i want you here (open)

[jemerite]

Characters: jemerite and You (open)
Date: July 17th
Summary: He can't do this to her.
Warnings: Zinc's world is vaguely offensive in its necrophilia? Her narrative can be kind of gory. She thinks about killing things, a lot.

She wakes up cold.

She's often cold, unless sitting in open sunlight, or curled up next to the heating unit that does a poor job of keeping Barbet's large studio warm in the wintertime. She hated the cold, really, it was a constant reminder of the stillness in her chest, but what she hated the most was waking up cold, like she'd been dead the whole night through. Barbet shouldn't have left her, she hates when he does and she usually wakes up as soon as he stirs because it's cold and it's lonely--(perhaps the loneliness is the worst. She... she hates that feeling, she wants to rip it out of her mind and ruin it forever.)

There is a moue of discontent on her lips already as she sits up, but it does not take her long to see things are very changed. And she knows exactly what's happened.

He's abandoned her. He'd drugged her and left her out here in the woods to die. The certainty of it rocks her, and causes a deep twisting sensation in her stomach. Hate. Hurt. Misery.

"Barbet?" She looks around herself, but all she sees is the cat approaching with the scroll in its mouth. Zinc hisses at it furiously, settled forward on her hands and knees like an angry little animal. The cat seems nonplussed, but it sits down, tail swishing. Zinc ignores it as she gets to her feet unsteadily, looking around again, sees only trees and she can't smell him anywhere. How is she meant to track him down and kill him if he's erased his scent?

"You can't!" She shouts, hands curling into fists, her well-kept nails biting into her palms with the fury of it. He would scold her for that. "You did this!"

She sees the path out of the clearing and begins to follow it, but what she sees only deepens her despair and that cat is following her. "I will eat you, if you do not get away from me," she snarls gutturally at the fluffy thing. Its eyes narrow at her, smug and nonreactive. She hisses, but carries on walking.

All she finds is forest and field. And, eventually, she drops down into the grass and simply begins to scream. Wordless, furious, keening. He can't do this to her. She can't even weep in this decaying body, and it's his fault that she has the desire to at all.


[ooc; I always write log openers in prose, but feel free to switch to action.]

Comments

[jemerite]

Zinc's curiosity piques further, relaxing unfurling from her huddled and aggressive position.

"All of us?" This woman was no Reanimate, if there were others, if this was something familiar to them, then perhaps she'd been wrong. Perhaps Barbet hadn't abandoned her, god she hopes that she was wrong.

"I thought... he'd left me here. To die." She wouldn't starve, she would weaken and deteriorate until her body could no longer hold itself together.

[nelsangue.livejournal.com]

"I do not know how many people there are in the gardens but I would hazard that it is no small number. Nowhere near as many occupants as a town or a city but there are many." She gives a hint of a smile then, annoyance flickering at the edges because so much of her life has been out of her hands already that being here does not please her, even if the respite is something she knows better than to take for granted when she has so little of it normally. "I am Ezio Auditore da Firenze, I can help you if I can."

The next words she hears make her frown; she does not like the sound of this, it sounds like men she has hunted through cities who take from the people, who abuse those that are weaker than them and whatever smile was on her face fell away at that.

"Who left you? Who would do something like that?"

[jemerite]

Zinc shakes her head slowly. "He wouldn't..." She says this distractedly, fully processing the idea that there are others who have been taken like her. This one says she will help her, and Zinc didn't even have to ask. That is a relief to her pride, something which has been sorely abused since she took that bullet. She'd died smirking at Isaac Crew, she'd woken up again trembling and screaming. And it was Barbet's fault.

"Barbet wouldn't leave me." She brushes a strand of her hair delicately behind her ear before she looks back up at Ezio with her brown eyes. She offers out her hand, hoping for help back to her feet. She can stand on her own, but it would be an awkward and graceless process. "Have you... really come from Firenze?"

She swings much too easily between her emotions, but for now she is calming down, she takes the time to pronounce her words carefully. It's a bit slow, methodical, but she would prefer to be clear.

[nelsangue.livejournal.com]

"It may be that he had no choice in matters if it is merely here then," she might still have doubts having seen the worst of human nature throughout her life but this queen does not seem to give much say in wrenching them away from their lives.

"Not exactly; I was in Roma before but Firenze is the place I lived when I was young. It is still home." Even if returning is impossible now - she has not been there since she had to regain the Apple and stop Savanarola, fifteen years ago now if memory serves her correctly. "You know of it though?" Ezio extends her left hand; even if it is the one with the hidden blade attached to it, her right possibly looks more imposing thanks to the metal cestus, thick brown leather lined with metal plates.

"And what of you, what is your name?"

[jemerite]

Zinc has very cold hands, and helping her to her feet is like lifting a feather. She's sure to reclaim her hand quickly once she is is balanced, brushing at her again with light fingertips.

"I do," she answers. Her family had traveled quite a lot when she was young. She'd never enjoyed it, and as soon as she'd been old enough to clearly decline she had stopped going along on family trips. She'd preferred it, the time alone. Firenze had never been one of the destinations she visited, but she still knew where it was. Even if Ezio says she has been in Rome, the question itself remains how she had come from Italy and Zinc had been taken from the States. "It's far, from where I was."

It's a distracting thought, but she's also been asked her name, and so she gives it.

"I'm called Zinc." Not the name she'd been born to, but the one she preferred to be called.

[nelsangue.livejournal.com]

"From what I have seen, it would be a different time. Things are a lot more modern," she thinks that's the right word for it so she'll stay with it, "here and for others. Where are you from though?" Maybe it can be pieced together, this puzzle of being brought to whatever the Gardens are - because they are more than just gardens clearly, far too sprawling and large and full of oddities to be something so seemingly simple.

