Hello! This is my very first fanfiction based on the game I love, Assassin's Creed that I don't own. I also regretfully don't own Altaïr, Acre, or anything else related to Assassin's Creed… ); I am putting this up to showcase and test people's take on my writing. So if I need to, I can improve! I will try to post on a regular basis, but I am a very busy person, so there will most likely be delays. Read and review, and please be nice!

"Get back here you dirty little thief!"

The guards had seen her.

She bolted down the street, shoving her way through the dense, smelly crowd. She was just small enough to duck under and hide between the compacted bodies of adults. The guards were still coming closer, knocking the people behind her to the ground. They were going out of their way to punish her for stealing a single, over-ripened apple from a merchant's stand. Her hunger had overcome her fear, and so she resorted to thievery.

When the guards had lost sight of her among the people, she veered out of the throng of bodies and darted into a dark, narrow alley. She slid behind a stack of crates against a wall and squeezed her body into the corner until she was nothing but a shadow. She firmly shut her eyes and believed she could be nothing but a shadow, and hoped they hadn't caught sight of her.

The sound of their threatening footfalls approached quickly. She heard their footsteps and the roars of anger grow louder until they stopped at the mouth of the damp, grimy alley. The guards whipped their heads around and strained their necks, inspecting every little nook and cranny of every street and building.

"She couldn't have gotten far, look everywhere!"

They started searching the nearby merchant stands, piles of garbage and a few unlucky passers-by's, breaking merchandise and untold amounts of pottery in the process. They were causing much more damage than what could be justified for retrieving an apple. She knew they were only interested in carrying out their judgment and delivering the highest sentence of punishment; which was, for thievery, the loss of a hand. She knew of no one who believed in righteous justice and morals anymore, and not the fulfillment of one's own pleasure.

She heard an aggravated sigh come from one of the guards. "To hell with this! We're never gonna find the urchin."

The mob of soldiers began to disperse.

Just as she began to relax, the sound of thick boots thudding on the cobblestone street and chinking metal came down the alley.

She froze into the corner once more as the sound moved next to the crates.

She dared not breathe as the unaware guard passed her hiding spot. He eventually sauntered out of the alley into the next street without as much as a backwards glance.

When all of the guards had eventually passed on, she un-tensed her body and stretched out her long, scrawny legs. She tried to calm herself by ruffling her short, greasy, matted hair. It had once been very long and a shining shade of honey brown, but that was a long time ago. She had cut it short when it had become nothing but a burden. Adrianna wiped the memory from her mind before it could fester in her head any longer. Forgetting the past had become a habit.

Her angry belly growled at her noisily. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her well-earned prize.

The soft, red scrap of fruit looked as wonderful and valuable as a ruby to her. It was certainly better than someone's leftovers that had been tossed out on the street to rot.

She hungrily bit into the mushy, delicious apple. She ignored the sticky juices running down her arms and neck and quickly devoured the rest of it until there was nothing but some seeds and a stem.

Adrianna sat back in content, her stomach satisfied for the moment. She wearily laid her head back against the wall and stared up at the darkening sky. The sky in Acre was always dirty and dark but it was turning into the black, murky night now. The gloom blocked out the colors of dawn and dusk, so afternoons turned directly into night.

Everything was filthy because the siege had deprived the city of food, clean water, and basic necessities. Disease and famine ran rampant throughout Acre, which spawned rising mounds of dead bodies that were left on the street to rot. Some of those corpses were casualties of the ongoing Crusades. In the poor district, it was the worst, because in Acre, you weren't considered to be in poverty until you had sunken below rock-bottom and didn't even own the rags on your back. There was a pitiful filth-ridden beggar around every corner clawing on the clothes of anyone who looked like they had even one coin. Those 'wealthy' people would, of course, not even acknowledge their existence and push them aside without so much as a moment's glance.

The Christians had all but erased what the city had been before, replacing mosques with churches and destroying anything that resembled the civilization they were fighting against; her civilization. Acre was consumed by the Crusader Knights and English architecture.

It hadn't always been like that though.

At one time, you could see the bright yellow sun and the deep blue sky on the days when there was no coastal cloud cover. You could sometimes even walk the streets with a smile on your face, without fear of being harassed by soldiers. People took enjoyment in the simple, little things, like having a family….

Adrianna sighed in depressing contempt at the memory of her long gone family and rolled to her side to get more comfortable. It had been about two years now since the last of them had become ill and left her alone to fend for herself. All she could do was blame them for her situation. She hated her younger brother for being last, for dying and leaving her alone in the world.

She buried her face in her sleeve in an attempt to stifle a sob. She shouldn't let herself get so worked up about the past. It was the past after all, and nothing could be done about it. She could at least thank her parents for having European ancestors among their Arabic heritage; she was mixed enough that the Crusaders didn't bother her. It was dangerous enough to be an unaccompanied thirteen-year-old girl wandering the streets of Acre. It was a wonder she had survived this long, though not without being unscathed.

It was almost completely dark outside and people were returning to their houses after a long day. She allowed her eyes to droop half-way closed as she stared up at the sky between the narrow walls of the alley, waiting for sleep to embrace her. She hadn't noticed it before, but somewhere among the buildings emanated the soothing, hollow sound of wooden chimes knocking against each other. She breathed out with content at the relaxing sound; this had certainly been the most peaceful night she had experienced in a long time. She could even see the light of the moon glowing through the gloom.

Just as she was about to close her eyes, a flash of white on top of building fleeted through her peripheral vision. She impulsively looked to see what it was. She scanned the tops of all the buildings around her but it was gone.

"Huh… must've been a bird…."

She didn't think about it any longer; sleep was invading the edges of her mind.

As she closed her drooping eyelids and began to drift away, a white feather drifted down from seemingly nowhere in particular and settled itself at her feet.

Was that really just a bird???? Or dare I say… Altaïr?? What will be in store for our poor little heroin?(sorry if it's too depressing, that's just how I roll.) More chapters to come! (Unless of course you don't review it! Reviews inspire me to write!)

أمان وسلام