New Rome story: The First Prayers of Man
For troyswann, a belated birthday offering. :)
The First Prayers of Man
Rome - Vorenus/Pullo
Spoilers for the entire series, but particularly Kalends of February
I, in this darkness,
see the wet extension
of my arms under a rainfall,
that rain which drenched the first prayers of man
(excerpt, From Green to Green by Sohrab Sepehry)
When he was a child, Vorenus believed Rome came to be through the influence of the she-wolf, the ravening dog, suckling the brothers whose hands built a city on the Palatine. He asked his mother about the sun and stars, the rise and fall of the sky, but she knew no tales about the formation of the world, nothing to explain the violent thunder or the fading glow of day.
In time, he came to understand there were no true myths, and with this knowledge, the certainty that this world consists of nothing but ridiculous lies, ships of air sailing blood-dark seas. There is nothing now but the hum and pitch of his life as events unfold around him, as other men cast the stones and build their legacies on the backs of those who laid the foundations.
He is familiar with the emptiness that comes of bearing such secrets. He saw it time and again in Niobe's eyes, before they closed forever.
Janus, god of beginnings, guardian of the open gates, I come before you a humbled man. Hear me.
He was not meant for farming, his father once told him; it's a trade best left to those with no intelligence, no prospects. This thought took root in his mind, erased dreams of sinking his hands into the crumbling rich soil, fingers flexing against the soft earth to touch the secrets hidden there, as if he could decipher the messages the world hides beneath its aged and broken surfaces.
This was how he came to give his service to the army, to rise one rank at a time on the split skulls and broken bones of men, dozens at first, then hundreds, the count kept from the first time he unsheathed his sword. His hands roughened and bled, his skin honed on duty and principle, his feet blistered and healed a thousand times on the marches west, east, north, into the cold and snow, and back again. Months blurred into years, compounding one on the other until he could barely remember the Aventine, as far from him as the heavens were from the fingertips of ordinary men.
I've brought you a sacrifice, an offering to your beneficence. I know you won't refuse me, despite my flaws.
There is nothing for him in the Senate. They have no use for him, nor he for them. He was simply a cog in Caesar's larger plan, a plan pulverized to dust with each stab of a traitor's knife. Instead he goes back to the service of Mark Antony, who does not blame him because Antony feels the same guilt, but to a greater degree -- so great the crushing weight of it haunts his eyes each time he casts them Vorenus's direction. By day and through many nights Vorenus stands at Antony's side, watching for visible enemies but always conscious of the invisible, the undercurrent of treachery that destroys even the most observant man.
He hardens by degrees, scarring over the wounds time cannot close, and remembers what it is like to kill with his eyes open, to be assured of the rightness of his position, to forget morality and conscience. Not just a citizen, no. More than this. A soldier.
Antony has his ways of making peace via vengeance. Subtle things: a reputation destroyed, a confidence betrayed, a bit of public retribution for a small slight. There was a time Vorenus might have taken these lessons to heart, learned from them the things Caesar wanted him to know, but now he has particular sympathy for those who are damaged by secrets let loose upon the world.
Vorenus once escaped a fate as another man's pawn, a killer of men who had done no wrong. For Antony, he becomes what he despised, and the burden of it is a relief, a repentance.
I beg you, take this offering of wine and blood and grant me this small favor. Just this one favor, and I'll trouble you no more.
In the evenings, he eats what Pullo sets in front of him - porridge, wines, simple breads, bartered from the merchants at the corner who cannot seem to look him in the eye, so invasive is their pity. He listens sometimes for the laughter of his daughters, but they are not with him. They have gone with Lyde to her tiny home among the merchants, taking all the servants with them, and all the joy that lingered has turned to sorrow in their wake.
They have gone, and with them, one other. The boy, Lucius, who is not his son.
His fingers close on the rim of the cup until he feels the seasoned wood crack beneath his grip. When he pulls his hand away, Pullo fills the cup again.
