When she jolts awake, she's not entirely certain why. Maybe it's a nightmare. A noise. Something in between.
Then again, she's not entirely certain of anything but the fact that her back and butt ache because they're on a cold stone floor, and when she sits up, she's greeted by the familiar sight of her suit when she looks down at herself.
Okay. Cool. Not bound or missing a limb. That's always a good start.
Except she doesn't remember suiting, or falling asleep, or getting knocked out. She touches her head--cowl's down--and doesn't feel any injury, but her head aches like she's not been drinking enough water. Slowly, the neurons fire, and she abruptly and frantically looks around her.
"Wait. Seriously?"
The castle. Paradisa. Wasn't she just here? Or... no. Not just here. Gotham? Something's not quite right, but that doesn't really tell her much because when was it ever, here? Oh, but she remembers. People passing through this lobby, going to the stairs, going to the different rooms. The kitchen, the pool. The city beyond.
Was she just here, or...? It feels longer. She shakes her head, trying to wake up.
Pushing herself onto her feet, she can't help but find it creepily cold and far more echo-y than she remembered.
"Hello? Anyone home?"
She pauses to pat herself down, looking for her journal. where is it? Where's her room, anyway?
If he's being honest with himself, waking up in a strange bed is not all that unusual. Rolling over and finding his bedmate missing isn't too far from reality either. He could even afford himself a few minutes of languishing, hauling a pillow over his head and blocking out the sun and trying to coax out another few minutes of sleep. He registers a dull headache -- too much wine the night before, which had followed an all-nighter that had him creeping across rooftops and climbing stone facades under the cover of darkness. There's a tightness in his ribs from where he'd caught a ledge hard.
Truthfully, what tips him off is the mattress. It feels divine. Unreal, actually; like the kind of featherbed a king or Borgia princess might sleep on. He relishes it for a moment and then throws the pillow off of him and sits up.
Just where did he fall asleep?
Just where did he wake up?
Ezio's eyes fall upon a black contraption on a countertop across the room. Everything is wrong. The cabinets are made a certain way, alien and yet undeniably familiar. The contraption is smooth and jet black with silver parts that might have been forged by a jeweler, and it is surely enough silver to feed a duchy for a year. There is a light, tiny, round, red. His mind registers very dully that it is a coffee-maker, and it was a gift from...
Who?
His feet hit the floor. He is not wearing pants, and somehow he thinks to dress before investigating further. He finds a wardrobe -- his wardrobe -- and he drags out good breeches and a fresh shirt, which he yanks over his head with little fanfare. He is still lacing up his trousers as he steps out into the hall. Bare-foot.
His heart skips a beat when he sees the doorplate of his neighbour's door. He turns and looks back at his own.
Ezio Auditore.
"Shit," he says. He isn't so sure this is a bad thing. On impulse alone, he pats himself down as if there might be a journal shoved in his pants, but he doesn't find it.
"Hello?" he calls down the hall. He gives the elevator at its end a dubious look, and then starts taking the stairs, round and round. "Hello? C'è nessuno?"
A beat later, and he thinks he might have heard someone.
More honesty: when he sees a blonde woman in a slinky, form-fitted outfit round the corner and appear at the top of a set of stairs, his first thought is that she's sexy. Look at her. Mm! Guarda com'era bella! That sight could stopper any productive thing his brain might try to do, any accounting of the situation.
And she's saying his name.
He knows exactly who she is.
He greets her openly, stepping into her lunge to he takes her by the waist, and he spins her in the air around him. It's about as graceful as one could expect, disoriented as he is, but that doesn't matter to him. He twirls her right into his arms.
It only occurs to her mid-launch that it's possible he might not have any freaking idea who she is. How many times had that happened? Not with them, not forever, but she remembers... it did happen. But then there's no reason to worry because there's a familiarity there when he grabs her, and hearing him say her name confirms it.
"Ezio," she repeats, one last time. Back on her feet, she grabs his shoulders as she leans back to look at him. Somehow, it's like she saw him yesterday and hasn't seen him in ages all at once. It's so confusing it makes her head throb, and she squeezes her eyes shot for a moment to will the ache away. Then, she's back to looking at him.
"Please tell me you're as confused as I am. Also, hi."
He laughs. It slips out of him like nothing, and he isn't even sure why -- it hasn't been that long, has it? Or maybe it has -- he feels like he's been somewhere else for an eternity, but that maybe one or the other was a dream. Now he's not sure which.
