A Living Diary

by Vill13rs

Summary:

Vieri inhaled slowly, chest rattling and lungs straining. His eyes slipped shut in reverence and he let out an emphatic sigh.

"I suppose this is my last chance to set things right." His voice became hollow, barely audible but resonating in a way that would stay with Ezio for the rest of his life. His face was etched in pure pensive melancholy, his thoughts thousands of miles away from his dying body.

Notes:

• For TheRebelDread.

Ezio had a personal vendetta and he'd be damned if anyone else took this opportunity from him.

 

The chase had been less than daunting but Ezio was charged with an unadulterated rage that drove him to pursue with an intensity like none other. He brought Vieri to the ground without effort, not even registering that he'd pulled his arm back to deliver the final strike until he felt the sharpened steel of his hidden blade sink through flesh and muscle, the tip expertly, though mindlessly, maneuvered to strike between ribs, to puncture his heart. The perfect picture of irony.

 

Blinding white light overcame them both, seemingly stopping time, the visage of the city around them washing away. Ezio clutched Vieri's dying body in his arms as he sat back on a knee, sparks shooting from his eyes and fire burning in his chest. He felt a warmth quickly spread over his hands. Blood.

 

"Speak!" Ezio barked, resisting the temptation to send his blade through Vieri's skull repeatedly.

 

"I'm sorry, were you hoping for a confession?" Vieri smirked, clinging desperately to his smug front, but Death had him in it's arms. He began coughing blood, bright red staining porcelain skin.

 

"You betrayed him! My brother, he loved you, and you betrayed him! Now he's dead! What do you say?! Explain yourself, Pazzi!"

 

"You've killed me, Auditore. I am dead. There is nothing more to this exchange. Now let me go to him. You would be doing me a great kindness." Sarcasm still tinged his words, though his voice was becoming feeble. Vieri would soon be dead.

 

"I do you no favors! I do this for revenge! Stop talking nonsense and explain yourself!" Ezio's screams bordered hysterics as they ripped from his mouth and echoed throughout the vast emptiness around them. 

 

Vieri inhaled slowly, chest rattling and lungs straining. His eyes slipped shut in reverence and he let out an emphatic sigh.

 

"I suppose this is my last chance to set things right." His voice became hollow, barely audible but resonating in a way that would stay with Ezio for the rest of his life. His face was etched in pure pensive melancholy, his thoughts thousands of miles away from his dying body.

 

"Your brother....he deserved so much better. Should have given his heart to someone better. Yet he gave it to me...."

"And you and your family gave him to Borgia! He loved you but you did not love him! Spare me your lies!"

 

"No, Auditore, that is where you are wrong. I loved Federico. I still love Federico. I believe even before I knew him, I loved him. But I wanted so desperately to impress my father, for him to approve of me....to love me....that I wanted nothing to do with anyone or anything that might damage what little chances I had. Or so I thought...."

 

Ezio's eyes scanned Vieri's face for any sign of falsehood. There was none. Only the deepest of sincerity drowning in remorse.

 

"He would have given me the world if I had only asked for it. But I was blind. Oh so very blind. I pushed him away, time an time again, yet he came back. He always came back. I would tell him to go, scream at him that I didn't want to see him, torment him with recounts of all my conquests hoping it would wound him just enough to turn him away from me. But he knew my words were empty.....he knew how I was so desperately afraid of rejection. And he wanted to take that fear from my heart. Wanted to give me a home in his. To show me that I was truly worth more than I had been led to believe, that there was more to life than my father's judgment. And I, like the idiot I am, pushed him away all the more. I thought he was naive....a fool! But he never let up. He could never let me go."

 

"He would sneak home at all hours of the night, and I could see it in his eyes. He would lie to me, tell me he was only tired and would be fine by morning, but I knew he was in pain. All because of you! You don't know what you did to him, you never had to see him suffer!" Ezio growled through barred teeth.