"Eat something," Pullo demands, much more like a clucking hen than Vorenus should tolerate, but he shovels spoonfuls of tasteless food down and swallows his impatient words. "You're skin and bones," Pullo adds, his hand resting on Vorenus's shoulder.
Vorenus shrugs away his touch. If what burns inside him consumes him, that's his business.
Pullo sits across the table, not eating, but watching, until Vorenus turns his gaze down toward the full plate, unseeing.
"It's no good," Pullo says. "It isn't for you."
"What business is it of yours?" Vorenus hisses. He barely quells the urge to overturn the table, to draw his knife and sink it into the flesh that offends him. But Pullo is too fast, too strong; he will never allow Vorenus to harm himself. He's caught the knives before. He'll keep doing so, as long as Vorenus lets him stay.
They both know the answer to the question; it is Pullo's business because Vorenus has made it so.
He doesn't ask Pullo to leave.
It's not so much to ask, is it? This one thing. I've asked for so little.
He's never paid much attention to the way Pullo fights until recently. It's always been enough that Pullo can cleave a man's torso near in two with one blow and wrench arms from sockets without flinching. But Vorenus has begun to notice, now, how graceful Pullo is in the dance of death, how much skill he shows with the sword. It is the death that interests him, the slow choking beauty of it, how the body falls with the spirit already gone, or how the shine leaves the eyes when it is finished.
There is one thing more Pullo does well, better than any other Vorenus has known, and that is to follow. It seems only natural that he should be at Vorenus's side as they move through the streets of Rome on Antony's business, through her sloping hills and to the Aventine; there is no question Pullo will return home with Vorenus at the end of each day. They have ceased to think of each other as strangers long ago, and they are brothers now, and more.
Pullo has never seemed complicated to Vorenus. His nature is to eat, drink, sleep, fight, and fuck, and Vorenus has seen him do all of those with a voracious joy he would envy, if he had any desire left in him to engage with his own life. The ease with which Vorenus understands him does not tax his angry heart, so Vorenus keeps him there, allows him to pull his pallet close to the bed Vorenus can barely stand to sleep in. In the night he hears Pullo breathing, hears the soft rustle of cloth that tells him someone else lives in this space, in the quiet dark where death has a foothold now.
There's been a lot of trouble recently. But what's a man to do? Even a good man can find his life turned upside down through no fault of his own, that's the pity of it. Great god, with respect - you've got to step in, here.
It's the nights that plague him most, those times when his defenses are down and the world comes rushing at him through his mind's eye, creeping in amongst his dreams.
He wakes, fists clenched, striking out at the ghosts of murdered men. It's Pullo's chest he finds beneath his clenched hands, Pullo whose strength wrenches him back from insanity and into the cold night.
He struggles against it, caught between the desire to remain with ghosts, and the need to escape them, but he is not a match for this enemy.
They crash to the floor hard enough to rattle Vorenus's teeth and Pullo descends on him, shaking him free of his demons. Pullo says things, words without meaning, the soft comfort a soldier should not wish to give and Vorenus does not wish to accept, and so Vorenus snarls, his fist connecting squarely with Pullo's jaw. The punch loosens Pullo's grip, but only for a moment, not long enough to change the circumstance.
"So it's to be that way, is it," Pullo grunts in his ear, and the feel of his breath against cold skin sends shudders through Vorenus's body.
They grapple with each other for long minutes, brute strength matched to brute strength, Vorenus determined to overpower and Pullo as determined not to yield, crashing about through rooms that seem to grow smaller and smaller as the night wears on. The neighbors don't come running any longer; they've learned the price of curiosity toward one such as Vorenus has become.