But she's grounding, and the mystery isn't nearly as compelling as her face, and when she gets a good look at him, he gets a good look at her, too. He brings a palm up to cup her cheek and stroke her face with his thumb and he beams at her.
"Very confused," he admits. "But glad not to be alone in that. Are you alright, bella?"
Waking up here would probably be the worst nightmare. Step takes a deep breath, burying that thought away, and nods. She missed that smile. She thinks, at least. Didn't she just see it?
"Yeah, think so. I woke up downstairs. In this," she says with a gesture at her suit, "Which is weird. Or at least I think it is? Uh, we didn't drink anything weird, did we?"
But when? She can't remember the last interaction she had with Ezio clearly.
Ezio thumb at her cheek a second longer, and then lets his hands linger on her hips again. Did you miss this, all the random physical affection, having a conversation with a person who cannot keep his friendly hands off of you? Ezio nods through her thoughts, quite sure that if he had drank something weird, it's so thoroughly worked into his system that he can't do anything about it.
"I did not see a single soul on my trip through," he says, finishing on a contemplative hum. "Even the air seems dead."
It's familiar. He's familiar, and she keeps her hands on his shoulders, thinking.
"... I have no idea where my room is." If she slurred her words, maybe it'd the admission of a drunk, but it's not. She feels sober and disorientated. Not drunk or drugged. And if it was the castle--well. They've been through enough here to figure it out pretty quickly.
"Which sounds like a good enough reason to knock on some doors."
In the horror movies, this is where they'd split up.
“If it’s gone, you can always stay in mine,” he suggests, and it might be serious, but it’s got just enough slyness to buy him a just kidding later on.
But he doesn’t disagree with her plan, and he tromps after her, still barefoot. The floors are cold, and they have that feeling on them like they might have not been swept in quite some time.
She'd roll her eyes if that might not be a valid choice, soon. Something about all this is making the hair on the back of her neck stand up, and like hell if she's going to volunteer to hang out alone.
"Helpful," she says cheerfully, not feeling very cheerful as all as she leads them down the nearest floor. No name on the first door. The second, a plate, but the engraved name is dusty and faded. Which is weird and vaguely making Steph think her horror film thoughts are too on the nose.
"Hello?" She calls out, knocking on a door that has a name, but not one she recognizes. "Anybody home? Hello?"
Worriedly, she looks at Ezio.
"I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but... I don't know. Should we try and break down a door? Climb in a window?"
Please don't be dead bodies is exactly the look in her eyes.
His mind floats to all their time in Paradisa and it comes back with the conclusion that Paradisa has done far stranger and far crueller things than leave dead bodies. Leaving its residents open to death seemed more likely to him than simply striking them dead. Toying with them, like a cat batting around mousetraps instead of the mice.
Ezio casts the door with a dubious look.
“I could climb around from the other side, but it may be swifter to kick it in. Just what do you think we will find?”
"I'm thinking corpses or nothing at all. At this point, I don't know which is gonna be worse."
If something strange was going on, other people would have picked up on it, too. They'd be out and about asking, checking on friends... right? Steph rubs her arm, like the suit isn't keeping her warm enough.
"Ezio, I'm sorta thinking we haven't been here for a while. On account of, you know. Memory loss? I can't remember where my room is, and I'm also having a hard time remembering yesterday."
When she thinks, she thinks she had class. But that's not right. Wasn't she here? But...
"Not to mention that this place looks rough. Like dusty, haunted castle rough."
Considering the plan is to learn how to survive, they take what they can carry back to the castle. Over the next days, between cram sessions about farming and trips back to the city to look for anything useful, Steph relaxes. Their food situation is decent enough, they have shelter, and nothing's really happened. Stephanie rediscovers her room in the castle, in one of the towers, and even finds her journal--but the pages are faded and worn, and separate from the binding when she opens the cover. Oh, well. At least she has her clothes.
It's Ezio's room they stay in. It feels more comfortable to her. Stephanie's sitting on the floor one evening, digging through a bag she'd found in the city, apparently forgotten by the door of a home. She's found some little tools in there that might be useful with no rhyme or reason as to why they were in this bag, especially when she reaches in and pulls out a little wooden box.
"Well, this is kind of sad," she says, tipping over the box into her palm. "Look. They kind of look like wedding bands."
Two simple, golden rings.
"I'm going to tell myself these were purposely left behind."
While they spend much of their days together, Ezio tends to do the recon on the castle on his own; sorting through people's rooms and belongings might have been something to do in a pair, but Ezio is far less bothered by the bones of the people left behind watching him as he works. It's quiet work he does as respectfully as he can, glad that the names on the doors are so long-gone that he cannot tell one from another, but he's happy to take on that kind of work if it spares her a little heartache.