 

"Wrong again, Auditore. As you said, I was the one responsible for his anguish. I know all too well what I did to him and it killed me to see his heart break but there was more to us than even you could know, assassino. Federico was the closest thing I had to a true friend. For two years he would always come to me at night, every night, and I would spill my soul into him, I would tell him of all my insecurities, my doubts, my fears, and he would try so perilously to soothe them, to take them from me. He would tell me I was worth more to him than gold and that one day he would show me, that I would see. I could be more than my father's opinion of me. But then I would tell him to go. I felt too vulnerable to let him be anything more than a....a living diary. To divulge my secrets into only to close and lock up and put out of my sight when I was finished, when I was too ashamed of what I had said. It's as if I asked him to love me but not to expect me to love him in return. I took all he could give but refused to give him the slightest bit in return. For two years he lived with my constant rejection but it never turned him away from me, not once. I gave him my absolute worst and still he saw passed it. Still he saw more to me. It wasn't until he was taken from this world....taken from me....that I realized how much of an idiot I was."

 

Vieri's eyes flooded with molten tears, streaming down the sides of his face and soaking his own hair. Blood stained fists clutched at Ezio's robes, staining the pristine white fabric and even deeper shade of crimson, pulling their faces closer. He was alive in a way only a dying man could be; his words were no longer wrapped in secrecy, he no longer spoke in riddles. The time for elegant colloquialisms was long gone. His title of Florentine nobility meant nothing to him now. His stare was now sharp and agonizing, body and mind melded together once again, and his eyes cut straight through to Ezio's own heart. Vieri, though inches from death, was very much alive; the last vestige of his soul ignited if only to explode in a final, passionate exposition before silence was his forever.

 

"He meant more to me than I had ever realized and do you know what I did to show him how much I cared?! I broke him! I thought it would protect him, I thought if I could keep him away from me that he'd be safe, I told myself it was for his own good so I didn't have to face that guilt but he was persistent and it only got him killed quicker, I  got him killed quicker! He could have had a gorgeous wife and many beautiful children; he could have had a family of his own, Ezio! But he had given himself to me entirely and I would tell him I did not want him, only because I refused to let go of the fantasy that perhaps my father would love me and it would somehow make me feel whole but it never did! I was so incredibly selfish....I robbed him of his life because all I cared about was my own! And now he's dead! Now do you see my guilt, Auditore?! Now do you see my pain?! I had been given everything I was so desperate for! I had it in your brother! But I took every last ounce of him and threw it away because I refused to let go of my mad obsession with the man who would never love me! I pushed him away for a ghost! How do I live with that, Auditore, how?! I can't!"

 

Ezio was left utterly speechless. This was not the Vieri he knew in life. This was a man consumed by fear and contrition. His contempt had been ill-conceived and was quickly waning, in it's place a sense of deference growing. Vieri had truly been the last piece of his brother he had left and soon he would be gone all the same.

 

"Do not blind yourself with what is behind you. Lest you make the same mistakes I have. You have much to learn, assassino. Do not wait until Death forces you to see the faults in how you have lived. I have given you your explanation. Now let me go. Let me see Federico. Let me give him the love he deserved for all eternity, since I was too foolish to give it to him here."

 

Ezio placed his hand over Vieri's chest, over the wound that had been ripped into place by his own blade. He exhaled solemnly.

 

"Do not keep him waiting any longer."

 

Ezio stood, stepping away from Vieri's body, watching the last of his life fade away. Vieri reached up for something only he could see. A somber smile spread across his pallid face, tears streaming endlessly from the corners of his eyes, leaving tracks in the blood staining his cheeks, as they came to a close one final time.

 

"Federico, angelo mio, you have come for me once again....I'm so sorry. Perdonilo, mi amore. I swear this time, I will never leave."

 

Vieri's hand fell back down to his side. Limp. Bloody. Lifeless. But still clutching on to whatever, or whoever, pulled his soul from his body.

 

Tears stung Ezio's eyes as reality rushed back into sight. San Gimignano still stood, though the sky was grayer than he remembered. Slowly, he turned his back to Vieri, unable to look upon his own work any further. But still he stood, mind racing and heart bleeding. He knew the guards would be on him if he didn't leave soon but one does not simply walk away from an encounter such as this.

 

Vieri wasn't coming back to life. Killing him didn't bring Federico back, either. It changed nothing. He felt no different from the Templars, no different from the Borgia. The only difference between them was the banner circumstance had placed them under. They all claimed to be righteous, but somehow a trail of dead brothers and dead sons didn't feel anything of the sort. Ezio looked back one final time, forcing himself to commit this to memory. He felt sick. He fought for words, something, anything to say that would wash the blood from his hands and the guilt from his heart. But there is no apologizing to dead men. Only paying respect.

 

"Che la morta tia dia la pace che cercavi. Requiescat in pace."