When finally Pullo conquers him, there is no surrender. Vorenus tastes blood on his lips, feels the pain on every scratched surface of his skin, wants the bruises Pullo leaves with his hands, with his mouth. He lets Pullo push him down, one hand on the back of his neck; wants it as he's wanted little else in his life, but he struggles so that Pullo will use all his strength. Mouth open against the wooden floor, he gasps for breath, and for those moments, just those few moments when Pullo shoves inside him and takes him, he forgets. Just for those moments, he closes his eyes and doesn't see Niobe falling, doesn't hear the silence where her scream should be, doesn't feel her broken body in his arms.
When it's over, he will accept no comfort, for he deserves none. Pullo tugs him to his feet, pushes him back on the bed; there is no expression on his face, but his eyes follow the path his hands worked across Vorenus's body. Once he tried to wash Vorenus, but this was too much, and now the wish only shows in the way his hands rise, then fall, without having shaped themselves to skin.
Through the night, he sleeps beside Vorenus, inches away. They never touch, after; this is the one boundary Pullo knows never to cross. There are so few boundaries left now that Vorenus expects him to disregard this one soon, as he has all the others.
But Pullo never does.
Give my friend Lucius Vorenus peace, eh? Help him to forgive the child. This mess is no fault of the innocent babe. A child needs a father.
Well, it strikes me that's two favors, isn't it?
You'll be wanting another sacrifice now I suppose.
He doesn't want to see them, won't take them from Pullo's outstretched hand. He tries not to listen to the words of explanation, each one a slap across the face, a series of demands he is not yet ready to meet. "Found them neat as you please in the marketplace - just trinkets, really. Couldn't resist them."
When Pullo drops them on the table, then throws a leather bag beside them, the set of ten tiny soldiers sprawls in all directions, forced askew by neglect. After a moment, Vorenus picks one up, traces a thumb across it. Carved crudely from wood, each one could be any soldier, every soldier; they are that indistinct.
"Have them or don't, I've no use for them."
Vorenus looks up and meets Pullo's eyes, his jaw set in a stubborn lock. "Then why did you waste your money on them? You have little enough as it is."
A shrug is his only answer, and Pullo turns away, sets about the business of the evening, cleaning armor and sharpening weapons with a fine stone.
Vorenus bundles the laundry to take to the washer woman. He ties a sheet around the grimy tunics, then fishes the toys up from the table and stuffs them in their leather pouch. Though he doesn't check to see, he knows Pullo is watching, feels it, the way he feels the sun sear his skin even when his eyes are closed.
Janus, god of beginnings, I'm back and I've brought that sacrifice. Had a time of it, too. Damned live chickens. It's too bad cold blood won't do, I'm a bit hungry. These would make a nice roast. Ah well. The gods demand what they demand, eh? No worries.
The girls fly into his arms the moment they see him. He's not prepared for the rush of tenderness he feels for them, the fierce protectiveness. This is new. He buries his face in Vorena's hair, soft, like her mother's, and lets the pangs of grief wash through him.
So solemn, Vorena, now that her masquerade is over. "May we come home with you now, Father?" she asks. He thinks of the good marriage he promised her, another of the many promises he has broken to his children. Niobe would not be pleased.
In Lyde's accusing gaze, he sees a mirror of his own failings.
"Not yet," he says, but he has a smile for Vorena, one she returns sweetly. She looks nothing like her mother. To Lyde, he says, "I will see him."
"You will not," she spits, and he is quite unprepared for her fear, her fury. "I'll not have you harm him." She sounds so like Niobe that he is prepared to acquiesce before he remembers where he is, and why he's come.
Her arm is slender beneath his hand, fragile, easily broken, if he wishes. He enjoys her cry of pain. "Bring him now, or I will fetch him myself."
Eyes narrowed, she pulls her arm away, but does what he's asked of her. She brings Lucius tucked beneath her arm, livid red marks across her wrist where Vorenus held her. The boy's eyes are huge and round, his small hands clasped around a cloth ball.
"Come here, boy," Vorenus barks, making a curt gesture with one hand. The boy shrinks back, squeezing the ball. Vorenus sighs, gentles his tone. "It's all right. Come here."
