"La Vittima" and "Le Sauveur (for RTP and TheWaitingDisaster)

Repeat's Post

Rosalba had turned to face the other direction, and then she felt something cold and razor sharp pierce her in the back. The pain in her body met the dismay that shook and disarmed her consciously as her knees caved in and gravity taking a hold of her. She wanted to get back up and turn around- defend herself and disarm the one that was very clearly now her opponent, but the wound made her torso stiff, limbs limp, and mobility impossible as the pain seemingly kept pulling her closer to the grounds rough surface.

It was the sound of laughter that irked her pride and motivated her to (painfully) roll back on her other side face pitifully face her opponent. She watched as her new enemy's silhouette- the one who she had just moments before seen as a valuable ally and friend- stepped back once, seemingly to pause and watch her shudder in pain, then saunter away from her and out the room, leaving her the sole presence left.
-----
An hour or so passed. Maybe it was two hours- as what had previously been twilight turned to the dark night. It felt more like broken minutes for Rosalba, however. She wanted to writhe in the discomfort, but the dull, aching wound throbbed and kept her still- her torso now heavy with the bleeding in her insides, and her limbs very clearly weak and drained. All of her energy had been drained away, and it now sit in the pool of blood beneath her- soaking her clothes and hair, coating her skin.

She could no longer see clearly, the corners of her vision had darkened and any source of miniscule light that the dying out candles were distorted.

A voice came very clearly from somewhere. It almost seemed to be from above, but really it had been to her right. It took effort, but Rosalba turned her head and peeked through her eye lashes. All she could see were hues of dark greys and blues, with a shining light of pale yellow and orange. The voice came again, this time closer to her. Then another voice came, slightly more to the left, but very clearly still above her. The voices were not directed at her, and she could not make them out. A hand lay itself upon her forehead and pushed her hair out of the way, and she felt herself pushing her head into the warm palm, relishing at how warm it was.

"Can you tell me who are?"

The words were now clear, and the hand didn't seem to move. Rosalba's eye flickered open, and she found that she saw still saw nothing but blurry colors. She closed her eyes to focus on her speech.

"R- Ro- URK-KAUGH!" She felt something thick and warm bubble up from the back of her throat, with the feeling of a painful chill washing through her as she bled out from her back, and crimson dribbled from her lips. Blood. Rosalba squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered.

More voices wavered in the air and the hand moved away. Rosalba tried to move away, but then something warm and soft wrapped itself around her. Arms took her and gingerly lifted her up. Then the feeling of the other person lifting her up faded away, and as Rosalba fell out of consciousness, the feeling of warm tightness did not follow her into the void.
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The Waiting Disaster's Post

Felicien frowned down at the young girl.

So young.

Too young for her life-style.

He had been running surveillance when he and his partner Archard had spotted the young girl. They didn't know how she had gotten there, but her clothes made it very obvious that she was an Italian assassin. One of the very people that Felicien and his like had been trained from a young age to kill. They had always been taught the Italian ring was full of deadly, blood-thirsty monsters. Yet here she was, totally defenseless, and with the look of her wound: it had not been a Bras Militaire (Military Arm) blade that had done her this horrible wound. The three triangularly oriented blades would have been unmissable if that had been the case. No, the Bras de Bibliothèque (Library Arm) had taught Felicien well that this was an Italian blade which had been drawn against her.

Under the glow of the early rising sun, her scarlet-red blood seemed to sparkle on the shingles of the roof.

"Leave her." Archard spoke plainly from the opposite side of her.

"We can't Archard. You know." Felicien reprimanded the younger assassin.

"Why not?" He asked curiously.

Felicien shook his head, "If there is descention amidst the Italian ranks, then the Bras de Bibliothèque will wish to know about it, and so will the Master. You know this."

"So what do we do with her?" Archard asked.

"We take her back with us." Felicien said.

He placed a single gloved hand on her forehead.

"Who are you, little girl?" He asked, with no response, "Can you tell me who you are?"

She tried to respond, tried to form words, but in the end her attempt met with failure. She coughed, hacked, tensed up, and slipped in to total unconsciousness as Felicien pulled her in to his arms.

"Now, let's get her to the safe-house." Felicien ordered his companion.

