Red Ink, White Feather

I couldn’t sleep at all that night. I just kept staring up at the ceiling, trying to think, trying to understand what was going on around me. Running through it all in my head didn’t seem to help clear it up at all. Some foreign family I’d never heard of wanted me to show up for a funeral, and then what? None of it made any sense.

I heard a light tap on the window, but I ignored it until I heard it again. I sat up and glanced over at it and almost had a heart attack at what I saw. Bob was clinging to the windowsill and giving me a look that said it was the most normal thing in the world. He pointed in the general direction of my front door and vanished, letting cloud-covered moonlight flood through the window once again. I moved to climb out of bed, but my eyes moved to look at Lyn’s sleeping face, and I simply froze. I hadn’t thought I was leaving in the middle of the night. I wanted to say goodbye to her, but she was so tired…

I simply gave her a light kiss and walked away. I couldn’t turn back or I knew I would never leave. I grabbed the bag I had packed the day before and opened the front door, surprised to find both Bob and Ezio standing there.

“Are you ready to depart?” Ezio asked. I nodded nervously and stepped outside. We followed Bob out to the street, where his car was waiting. I climbed into the backseat, and Bob began to drive away.

“Why are we leaving right now?” I asked out of curiosity. “I thought I would at least get to say goodbye…”

“We cannot waste any more time,” said Ezio. I noticed that he was holding on to the handle attached to the car door, as if he was nervous. It almost seemed that he hadn’t spent much time in a car before. “We must arrive in Italy as soon as possible.”

I sighed and stared out the window. My eyelids fluttered closed a few times before permanently shutting. I wasn’t quite asleep, but Bob and Ezio seemed to think I was. They spoke in quiet, closely guarded whispers that only barely drifted through my ears.

“This is going to be difficult for him,” said Bob.

“I understand, but you know you are not able to assist him if it breaks the creed.”

“I am well familiar with the creed, Ezio.” Bob sighed. “I just wish I knew more of why this is all happening. Did I let something go wrong?”

“It is not of your doing,” Ezio answered. “The political situation in Italy has only worsened with my great-grandfather’s death.”

“Wait… You’re related to Gerard?” Bob asked, trying to hide his surprise. It took all of my strength to keep a gasp from slipping between my teeth.

“He is my cousin,” said Ezio. He sounded somewhat disappointed. “I had been hoping he would be more…”

“Like you?” Bob offered, lowering his voice even further. I assumed Ezio nodded, because he didn’t answer aloud. “You said something about politics a second ago. What was that about? I haven’t heard anything.”

Ezio let out a low laugh. “This is the difference between us. I am required to understand the reasons behind my kills so that I can always be certain of what I fight for.”

“I guess when you work for a group that has a blood feud with almost every other organization on the planet, that would be helpful.”

Both of them went silent for a time. I wasn’t sure if it was because of what Bob had said or if I had fallen asleep, but I was only focusing on the intense levels of fear in my heart as I thought of what lay ahead for me. My family had obviously kept something from me, something that was about to change the course of my life. Even while I worried about myself, I couldn’t help but think of Lyn as well. I wasn’t sure what I would do if she got hurt because of all of this.

I must have fallen asleep at one point or another because the next thing I heard was Bob’s quiet tones as he tried not to startle me awake. I forced my eyes open and shifted so I was sitting up instead of leaning against the car window. “Are we at the airport?” I asked sleepily.

Strangely enough, Bob laughed, and I was pretty sure I heard Ezio laughing as well. “We have a private plane, Gee. Turns out the Assassins have money, and I can’t picture us getting through airport security with all of this.”

I climbed out of the car and into the harsh night air of winter. I noticed that Ezio was wearing a wide leather belt over the rest of his strange outfit, and it was fitted with an array of small knives and vials. Bob’s jacket looked bulkier. I guessed he had filled it with a number of weapons. We had driven to some smaller airport and were now parked next to an expensive-looking plane. I shivered. Everything felt so unfamiliar. I just wanted to go back home and pretend nothing had ever happened. I waited helplessly off to one side as Bob loaded a few bags into the plane’s cargo compartment. The door folded down, and we climbed up the stairs and settled inside.

I was asleep again before five minutes had passed. I had all sorts of strange, confusing dreams. Most of them were too short to be worth mentioning, but there was one that I remember very clearly.

I was running. My feet were pounding rhythmically against a slanted surface covered with rounded tiles of a sandy red color, and there was a hot summer sun beating down on my back. I felt like I was moving lopsidedly, with different spots of heaviness dotting my body. Something was brushing against my side with every step, and there was a wide, flat object pressed against my stomach that felt like it was weighing me down further. I wanted to stop and look at what it was, but for whatever reason, I pressed on.

There was someone ahead of me that was running as well. I don’t remember what he really looked like, just that he was wearing a lot of black and that I thought it was strange since it was so hot outside. I glanced down at my arm as I ran and noticed that I was wearing white. The edges of my vision were lined with a crimson red. In any case, I was catching up to the man very rapidly. I somehow reached down towards my feet and gripped the handle of something attached to my boot. I drew it from its position and had just enough time to see the blade of the short knife gleam white in the sun before it was plunged into the man’s body and withdrawn to glow an ominous shade of red. He tumbled forward and collapsed, rolling up into a ball that slid down to the edge of the roof. Somehow he managed to grip onto the eave with one hand and looked up at me with a helpless, fearful gaze. I felt frozen, unable to decide whether to reach out a hand to assist him or flatten his fingers beneath my feet.

My eyes opened again before I had to make that decision. Night still lingered just outside the windows, thinly layered with clouds that gleamed silver in the moonlight. I leaned against the window and let the cold of its surface soothe the headache that was quickly settling into my mind. A typical buzz had filled my ears thanks to the subdued roar of the airplane’s engines, and it only made me feel worse. I thought to check if I had any aspirin with me, but then I remembered that it was in my bag. I groaned and shut my eyes. This trip was not starting out as well as I had hoped.

I remembered the small tattoo on my arm and pushed back the sleeve of my shirt to look at it again. It shone a dull gray in the moonlight, appearing black against my pale skin, a smudge of darkness on an otherwise perfect surface. I realized then that I did not want it. I wanted no part of this Auditore family, let alone the whole Assassin business. I tried to think of ways to tell Ezio that I planned on returning home early, or maybe asking Bob if he could help me sneak away, but nothing came to mind.

“Having second thoughts?” Ezio asked, suddenly sitting across from me. I tried not to look too startled as I shifted so that I was sitting up straight and pulled my sleeve back over the mark on my wrist.

“I’m still so confused,” I tried to explain. “What does all of this have to do with me, anyway? I’m not…I’m not a…”

“…an Assassin?” he offered, managing a mischievous smile as well. I nodded numbly. He sighed. “It is not always a life chosen, my friend. Sometimes it is a path that must be taken.”

“I don’t see why,” I said glumly. “I wish I were home instead. I don’t want anything to do with this.”

“I know,” he said. “You will come to see Italy as your true home in time, however. I am certain of it.”

I wanted to believe what he was saying. Knowing that part of my family had come from such a place had always made me feel somewhat connected to the foreign land, but it was just that: foreign. Unrelated to me. I had a lot more to get used to than I had initially thought, and currently, things weren’t looking any better.