Lucius leaves the shelter of his aunt's arm and comes to Vorenus, quick trotting steps to cover the distance quickly. Vorenus puts out his hands and stops the boy short. "I've brought something for you," he says, and presses the bag of soldiers against the back of one tiny hand. "Take it."
With grubby fingers, the boy fishes inside the bag and pulls out a soldier. A smile lights his dirty face, fleeting, chasing shadows from his eyes. Slowly, Vorenus reaches up to ruffle his hair. This is the child who resembles his mother, and who must be made to remember her without bitterness.
"I will come for them tomorrow," he tells Lyde, with no satisfaction for the grimace of pain this causes her. "All of them."
Ah, Janus, you're a just god! I must remember to build you a shrine. You'll have to share, though. I can't afford to piss off any of the others, you understand. Might have need of their goodwill in battle one day.
Pullo is waiting for him on the steps when he arrives home. It's late, so much so that the courtyard is empty but for his friend, standing watch. Vorenus isn't drunk, though the thought crossed his mind once or a million times while he walked through the city, burning off the restless irritable anger still lingering in his blood. On the morrow he will see Antony and require an adjustment to his duties. But he does not tell Pullo, yet. It's not a matter of honor, or a question of duty; it's a simple question of respect, one Pullo solved for himself a long time ago, and now Vorenus has reached his own conclusions.
"Dropped the laundry, did you?" Pullo says, standing to greet him with a half-smile. Vorenus eyes him, then passes by him on his way up the stairs. Pullo follows him in; he never waits inside the house, for it isn't his house, or his place.
Vorenus pours a cup of wine and hands it to Pullo, then drops his cloak on the floor. Softly, he says, "I'll be bringing the children home tomorrow."
Pullo downs the contents of his cup and sets it on the table. "Right, then," he says evenly. Vorenus notices the muscle twitching in his jaw, the way his eyes shift down, away. "I'd best get my things and move them to the yard."
"I said tomorrow."
Pullo raises his eyes in response to the low pitch of Vorenus's words, nods once, reaches to pull his tunic over his head. Vorenus follows in kind.
This time, they are quiet, save for sounds of pleasure; this time, Pullo's hands fit snug against faded bruises, but leave no new ones. This one time, Vorenus draws no boundaries.
Janus, god of beginnings, most honored - I suppose that chicken was enough for three favors, eh? But you've done all I asked and more, that's plain to see. My gratitude. A god who listens, that's all a man can ask.
~end~
February 2006
The First Prayers of Man
Rome - Vorenus/Pullo
Spoilers for the entire series, but particularly Kalends of February
I, in this darkness,
see the wet extension
of my arms under a rainfall,
that rain which drenched the first prayers of man
(excerpt, From Green to Green by Sohrab Sepehry)
When he was a child, Vorenus believed Rome came to be through the influence of the she-wolf, the ravening dog, suckling the brothers whose hands built a city on the Palatine. He asked his mother about the sun and stars, the rise and fall of the sky, but she knew no tales about the formation of the world, nothing to explain the violent thunder or the fading glow of day.
In time, he came to understand there were no true myths, and with this knowledge, the certainty that this world consists of nothing but ridiculous lies, ships of air sailing blood-dark seas. There is nothing now but the hum and pitch of his life as events unfold around him, as other men cast the stones and build their legacies on the backs of those who laid the foundations.
He is familiar with the emptiness that comes of bearing such secrets. He saw it time and again in Niobe's eyes, before they closed forever.
Janus, god of beginnings, guardian of the open gates, I come before you a humbled man. Hear me.
He was not meant for farming, his father once told him; it's a trade best left to those with no intelligence, no prospects. This thought took root in his mind, erased dreams of sinking his hands into the crumbling rich soil, fingers flexing against the soft earth to touch the secrets hidden there, as if he could decipher the messages the world hides beneath its aged and broken surfaces.