--------

The safe-house was a warm, homely affair. Nestled indiscreetly amongst middle-class housing: it was a nexus point for local assassins of the Bras Militaire to receive orders from. From the outside, it was no different than a normal house, and the first floor or higher gave that appearance as well (save for a well-hidden loft for roof access if necessary). It was the two basements that held the real secret. It was in the lower of the two where the young girl would find herself. Her room would be lit by candles, with a comfortable one-person cot that she was laying on. A tub for bathing rested in the far corner and there was a heavy wooden door with metal strips to prevent it from being kicked in by would-be raiders.

A barred window let in the noon sunlight and a relaxing breeze that gave a very comfortable and "at home" feel to the place. She would awake with the distinct sensation of a drug-induced sleep and she would find that her bandages, while still sore, had obviously been tended to, and bandaged by somebody. Her clothes, freshly cleaned, were folded, and stacked on one of two chairs at the foot of the cot.

And now, for the continuation...

Oh God. It’s finally happened. I’m dead.

Rosalba couldn’t stop thinking it over and over, as she kept her eyes shut. She count recount all of the events from the night previous, but what she remembered the most were the voices and those shadows. She count remember the feeling of being lifted and carried away and into a void of darkness and air, accompanied by the feeling of purely nothing at all.

“Nothing” was the key word. When she had been recruited to become an assassin, she had remembered asking the ultimate question about the afterlife, and being told that when someone dies, it was “nothing” that would happen to them, since “nothing” would change at all.

But if “nothing” had been the case, then why was she still conscious? She didn’t want to look around to see that there actually had been “something.” And she didn’t want there to be any form of punishment for the way she had lived-

It was the sound of a door creaking elsewhere and voices that had caused her to snap her eyes open. Her surroundings- the walls, the tub, the window, and the door- they were all clearly parts of a home and not some sort of underworld or “nothing” that came after death. She sat up in her cot, dressed in an gauzy under tunic, breeches, and bandages, coming to the conclusion that she was very, clearly alive-

And as the pain forked itself into her back, she had no other choice but admit that she was really alive, since the pain was still there and light was flooding into her eyes.

Her vision was foggy, however. And blurry. She still felt like she was in pain and her back hurt tremendously, but she felt groggy and slow. Her tongue felt thick and limbs heavy. Had she been drugged? Surely a medic had given her something that would kill the pain, and it surely hadn’t done that good of a job… She needed to talk to him, let him know what he had done wrong.

Obviously (and unfortunetly), the drugs had been very effective in keeping her unable to realize that she was in enemy territory.

Nothing kept her from slipping away from the cot and getting her feet on the floor. She swept her dark brown bangs away from her eyes and moved forward to the door, gripping the handle and pulling the door open to the hallway.

Outside the door was, in fact, not actually a hallway. It was a large rectangular room. On the wall to her left were bookshelves as tall as the room itself, packed with books, as well as on the far wall, and on the right was pillows and mats for those who preferred to sit while they read. In the center was a collection of well-made chairs and a pair of large circular tables with candles lit in the center of each table. Similar candles were on the walls that illuminated the room, as well as the sunlight coming in from a pair of windows to her right where the pillows and mats were. Thin, though obviously well-maintained, furs were on the floor of tis room to protect bare feet from the bitterly cold stone of the basement. Yet the most important thing of interest was the man who bolted to his feet from one of the chairs around the table closest to the door that she had come through.

Felicien was a tall man when compared to others of his age and gender, at 6'0. He had raven black hair that was currently tied back in a ponty-tail, and if you looked at his face it was obvious that he hadn't shaved that morning. Besides the tell-tale signs that he didn't shave, it was obvious that he hadn't slept much recently from the bags under his dark green eyes. He was in his custom-made leather boots, crimson-colored pants, and the white undershirt that were all recognizable parts of the uniform for the Bras Militarie. His tunic was folded up and hung over the back of his chair.

"Oh." He said simply, speaking in Italian, "I see you've finally woken up. It's good to see your well enough to stand."

Rosalba, being five feet and two inches tall, was the shortest member in her fleet of assassins, and most of the time, even shorter than most civilians. She never felt tall, however since she was always one to stand up straight as a board, and always looking the taller person in the eye, and always making an effort to be seen as an equal. Despite this, (and having her senses hinder since she was drugged and weaked), she suddenly felt strikingly short and miniscule, and equally confused, not knowing this man- or the origins of his accent. No one that she knew was this fair skinned, nor did they have hair this dark- all of her team members that she knew of had olive skin and hair that was more fairly brown.. She knew a few biondis, but no one with features this striking.

