Chapter Text
Maria extends her hand out, brushing her fingers against the soft skin of the boy’s cheek. The skin is reddened, coarse after a harsh yet much needed wash— she furrows her brows, tracing the scar over the child’s lip with her eyes. It’s healed, but if it were up to Maria, she would’ve called for a physician just to make sure no ill humours had settled beneath the skin.
She hopes that the wound had not closed too quickly over some hidden corruption. The boy is young, overeager in his excitement — he doesn’t even know the proper way to change the fresh linen, fumbling with the sheets with clumsy fingers. He’s trying so hard at it that Maria can only scoff under her breath. The corner slips from his grasp twice, his face flushing darker each time, as though he’s been set some great trial from Boccaccio instead of the simple task of making a bed.
Maria doesn’t comment on the boy’s incompetence or his crushing defeat. Despite the humiliation, he comes back, adjusts Maria’s sheets, and leans his head on the edge of her pillow, solemn dark eyes fluttering shut when she promises to keep watch, if only just for a while.
The boy is young. His cheeks are still pudgy, full with that youthful fat — skin soft and malleable, a child’s face still clinging to the bones beneath despite the jagged, raw cut at his lip.
She gingerly trails her thumb over the boy’s lip. God, but the scar is fresh. Who even dared to leave such a mark on a child?
Maria cannot imagine a man that vile without her stomach turning cold. No child ought to carry another man’s cruelty so plainly upon his face. The flesh has knitted, yes, but badly — uneven at the edge, tugging faintly when his mouth parts in sleep, a pale seam where there should have been nothing but softness. She thinks of careless hands, or of a blade, and purses her lips, narrowing her eyes in displeasure.
The boy does not stir beneath her touch, trusting in that thoughtless, foolish way children do when they have been given even the smallest scrap of kindness. It makes something in her chest ache, sharp and unwelcome. She traces the boy’s nose, the high bridge letting her fingers wander, lost in thought.
Giovanni had the same proud nose, making him look stern and forbidding. No one but Maria had noticed the warmth tucked at the corner of his mouth, or the gentleness of his hands, always hovering above Maria’s hesitant fingers. Her husband was a man who would give his life for his family, bleeding out into a cold December evening if it meant their children might survive — though they had not. Not all of them. And despite it all, he would have fought the Devil himself to keep hardship away from them.
For that, Maria is thankful. For that, Maria reaches out with her hands, blindly, her palms seeking her beloved. She knows she will not find him, but she keeps waiting for him nonetheless.
And for that, Maria is hopeful.
It’s Maria’s fault that she has gotten this attached to him; after all, beasts meant for the slaughter have no reason to be loved. This boy is just one of many children to go through Maria’s unloving, cruel hands. Claudia might think herself the Lady of Roma, but Maria knows her daughter’s heart has always battled with her wits. Letting a child who keeps hiding behind walls and flinching from raised voices into their house is plain foolishness — Maria doesn’t have time to heal children of their ails.
And yet there is a boy with her husband’s nose and her eldest’s smirk. He helps Maria wash up and brings her breakfast, gently lifting warmed wine to her lips. He is young, so much younger than Petruccio would have been now, though Maria cannot bear to measure children by the dead. He brings her feathers, tucking them into her abandoned journal, waiting for her to pluck them out and bring them back to the box like a scared, hurt, anxious bird.
Ezio’s child approaches Maria like a half-starved animal. She learns not to move closer to the boy too suddenly, lest he shudder, gasp, and bolt away. She spends her time teaching him her patterns: opening her window after breakfast, closing it after lunch. She sits by the door every day from dinner until nightfall, waiting for him to come, eagerly awaiting his fingers combing through her well-kept hair.
She learns to hate the child’s careful steps — for all that Maria had been married to an assassin, she had never become one. Her grandchild should’ve been born into laughter and noise, arguing at supper with their family while their father pretended not to smile over his wine. They should have been guided through their first steps by Petruccio’s gentle hands, their first words coaxed out by Federico’s loud encouragement, their first mischief excused by Claudia’s indulgent tongue, and their first victories met with Ezio’s proud, helpless smile. Regardless of where the child had come from, Maria would’ve been there for every breath and step — cradling the babe in the Auditore house; not staring at a scar carved into the child’s skin, not watching the haunted flinch the child keeps so insistently tucked beneath his skin.
This child is scared of touching her. He reaches out for comfort and pulls back when she glances at him, Ezio’s eyes going haunted, Giovanni’s lips pursed, Federico’s nose scrunched up, Petruccio’s grimace on his lips, and Claudia’s pride tightening his jaw. There’s Maria’s misery written all over the boy’s face, and she hates herself for it. Still, she reaches out for the babe who is not ready to be fed, yet aches for it so plainly that Maria can hardly bear to look.
When she gets distracted, abandoning her vigil over the sleeping child, she comes to a pressed apple to her palm — Maria makes sure to touch her lips to the fruit, thanking the child for his offering. She moves it into her lap, both hands cradling it, smiling at Claudia’s pout and Federico’s furrowed brows.
“Please eat today, signora,” Ezio’s child tells her, lips pursed and fingers fidgeting with the threadbare robe thrown over his shoulders. “Madonna wouldn’t be too happy if you skipped a meal.”
What a silly boy. As though Claudia’s displeasure is the thing that frightens Maria most in this world — as though Maria has not lived through God’s own cruelty and found herself still breathing after it.
Still, she lifts the apple obediently, teeth sinking into the skin while her boy watches with open, terrible hope. The taste is sharp and sweet on her tongue. Maria notes how his face softens at the sight, and how pleased he looks to have won this small victory.
Foolish boy, she thinks again, chewing slowly. Foolish, yet beloved child.
When he leaves, Maria busies herself with picking the best feather from her collection. The child deserves only the best — and the next time he visits, Maria will be prepared.
It is his right as an Auditore.