This was how he came to give his service to the army, to rise one rank at a time on the split skulls and broken bones of men, dozens at first, then hundreds, the count kept from the first time he unsheathed his sword. His hands roughened and bled, his skin honed on duty and principle, his feet blistered and healed a thousand times on the marches west, east, north, into the cold and snow, and back again. Months blurred into years, compounding one on the other until he could barely remember the Aventine, as far from him as the heavens were from the fingertips of ordinary men.
I've brought you a sacrifice, an offering to your beneficence. I know you won't refuse me, despite my flaws.
There is nothing for him in the Senate. They have no use for him, nor he for them. He was simply a cog in Caesar's larger plan, a plan pulverized to dust with each stab of a traitor's knife. Instead he goes back to the service of Mark Antony, who does not blame him because Antony feels the same guilt, but to a greater degree -- so great the crushing weight of it haunts his eyes each time he casts them Vorenus's direction. By day and through many nights Vorenus stands at Antony's side, watching for visible enemies but always conscious of the invisible, the undercurrent of treachery that destroys even the most observant man.
He hardens by degrees, scarring over the wounds time cannot close, and remembers what it is like to kill with his eyes open, to be assured of the rightness of his position, to forget morality and conscience. Not just a citizen, no. More than this. A soldier.
Antony has his ways of making peace via vengeance. Subtle things: a reputation destroyed, a confidence betrayed, a bit of public retribution for a small slight. There was a time Vorenus might have taken these lessons to heart, learned from them the things Caesar wanted him to know, but now he has particular sympathy for those who are damaged by secrets let loose upon the world.
Vorenus once escaped a fate as another man's pawn, a killer of men who had done no wrong. For Antony, he becomes what he despised, and the burden of it is a relief, a repentance.
I beg you, take this offering of wine and blood and grant me this small favor. Just this one favor, and I'll trouble you no more.
In the evenings, he eats what Pullo sets in front of him - porridge, wines, simple breads, bartered from the merchants at the corner who cannot seem to look him in the eye, so invasive is their pity. He listens sometimes for the laughter of his daughters, but they are not with him. They have gone with Lyde to her tiny home among the merchants, taking all the servants with them, and all the joy that lingered has turned to sorrow in their wake.
They have gone, and with them, one other. The boy, Lucius, who is not his son.
His fingers close on the rim of the cup until he feels the seasoned wood crack beneath his grip. When he pulls his hand away, Pullo fills the cup again.
"Eat something," Pullo demands, much more like a clucking hen than Vorenus should tolerate, but he shovels spoonfuls of tasteless food down and swallows his impatient words. "You're skin and bones," Pullo adds, his hand resting on Vorenus's shoulder.
Vorenus shrugs away his touch. If what burns inside him consumes him, that's his business.
Pullo sits across the table, not eating, but watching, until Vorenus turns his gaze down toward the full plate, unseeing.
"It's no good," Pullo says. "It isn't for you."
"What business is it of yours?" Vorenus hisses. He barely quells the urge to overturn the table, to draw his knife and sink it into the flesh that offends him. But Pullo is too fast, too strong; he will never allow Vorenus to harm himself. He's caught the knives before. He'll keep doing so, as long as Vorenus lets him stay.
They both know the answer to the question; it is Pullo's business because Vorenus has made it so.
He doesn't ask Pullo to leave.
It's not so much to ask, is it? This one thing. I've asked for so little.
He's never paid much attention to the way Pullo fights until recently. It's always been enough that Pullo can cleave a man's torso near in two with one blow and wrench arms from sockets without flinching. But Vorenus has begun to notice, now, how graceful Pullo is in the dance of death, how much skill he shows with the sword. It is the death that interests him, the slow choking beauty of it, how the body falls with the spirit already gone, or how the shine leaves the eyes when it is finished.