Clearly, this man was not one of her own.

"Who..." She began, stepping back a bit and pressing her back at the wall, not taking her eyes off of him. If this person was not an ally, turning her back or looking away from him could prove to be quite fatal. That was a mistake that she was not willing to make again.

"What am I doing here?" She demanded, "Which base is this?"

Felicien watched the still dazed and confused girl as she cut of her back from him: pressingly firmly against the wall. It was obvious that she didn't trust him, so he stayed where he was by the table, and watched with a look close to amusement as the disoriented young girl tried to stabilize herself. It wasn't until he was finally asked a question that he actually spoke again, with a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Arms crossed, he leaned back against the table at which he had just been sitting.

"You are not in any Italian base, little girl." He shook his head, "Yet you are surrounded by kin who will protect you. You're in a French base."

Rosalba's eyes widened, but she remained still- he was being calm and collective, unmoving and non-aggressive, and she would have to do the same.

French base. He said that she was in a French base. Rosalba had been taught about the Bras de Bibliothèque,and how they were most certainly not friendly with The Order...

"What are you French doing in Italy?" She demanded, trying not to shout and keep her composure, "Are you to capture me for some elaborate scheme? I know not of information that is valuable to you." Her voice began to grow louder in volume, and she stepped forward.

"You are a fool, you know. You all are, for hiring Azzo to stab me and leave me like that. You should have let me die instead of just taking me!"

Felicien shook his head, "I no of no man named Azzo, for we would never do such a thing. One thing you must understand of the Bras Militaire is that if we kill you, we will do it ourselves, and with our own blades. We would never hire another to do our work."

With that, he casually raised one hand, which produced a triangle-blade dagger: a signature of the French ring's "Bras Militaire". For a moment, his gaze rested almost admiringly on the blade, rather than on the young girl in front of him. He then looked to her once again.

"Did we bring you here for an elaborate scheme?" He asked rhetorically, securing the blade in it's hiding spot behind him once again, and shaking his head, "No. The Bras de Bibliothèque is simply curious as to why The Order would leave one of their own for dead on somebody's roof in southern Rome. We can tell it was not one of the Bras Militaire who did that to you. In fact, I was the one who carried you back hear and treated your wound."

He smiled, eyes cast to the floor now as he shifted himself in to a more comfortable position leaning against the table, "As for what we French are doing in Italy?" He chuckled, "Mind your own business."

Rosalba stepped to her right, still keeping her eyes on Felicien.

"And do you really think that I would surely just give you any information?" She smirked at him. "Knowing why one of my own turned on me is one thing, yes... But of course, I do not even know why my partner had even done such a thing. In fact, that is probably something that I would have to investigate myself. Aside from that..." She took a few more steps to her right, still looking at him. "I feel that your efforts to save and use a member of the Order are futile. I won't be able to give you anymore information either, since it's only the Master Assassin's who know anything at all- which is what I am not. I am apprentice assassin, sure.... But I know of nothing aside from the name of my enemies and what I am told to do."

She locked eyes with him, furrowing her eyebrows and still smirking.

"I'm really quite interested to see what Frenchmen will do with me next." She piped, almost mocking him. "You can torture me all you want to try and get information out, but I won't have anything to tell you. It's probably just best to execute me so I can't run off and tell the Order where you are located." She chuckled, "I wonder who you had to convince to keep me alive instead of just leaving me for dead... Will they be frustrated with you?"

Stepping forward, Felicien grinned as he took the proverbial high-ground.

"Nobody." He said simply, making a wide gesture to the rest of the room, "As the Mentor of this House: I am in charge of all that it encompasses. Successes and failures: I enjoy the nectar of both."

He didn't turn his back to her, of course, and kept his eyes on her.

"You say you were only an apprentice. So -- did you yet take vows? Or do you silly little Italians not do that?" He then glanced to another window, "Also, to be blunt. We both know I need to gain something of this. Would you be willing to divulge the location of your nearest spies? I tire of them eyeing us from dark windows, and I do disdain of torture. It's so -- uncuth."