"Zinc?" She repeats it, the name odd to her. "I have not heard a name like that before." Hell, the element won't even be named until after her death.

[jemerite]

"Delaware," she answers vaguely. She was never in the habit of telling anyone where she was from, and lying blatantly if pressed too closely for it. At first it had been so that her family would be unable to find her, then because it was no one's business where they could find a counterfeiter. These days it was more about Barbet than herself. They lived right at the border, in the sprawl off of Ocean City, everything touching the water.

"Barbet calls me Zinc," she explains. She had picked the moniker when she was eighteen, it was a tradition among the gangs, it separated them from the civilians, and their families. She was no longer involved with the gangs, however, she easily could have taken up her old name, but she was often of the opinion that Carla should stay dead. Otherwise Isaac Crew might take it into his head to finish his vendetta properly. "I used to... work, in zinc."

[nelsangue.livejournal.com]

"Delaware? I am not familiar with that place; what of the country?" She knows Europe, parts of the Middle East - there is a man she has met who was to set sail for the new world, for undiscovered lands but she has not heard of him yet or what it is he has found. No, she knows more of Italy and the trips she has made to Barcelona and Vianna in Spain - her recruits are more travelled than she - England, France, Turkey, Austria and other places. Places she cannot go but still can aid.

"This Barbet - famiglia o un amico?" She asks although family and friends are a very blurred line with her. The Assassin's are family of a sense and friends alike with her own blood family soon to be just her and her sister - their mother is, after all, very old for a woman when Ezio has seen so many dying young from ill health. "But what is zinc? I have not heard of this thing before."

[[ooc: famiglia o un amico? - family or friend.]]

[jemerite]

She eyes Ezio's clothing for a moment, thinking about what she said, about different times. She still thought it was strange, and really a very stupid concept, but if Ezio does not recognize her as an American, it may be the reason.

"America, across the Atlantic." She adds the latter part, even if it might turn out to be unnecessary.

Her second question is much more difficult to answer. She has never been one to make 'friends.' She had always been far too selfish, she saw only what could be used, what could benefit and amuse her. She would not say she had changed in that outlook, not truly, just become gentler in her greed. She, likewise, had cared very little for family. Barbet was not either of these things. Zinc knows very little Italian, but the word is the same be it French, Spanish, or Italian:

"Amant, once." Not any longer. He wouldn't touch her that way now that she was dead. There was a part of her that appreciated it, she wouldn't have enjoyed such an advance in any way, but the rest of her remembered his affection and longed to have it back. "He's an artist. He works in... many things. I worked in metal. Zinc, soft and easy to... etch into."

[nelsangue.livejournal.com]

"Where?" She hasn't heard of either of those places at all; undiscovered, Christoffa Corombo the only true explorer she has met, setting sail for India but she has not heard what he has discovered. Meeting the explorer was more an accident and then there were all her other worries, her cause, her Order, all these things that consume her life and have done for the past thirty-one years.

"Then I hope that it was ended on your terms or that he is an idiot to no longer be with someone so beautiful." Which she means in more than one way; yes, she always notices beautiful women, it is impossible for her not to and the garden is an opportunity away from the restricions of Italian society but this Zinc looks many years younger than Ezio, and so it not unlike when she would attempt to reassure Claudia about stupid idiot boys in more innocent times. "There are those here who would be happy to speak to you knowing that you know an artist," her discussion with Kuja was one she enjoyed and she won't forget it easily. "So zinc is a metal then? If we have it, it is not known to me or to those around me, I feel certain that Leonardo would have mentioned such a thing."

For all she knows, he did and she just slept through it as she so often did when the man went on one of his meandering tangents of rambles.

[jemerite]

Zinc gives her a bemused look. If Ezio doesn't know, she won't be able to explain it easily without a map. She shakes her head, maybe another time. Likewise, it was a bit much to explain that their relationship had been ended on Isaac Crew's terms when he'd beaten her and shot her on the floor of Barbet's studio. That Barbet had jerked her back from death so that she could live in misery as his pet.

"We are not... intimate, but he is my caretaker, now." Zinc has no complaint with being called beautiful, however. She could convince Barbet to say it aloud, from time to time, even though it annoyed him to do so. He had Reanimated her to preserve her, he protected her from the reach of the gangs that would gladly have taken such a pretty thing into their kennels, and she still wanted him to extol her? Yes, she truly did. It was truest from his lips. When anyone else said it to her... it was his work they praised. She was his best piece.

She would still have agreed that he was often an idiot of a man, but she loved him despite his fussiness and his faults. She smiles, a little, but it's weighed down by the inevitable knowledge that Barbet is not here, and she does not know how to return to him.

"Zinc wasn't named until the 16th century," she tilts her head, waiting to see if this is still later than what Ezio will recognize.

[nelsangue.livejournal.com]

It would perhaps be too much. If she is to learn of other lands she would be better served to learn of them in a place where she can sit down and look, to really take note of the actual scale of it.

"It is understandable then that you were upset." She smiles, a little fond and nostalgic around the edges because if Claudia were to be here, she can imagine a similar reaction to being brought here. Claudia has always been...strident in her opinions and in voicing her displeasure with men, with Ezio, with the world around her and not getting her way. She loves her little sister dearly but god, sometimes she really does not have the patience to listen to her rapidfire rants. Although, they have lessened now that she and Ezio have mended their bridges, Claudia's ring finger branded just like hers.

"It will be another century, give or take a few years then. Long after I am gone." She knows that for her society and for the life she leads that she is considered old; forty-eight, very respectable and still she is fighting and scrambling about, taking down those who are at times less than half her age.