There is one thing more Pullo does well, better than any other Vorenus has known, and that is to follow. It seems only natural that he should be at Vorenus's side as they move through the streets of Rome on Antony's business, through her sloping hills and to the Aventine; there is no question Pullo will return home with Vorenus at the end of each day. They have ceased to think of each other as strangers long ago, and they are brothers now, and more.
Pullo has never seemed complicated to Vorenus. His nature is to eat, drink, sleep, fight, and fuck, and Vorenus has seen him do all of those with a voracious joy he would envy, if he had any desire left in him to engage with his own life. The ease with which Vorenus understands him does not tax his angry heart, so Vorenus keeps him there, allows him to pull his pallet close to the bed Vorenus can barely stand to sleep in. In the night he hears Pullo breathing, hears the soft rustle of cloth that tells him someone else lives in this space, in the quiet dark where death has a foothold now.
There's been a lot of trouble recently. But what's a man to do? Even a good man can find his life turned upside down through no fault of his own, that's the pity of it. Great god, with respect - you've got to step in, here.
It's the nights that plague him most, those times when his defenses are down and the world comes rushing at him through his mind's eye, creeping in amongst his dreams.
He wakes, fists clenched, striking out at the ghosts of murdered men. It's Pullo's chest he finds beneath his clenched hands, Pullo whose strength wrenches him back from insanity and into the cold night.
He struggles against it, caught between the desire to remain with ghosts, and the need to escape them, but he is not a match for this enemy.
They crash to the floor hard enough to rattle Vorenus's teeth and Pullo descends on him, shaking him free of his demons. Pullo says things, words without meaning, the soft comfort a soldier should not wish to give and Vorenus does not wish to accept, and so Vorenus snarls, his fist connecting squarely with Pullo's jaw. The punch loosens Pullo's grip, but only for a moment, not long enough to change the circumstance.
"So it's to be that way, is it," Pullo grunts in his ear, and the feel of his breath against cold skin sends shudders through Vorenus's body.
They grapple with each other for long minutes, brute strength matched to brute strength, Vorenus determined to overpower and Pullo as determined not to yield, crashing about through rooms that seem to grow smaller and smaller as the night wears on. The neighbors don't come running any longer; they've learned the price of curiosity toward one such as Vorenus has become.
When finally Pullo conquers him, there is no surrender. Vorenus tastes blood on his lips, feels the pain on every scratched surface of his skin, wants the bruises Pullo leaves with his hands, with his mouth. He lets Pullo push him down, one hand on the back of his neck; wants it as he's wanted little else in his life, but he struggles so that Pullo will use all his strength. Mouth open against the wooden floor, he gasps for breath, and for those moments, just those few moments when Pullo shoves inside him and takes him, he forgets. Just for those moments, he closes his eyes and doesn't see Niobe falling, doesn't hear the silence where her scream should be, doesn't feel her broken body in his arms.
When it's over, he will accept no comfort, for he deserves none. Pullo tugs him to his feet, pushes him back on the bed; there is no expression on his face, but his eyes follow the path his hands worked across Vorenus's body. Once he tried to wash Vorenus, but this was too much, and now the wish only shows in the way his hands rise, then fall, without having shaped themselves to skin.
Through the night, he sleeps beside Vorenus, inches away. They never touch, after; this is the one boundary Pullo knows never to cross. There are so few boundaries left now that Vorenus expects him to disregard this one soon, as he has all the others.
But Pullo never does.
Give my friend Lucius Vorenus peace, eh? Help him to forgive the child. This mess is no fault of the innocent babe. A child needs a father.
Well, it strikes me that's two favors, isn't it?
You'll be wanting another sacrifice now I suppose.
He doesn't want to see them, won't take them from Pullo's outstretched hand. He tries not to listen to the words of explanation, each one a slap across the face, a series of demands he is not yet ready to meet. "Found them neat as you please in the marketplace - just trinkets, really. Couldn't resist them."
