let yourself rest. It would do you no good to be doing this on an empty stomach.”
“I do eat enough…” Ezio mutters, but he can't pretend he hasn't been craving his mother's meals, wishing for food not eaten in a dingy tavern or heated over a fire on some overgrown dirt road in the countryside.
Wishing for meals shared with Petruccio and Federico and their father.
Tears form in Ezio's eyes, and he turns away from da Vinci, but he still notices. Fortunately, he doesn't comment, instead turning to slip out the door to the market, leaving Ezio alone and warm and
safe
for the first time in months.
He's shaking. He tries to tell himself it's the fever from the poison still lingering.
Slumped in the chair, he tries to consciously untense his muscles, unclench his jaw, to just relax. He's so tired.
He's so tired.
He hadn't realized how exhausted he was, how much tension he'd been holding, until he's trying to release it. He feels stiff and achy from being unconscious.
He stands and stretches his arms up, and popping echoes down his spine and through his shoulders, sending another pulse of pain down his neck. He winces but keeps stretching, rolling out his shoulders and leaning down to press his fingertips to the floor.
He straightens up, twists, and, finally done with the long sequence of stretches, collapses back into the chair, now finding it easier to relax without the stiffness of being restrained.
Ezio leans his head against the back of the chair, looking up at the pockmarked stone ceiling.
If he lets his vision unfocus, he can see vague shapes in the texture and streaks in the stone, a hill, a feather, a blade. He traces his eyes lazily along the stone, not used to having such time to kill while not having to watch his back.
He's still staring at the ceiling, eyes tracing the curves of the colors in the stone, when the door opens. Immediately he's on his feet, grabbing his sword off the table, and stancing himself up to fight.
“It's just me!” a familiar voice says, and da Vinci rounds the corner.
“Mi dispiace,”
Ezio says, setting the sword back on the table.
“Do not worry,
mio amico.
I understand.” da Vinci begins making dinner, and Ezio stands.
“Would you like some help?” he asks.
“No, no, it is okay. Rest, let me make you a meal.”
“You are sure?”
“Si, si.”
“If you say so…” Ezio sits back down, letting himself melt into the chair.
After a few minutes of listening to da Vinci move around, sleep begins to paw at the edge of his consciousness, and Ezio lets it drag him under.
He's jolted awake some time later by the sound of ropes being pulled taut, wood grinding, and yelling, but the moment he opens his eyes the sounds are gone, replaced with da Vinci humming to himself.
“Ah,
bene!
I was just about to wake you up,” da Vinci says, setting a plate in front of him.
Whatever dream he'd had makes panic linger in his chest, and it takes him a moment to calm his racing heart and focus on the plate in front of him. It's pasta with salted fish and a thick slice of bread, and Ezio takes a long moment to stare at the food before picking up his fork.
“Are you alright,
mio amico?”
da Vinci asks.
“I am fine-” Ezio clears the ball of emotion from his throat. It’s a fairly simple meal, but it’s one he’s shared with his family dozens of times- the plain pasta didn’t upset Petruccio’s stomach, and Federico and Ezio would fight over the piece of fish he didn’t eat. “It is just… I am thinking of
mia famiglia,”
he finally says. “Your meal looks
delizioso.”
“Grazie, ser Ezio.”
Not trusting himself to speak, Ezio just nods, finally twirling some pasta onto his fork.
Slowly, he takes a bite.
He closes his eyes, holding back tears. The pasta is perfect, if a little oversalted, and the fish is cooked to perfection, melting in his mouth.
He turns his head away from da Vinci, taking a deep, steadying breath before turning back.
“Perfetto,
Leonardo.”
“Grazie.”
They eat in silence, and Ezio has to force himself to slow down, to savor each bite. He's not sure when his next proper meal, one that's not served in a dingy pub, will be, and he wants to enjoy this meal.
They both finish eating, and Ezio stands.
“Grazie
for the kindness, Leonardo,” he says. “I will be on my way.”
“No, no, you should stay for the night. Rest where it is warm.”
Many nights had been warm but not necessarily restful, either due to dreams, drink, company, or some combination of the three. But he feels safe here, moreso than with the presence of someone he doesn't know but had paid to spend a night with. Those nights, pleasant as they were, had come with plenty of anxiety, that the wine he drank would be poisoned or a dagger would be hiding beneath a bodice.
But he knows da Vinci won't hurt him.
An achingly guilty voice drones,
‘And he thought you wouldn't hurt him,’
but he forces the thought down. He'd been poisoned, his own mind turned against him in one of the more horrifying experiences he'd ever had. Not quite as horrifying, of course, as the execution, but-
“You do not have to stay if you do not want to,
amico,”
da Vinci says. “I just figured you might need the rest.”
“No, I- I will stay here.
Grazie mille,
Leonardo.”
After some back and forth, Ezio ends up sleeping in da Vinci's bed and da Vinci falls asleep in a chair in the other room. Ezio feels guilty, but da Vinci had insisted, so he carefully removes his Assassin robes and climbs into the bed.
The blanket is surprisingly soft, and when he lies down he feels the pressure release from his back. He sighs, sinking into the mattress, and as sleep takes hold, he finds for the first time in months, he doesn't fight it, doesn't dread the nightmares, he just lets sleep pull him under.