newpest | 受信箱

He's vaguely aware spinach is a plant. No clue what ricotta is, but something on that plate looked like mashed osetinsky, so probably cheese. Vegetables and cheese, he can live with that.

Absent-mindedly, he shrugs at Ezio's question. "For a while. Most of my life. Exciting stuff. Where'd you learn to fight, rose tribe?"

“My brother taught me brawling and some swordplay when I was a boy,” he replies. “My uncle and his mercenaries sharpened those skills. I lived in a brothel for many years as bodyguard, and with a thieves’ guild before that. Thirty or so years of trying new things add up to a great deal of skill… you must have started young too.”

"Twelve," he says dryly. "Didn't the file say that?"

He knows it did. He's just being petulant (and wondering how long it's been since he's fought with a sword. Too fucking long).

"Of course it did," Ezio says, and he waves it off. "I am putting our lives in conversation. I think we are not so different in training."

"As a bodyguard, a consultant, a financier or a teacher?" Kovacs counts them off on his fingers. The answer to 'what do you do' had been vague, but being that Kovacs himself has seen his share of professions and odd jobs, he hadn't been terribly bothered. He'd just absorbed the information, like any Envoy would.

And then the guy had to fight like a beast, and Kovacs isn't sure if he's exactly enthralled, but he's certainly intrigued.

Ezio chuckles, and it reverberates through him in a way he regrets when his nose stings.

"I cannot imagine you as a financier," he replies, wryly. "What do you think I do?"

Impress me, his tone says.

His uncle had a big house. Gave it to the poor. Soldier of fortune. Trained from a young age. Angry about civilian death. Fights like a terror.

Kovacs stops where he is, and smacks one foot down on the marble floor. The sound reverberates like flock of birds shattering off a tree. Gotta be real quiet to not get noticed in a house like this. He wonders how much of it's a trap.

"Some kind of dissident," Kovacs says, "family tradition."

"Of some sort," he agrees.

Fitting, he thinks: his profession is only recognized by those with training of their own. It isn't quite Assassin hissed through one's teeth, but it's the closest he's heard in many months.

He watches Kovacs, still sat on the floor, weight leant back on one hand. Relaxed despite the gravity in voice.

"When your associate said you were a follower of someone who led an uprising, I was intrigued."

His face doesn't quite fall, but it does go carefully blank. So he's been talking to Kristin-- ever since they fought, he can only think of her as Kristin. It's annoying, but not a total breach of his personal fucking privacy, so he'll let that slip for now.

"You wouldn't know any Falconer," he says. "Her books are on this thing."

He's not sure why that's important. Maybe because it's just more satisfying than asking if she called him a terrorist. At the moment, he'd rather not know if his hunch is correct.

"I am looking forward to learning more about her," Ezio replies, with a curl of intrigue: a woman. Her uprising cannot be given any particular weight with how little he knows, but it's a thread to tug on later. "My thought, Kovacs, is that very particular kinds of people become followers of individual men or women... and you do not strike me as someone looking for comfort in dogma."

"The me you're talking to didn't join the Uprising."

It's an odd way to phrase it. I'm older now. But he rarely feels like himself, these days. Letting this weirdo know that, though... let him figure it out.

He pauses, scrutinizes the lines of Kovacs' face, the way he tries to mask any reaction. He thinks of Francesco, of Enu, of Tessa. How young they'd seemed, even into their twenties, and how empty Tiber Island's courtyards had felt when they'd set out into the world. The men and women who had come back.

"I spend much of my time with apprentices," he remarks. "Young people who abhor injustice but have no means to do something about it. They are seldom the same people, years later."

An eyebrow quirks. It's more appealing on different sleeves. Ryker's expressions are always so ghoulish.

"You recruit?"

He tries to hide the edge from his tone, and gets most of it, but all? Envoys weren't trained for chitchat.

The floor starts to feel tiresome. Ezio gets up, collecting his shirt.