He's recently returned from one of those little trips when she starts going through things, and he looks up from where he's unbuckling his boots for the night to see what she's got. Rings. Small enough to not be burdensome to take, more than worth their weight in sentimental value –– but there's no way of knowing.
"Perhaps they forged prettier ones with stones," Ezio suggests. "No need for such simple alternatives."
He watches the back of her pretty blonde head, nudging off the heel of his boot and shoving it aside. It’s nice to see her caught up in something like that, simple but romantic. He’s taking notes.
“I did not imagine you were one of those girls dreaming of her wedding ring,” he remarks, playful as he shucks off his vest.
She's already comfortable, in a loose t-shirt and shorts, and shrugs.
"I'm not. My tastes just lean towards... inexpensive. Not so flashy. It was probably the sentiment behind these rings that made them special, not the cost or appearance. That's how it should be."
“Taste is one thing,” he replies, coming up behind her and stooping to press a kiss to the crown of her head. “But a man who labours to afford some precious gemstone does not have less sentiment for his beloved.”
He lingers just to kiss her again, and then he settles on the floor with her. He sprawls out on his side, propping his head up on one hand. But he's not quite relaxed; her assessment catches him off-guard, and he responds with a vague surprise.
"Few things are truly unnecessary in the world, dolcezza, and I do not think sentiment is one of them," he says. He looks at the rings for a moment; they are simple, but then again, so are most rings that do not belong to kings or empresses. "If you do not care for a ring, so be it, but it is certainly not unnecessary."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
good morning, sunshine.
Then again, she's not entirely certain of anything but the fact that her back and butt ache because they're on a cold stone floor, and when she sits up, she's greeted by the familiar sight of her suit when she looks down at herself.
Okay. Cool. Not bound or missing a limb. That's always a good start.
Except she doesn't remember suiting, or falling asleep, or getting knocked out. She touches her head--cowl's down--and doesn't feel any injury, but her head aches like she's not been drinking enough water. Slowly, the neurons fire, and she abruptly and frantically looks around her.
"Wait. Seriously?"
The castle. Paradisa. Wasn't she just here? Or... no. Not just here. Gotham? Something's not quite right, but that doesn't really tell her much because when was it ever, here? Oh, but she remembers. People passing through this lobby, going to the stairs, going to the different rooms. The kitchen, the pool. The city beyond.
Was she just here, or...? It feels longer. She shakes her head, trying to wake up.
Pushing herself onto her feet, she can't help but find it creepily cold and far more echo-y than she remembered.
"Hello? Anyone home?"
She pauses to pat herself down, looking for her journal. where is it? Where's her room, anyway?
my only sunshine!!
Truthfully, what tips him off is the mattress. It feels divine. Unreal, actually; like the kind of featherbed a king or Borgia princess might sleep on. He relishes it for a moment and then throws the pillow off of him and sits up.
Just where did he fall asleep?
Just where did he wake up?
Ezio's eyes fall upon a black contraption on a countertop across the room. Everything is wrong. The cabinets are made a certain way, alien and yet undeniably familiar. The contraption is smooth and jet black with silver parts that might have been forged by a jeweler, and it is surely enough silver to feed a duchy for a year. There is a light, tiny, round, red. His mind registers very dully that it is a coffee-maker, and it was a gift from...
Who?
His feet hit the floor. He is not wearing pants, and somehow he thinks to dress before investigating further. He finds a wardrobe -- his wardrobe -- and he drags out good breeches and a fresh shirt, which he yanks over his head with little fanfare. He is still lacing up his trousers as he steps out into the hall. Bare-foot.
His heart skips a beat when he sees the doorplate of his neighbour's door. He turns and looks back at his own.
Ezio Auditore.
"Shit," he says. He isn't so sure this is a bad thing. On impulse alone, he pats himself down as if there might be a journal shoved in his pants, but he doesn't find it.
"Hello?" he calls down the hall. He gives the elevator at its end a dubious look, and then starts taking the stairs, round and round. "Hello? C'è nessuno?"
A beat later, and he thinks he might have heard someone.
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"Ezio."
Her friend. Some more profound than that, maybe, and her heart pounds uncomfortably hard as she turns to the stairs and starts rushing up them.
"Ezio!"
When she inevitably sees him, the first thing she does is fling herself at him. It's the only sensible thing to do.
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And she's saying his name.
