Author's Note: So I basically took a prompt from the kinkmeme, the one line of info Ubisoft gives about the Dama Rossa, and ran with both. I have all the chapters of this story written out, I will post the next tomorrow. This fic takes place in the bigger storyline of a larger fic I am planning.

They had thrown her in the cell some hours before. The Dama Rossa knew much of torture, and she knew they were trying to use her mind against her. Her hands were linked together and chain to the wall holding her upright, and her feet hobbled, leaving her defenseless and unable to explore the room she was confined in. They were trying to make her feel vulnerable. The pitch black room was intended to provide a backdrop for imagined horrors, created by anxiety and apprehension of the torment that was sure to come.

It was a standard softening up technique. Hardened fighters were far more likely to be afraid of their past victims, of shadows, then of pain. Being a secretive operative led one to become paranoid and the assassins obviously were trying to utilize this.

She told herself she was far above such things. She had killed many, many men, and feared few individuals, living or dead. One of those few was her master, Cesare Borgia. If she spilled his secrets, the punishments him and her fellow Templars would inflict upon her would be far worse than anything an assassin could dream up. Cesare had assembled a fine group of psychopaths to do his bidding. Herself included.

The Dama Rossa twisted in her bonds, running her gloved hands over the surface behind her. She had been stripped of her lethal hairpin, and the other weapons she had carried. Even the set of lockpicks, borrowed from Faustina and concealed in her hairdo, had been found and confiscated. If the Dama Rossa got out of this alive, she was going to have a very annoyed Thief on her hands.

She focused on this instead of the darkness, which seemed to be pushing in on her. She got on well with the Thief, the Templar information-seeker and con. She had been coerced into serving the Templar Order a year or two before Faustina, when the bloody murder of her fiance had grabbed the attention of the Templars, and had trained alongside the Thief many times.

Anyone with a talent for tracking and killing inevitably got an invitation to join the Templars' secret force. She loathed her recruiter, the Templar spymaster Baltasar de Silva. Maybe if she hadn't been roped into his cause she could have put her murderous nature aside, locked it back up, and become Garnette again.

But no, it wasn't likely. Murdering her lover, the traitor, had released something in the Dama Rossa she had never wanted to acknowledge before. Something that once unleashed could never be fully under control again.
Her thoughts wandered like this for a long time.

Baltasar had been the one to send her on this mission. Her dislike of the man almost made her suspect that he had sent her on a suicide mission just to be rid of the nuisance, but she knew Baltasar was far too good a spymaster to waste a talented operative like her.

The Dama Rossa had been sent to thin the assassin ranks. A promising novice was supposedly being sent on a mission, and she was to ambush and elminate him. Instead she had found herself ambushed by none other than Ezio Auditore.

It was surprising she hadn't been killed outright, as was the Assassins' usual way. They usually did their interrogation on the spot, if they bothered with it, and then disposed of the target. This was new, as far as she knew at least.

Though it shouldn't have been too unexpected. The Templars had learned from the Assassins and adapted their own secretive killing force, why wouldn't the Assassins learn from their counterparts?

After several hours hunger began to gnaw at her belly. There had been enough missions were she had tracked her prey for days and not eaten anything out of suspicion or haste, so it was easy to ignore. Worse was the thirst. Within the first day her throat was burning, and her once lovely lips were dry and cracked.

It became harder and harder to stand, and she slumped against the wall uncomfortably. The cuffs chafed unpleasantly, quite a feat given the slenderness of her wrists.

She could only thank the fact she did not like to eat or drink before a mission for keeping her pride intact, as she had not had to relieve herself. That humiliation would have been worse for the proud Templar then pain.

Still she had not seen hide nor hair of her captors. The cell remained pitch black and silent. As hard as she trained, as long as she listened, she couldn't pick up the sound of the streets of Roma, or conversation, or anything. She kept herself occupied with tactical exercises and playing matchmaker for the Thief (the woman did not see the pleasure of the company of men, a serious problem that needed to be rectified), to keep her imagination from what lay ahead.

Sometimes she sang songs in her native language, the language of England, which she had fled years previous in pursuit of her fiancé. The words filled up the silence, and (she hoped) spited her captors. She wanted to show them she had not sunk into despair.

After many hours, perhaps two days, dehydration had driven her to near delirium. She hung limply in the chains, far from broken, but no longer seeing the point in showing defiance to someone who wasn't even there. The Dama Rossa found her initial observations of the room had been wrong. It had seemed cold and drafty at first. Now it was far too warm, and the darkness seemed to be warm and constricting. Sweat dripped from her forehead, and stung her eyes. She couldn't even reach up a hand to wipe it away.
Paradoxically, she was trembling, and goosebumps rose of her skin as if she was freezing. It brought back memories of England, the cold winter evenings huddled by the hearth...
When she had finally settled into near-delirium, a door she had not been able to make out before burst open. The Dama Rossa squeezed her lids shut against then unbearably bright light, and when she opened them again there was a pair of hooded amber eyes meeting her own.