“Occasionally,” he replies. He pulls his shirt on, leaving it untucked and rumpled. “We would pass into history if we did not. Why become an Envoy then, if not now?”

A casual shrug, one shouldered. "Needed a place to hide. CTAC's not real fond of deserters."

What military is? He can't imagine a kennel that doesn't tag its dogs, keeping them on a short, unforgiving leash.

“But it takes a particular man to seek refuge amongst those who go headlong into war with the powers you are hiding from,” he replies. Being that man feels hard-won. “Why go where you are most likely to be caught?”

Kovacs turns his head like an offended bird. "Really fucking underestimating the Uprising."

You weren't there. No one was, not anymore. Those stacks have been fragged. Those memories have been deleated.

Ezio considers the balance of his own patience. What patience may have done with Larry, what honesty might have done better.

But Larry wasn’t interested in a fight.

A fight, Ezio thinks, takes two. And where he lacked the tenderness Larry needed, he thinks he has the fight Kovacs may demand.

“I could have gone where my family’s enemies would never find me, hidden away in Spain,” he says. “I instead put thirty years into an uprising greater than me, and expect to put in as many more as our enemies will allow. So tell me about yours. I want to know the cause you fought for, even for a time.”

"The first C in CTAC is for colonial," Kovacs says. His voice echoes in this strange hallway. It feels like such a small, weak thing to admit his past goals to a stranger. "Why don't you guess."

It's a tricky thing, the gulf of time between them. Eight hundred and seventy eight years, to be exact. His life was lived closer to Heraclian rule than this man's life, a fact which makes him feel more ancient than this space ship ever could, but he is bolstered by what he has seen of the future, and everything he ever wanted to know of it.

"I do not know this word, but," he says, with a considering gesture, his gaze fixed on Kovacs. "Long before my time, there was the Roman Empire –– an imperial age that ended a thousand years before I was born. The birthplace of Catholicism. They had something called colonia. Military outposts beyond the Italian peninsula's shores, and thousands of little cities and towns awarded colonia despite no Roman soul having ever lived there. Mere legal status so that people governed by their own could be reminded that they were still conquered."

Ezio pauses, and then nods to himself.

"So if I guessed, I would say your Protectorate is the same. Your Falconer, she wanted liberty from it. Your Envoys, they were made legends for being willing to stand for freedom."

And you, he thinks, wanted a cause.

Edited 2021-10-30 20:27 (UTC)

What a strange thing, colonialism without unsettled worlds, without cryo. How would that even work? Yet, the word had to come from somewhere. колонијализам certainly doesn't have the rhythm of the languages he grew up speaking.

"Falconer wanted liberty from everything," he says. "It's a nice dream."

And that's all it fucking is.

Ezio breaks his gaze on Kovacs to look down at bracer. He gets a twitch of a smile while he laces the strap through the buckle, the thin metal sheath clasped to the underside. That delicious little confidence –– he's right, isn't he?

"A dream that persists, if people still talk about Envoys," he replies.

A hard scoff, and Kovacs is too tired to be angry about it. "It's a fairy tale," he says, harsh. "The glorious victory of CTAC over vicious terrorists."

And Ezio, buoyed by the transformations he's seen of shattered brotherhoods, firm: "And you believe that? In your heart, the dream is little more than a fairy story, and if Falconer arrived tomorrow, you would tell her so with this same frustration?"

The question shocks jagged laughter from Kovacs. He shakes his head. "If Quell was here? Right now?"

He turns his head, hand over his eyes. All sounds feel distant. Even Quell's image, haunting him from a distance of inches, feels mournful. The laughter peters off.

He leans against a stone wall, feeling the cold seep into the skin of his back. He hopes his sweat stains the marble.

"That's a good taunt. Try it again when I'm paying less attention."

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hiddenblade - 2021-10-30 23:12 (UTC) - Expand