He knows exactly who she is.
He greets her openly, stepping into her lunge to he takes her by the waist, and he spins her in the air around him. It's about as graceful as one could expect, disoriented as he is, but that doesn't matter to him. He twirls her right into his arms.
Oh, God.
"Stephanie," he breathes.
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"Ezio," she repeats, one last time. Back on her feet, she grabs his shoulders as she leans back to look at him. Somehow, it's like she saw him yesterday and hasn't seen him in ages all at once. It's so confusing it makes her head throb, and she squeezes her eyes shot for a moment to will the ache away. Then, she's back to looking at him.
"Please tell me you're as confused as I am. Also, hi."
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But she's grounding, and the mystery isn't nearly as compelling as her face, and when she gets a good look at him, he gets a good look at her, too. He brings a palm up to cup her cheek and stroke her face with his thumb and he beams at her.
"Very confused," he admits. "But glad not to be alone in that. Are you alright, bella?"
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"Yeah, think so. I woke up downstairs. In this," she says with a gesture at her suit, "Which is weird. Or at least I think it is? Uh, we didn't drink anything weird, did we?"
But when? She can't remember the last interaction she had with Ezio clearly.
"And, um."
She glances around them.
"It's really quiet. Like, spooky quiet."
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"I did not see a single soul on my trip through," he says, finishing on a contemplative hum. "Even the air seems dead."
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"... I have no idea where my room is." If she slurred her words, maybe it'd the admission of a drunk, but it's not. She feels sober and disorientated. Not drunk or drugged. And if it was the castle--well. They've been through enough here to figure it out pretty quickly.
"Which sounds like a good enough reason to knock on some doors."
In the horror movies, this is where they'd split up.
"Come on."
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But he doesn’t disagree with her plan, and he tromps after her, still barefoot. The floors are cold, and they have that feeling on them like they might have not been swept in quite some time.
“I must confess, I have no recollection at all.”
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"Helpful," she says cheerfully, not feeling very cheerful as all as she leads them down the nearest floor. No name on the first door. The second, a plate, but the engraved name is dusty and faded. Which is weird and vaguely making Steph think her horror film thoughts are too on the nose.
"Hello?" She calls out, knocking on a door that has a name, but not one she recognizes. "Anybody home? Hello?"
Worriedly, she looks at Ezio.
"I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but... I don't know. Should we try and break down a door? Climb in a window?"
Please don't be dead bodies is exactly the look in her eyes.
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Ezio casts the door with a dubious look.
“I could climb around from the other side, but it may be swifter to kick it in. Just what do you think we will find?”
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If something strange was going on, other people would have picked up on it, too. They'd be out and about asking, checking on friends... right? Steph rubs her arm, like the suit isn't keeping her warm enough.
"Ezio, I'm sorta thinking we haven't been here for a while. On account of, you know. Memory loss? I can't remember where my room is, and I'm also having a hard time remembering yesterday."
When she thinks, she thinks she had class. But that's not right. Wasn't she here? But...
"Not to mention that this place looks rough. Like dusty, haunted castle rough."
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sometime later
It's Ezio's room they stay in. It feels more comfortable to her. Stephanie's sitting on the floor one evening, digging through a bag she'd found in the city, apparently forgotten by the door of a home. She's found some little tools in there that might be useful with no rhyme or reason as to why they were in this bag, especially when she reaches in and pulls out a little wooden box.
"Well, this is kind of sad," she says, tipping over the box into her palm. "Look. They kind of look like wedding bands."
Two simple, golden rings.
"I'm going to tell myself these were purposely left behind."
Re: sometime later
He's recently returned from one of those little trips when she starts going through things, and he looks up from where he's unbuckling his boots for the night to see what she's got. Rings. Small enough to not be burdensome to take, more than worth their weight in sentimental value –– but there's no way of knowing.
"Perhaps they forged prettier ones with stones," Ezio suggests. "No need for such simple alternatives."
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"These are pretty, though. Stuff doesn't need to be all blinged out in diamonds and rubies to be pretty."
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“I did not imagine you were one of those girls dreaming of her wedding ring,” he remarks, playful as he shucks off his vest.
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"I'm not. My tastes just lean towards... inexpensive. Not so flashy. It was probably the sentiment behind these rings that made them special, not the cost or appearance. That's how it should be."
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"True. Good thing you're off the hook though, huh?" For numerous reasons.
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"I am?"
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"I thought that'd be a relief."
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"I do not recall ever expressing dread at the prospect of giving you a ring," he replies.
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