Re: second floor ; smoking
"You may be those things, but you are wise, too," he told her. "There are things we are known for and things we are not, but we are all more than what others know of us, are we not?" What people did not know about him could fill the pages of many books, after all, and he suspected the same was true for her. The world looked at her and saw a pretty face, which she was, but there was more to her than vapid beauty. "Wisdom is never dull, and those who say it is are those who lack it," he said with a smile. The assassin had crafted his facade well, and he knew the dangers of losing oneself in the pretense and forgetting the truth. "It is a balance, I think, which is difficult to maintain." Though some could. He laughed, good humor returned for a moment, when she asked if he would force Italian men to listen to her. "I would," he vowed, before a more sobering topic followed suit. "The answer to that, I think, is a matter of opinion."
They were the words of a stranger, her assurances that he would remember his parents, but he held it close regardless. For tonight, at least, he believed it was true. "Do I?" he asked of inspiring confidences, but it was more of a rhetorical question than one he expected an answer to. "Di niente. Secrets, when entrusted, are meant to be safeguarded," he said simply. He held his own secrets close and to entrust them to another was the greatest act of trust; a betrayal would cut deep, and he would never do such a thing to another.
He was a man who fought each battle as though it was his last, who bore his scars proudly, who lamented each loss as though every one was his own personal failure. Pleasure was different when blood was spilled and lives lost or saved, but he had more control over that, at least. "I don't know," he admitted, of which was more valuable. "Someone who truly cares, who is there before and after, will they be content to stand aside while I fight? Should they not be first, and the battle second? I am not sure I can be that man." Which, he thought, might be why the woman was gone in the first place.
No, she was not his lover. She was not the woman he thought of, who he might have lost, and he was not a man who could love her as she wished to be loved. But the assassin could feel the weariness in her touch, the cold, too, and he raised his gaze to meet hers. "To remember," he echoed, and in very belated acquiesce to her earlier request in the elevator he leaned forward, all but rising from his chair, and kissed her.