When Pullo drops them on the table, then throws a leather bag beside them, the set of ten tiny soldiers sprawls in all directions, forced askew by neglect. After a moment, Vorenus picks one up, traces a thumb across it. Carved crudely from wood, each one could be any soldier, every soldier; they are that indistinct.
"Have them or don't, I've no use for them."
Vorenus looks up and meets Pullo's eyes, his jaw set in a stubborn lock. "Then why did you waste your money on them? You have little enough as it is."
A shrug is his only answer, and Pullo turns away, sets about the business of the evening, cleaning armor and sharpening weapons with a fine stone.
Vorenus bundles the laundry to take to the washer woman. He ties a sheet around the grimy tunics, then fishes the toys up from the table and stuffs them in their leather pouch. Though he doesn't check to see, he knows Pullo is watching, feels it, the way he feels the sun sear his skin even when his eyes are closed.
Janus, god of beginnings, I'm back and I've brought that sacrifice. Had a time of it, too. Damned live chickens. It's too bad cold blood won't do, I'm a bit hungry. These would make a nice roast. Ah well. The gods demand what they demand, eh? No worries.
The girls fly into his arms the moment they see him. He's not prepared for the rush of tenderness he feels for them, the fierce protectiveness. This is new. He buries his face in Vorena's hair, soft, like her mother's, and lets the pangs of grief wash through him.
So solemn, Vorena, now that her masquerade is over. "May we come home with you now, Father?" she asks. He thinks of the good marriage he promised her, another of the many promises he has broken to his children. Niobe would not be pleased.
In Lyde's accusing gaze, he sees a mirror of his own failings.
"Not yet," he says, but he has a smile for Vorena, one she returns sweetly. She looks nothing like her mother. To Lyde, he says, "I will see him."
"You will not," she spits, and he is quite unprepared for her fear, her fury. "I'll not have you harm him." She sounds so like Niobe that he is prepared to acquiesce before he remembers where he is, and why he's come.
Her arm is slender beneath his hand, fragile, easily broken, if he wishes. He enjoys her cry of pain. "Bring him now, or I will fetch him myself."
Eyes narrowed, she pulls her arm away, but does what he's asked of her. She brings Lucius tucked beneath her arm, livid red marks across her wrist where Vorenus held her. The boy's eyes are huge and round, his small hands clasped around a cloth ball.
"Come here, boy," Vorenus barks, making a curt gesture with one hand. The boy shrinks back, squeezing the ball. Vorenus sighs, gentles his tone. "It's all right. Come here."
Lucius leaves the shelter of his aunt's arm and comes to Vorenus, quick trotting steps to cover the distance quickly. Vorenus puts out his hands and stops the boy short. "I've brought something for you," he says, and presses the bag of soldiers against the back of one tiny hand. "Take it."
With grubby fingers, the boy fishes inside the bag and pulls out a soldier. A smile lights his dirty face, fleeting, chasing shadows from his eyes. Slowly, Vorenus reaches up to ruffle his hair. This is the child who resembles his mother, and who must be made to remember her without bitterness.
"I will come for them tomorrow," he tells Lyde, with no satisfaction for the grimace of pain this causes her. "All of them."
Ah, Janus, you're a just god! I must remember to build you a shrine. You'll have to share, though. I can't afford to piss off any of the others, you understand. Might have need of their goodwill in battle one day.
Pullo is waiting for him on the steps when he arrives home. It's late, so much so that the courtyard is empty but for his friend, standing watch. Vorenus isn't drunk, though the thought crossed his mind once or a million times while he walked through the city, burning off the restless irritable anger still lingering in his blood. On the morrow he will see Antony and require an adjustment to his duties. But he does not tell Pullo, yet. It's not a matter of honor, or a question of duty; it's a simple question of respect, one Pullo solved for himself a long time ago, and now Vorenus has reached his own conclusions.
"Dropped the laundry, did you?" Pullo says, standing to greet him with a half-smile. Vorenus eyes him, then passes by him on his way up the stairs. Pullo follows him in; he never waits inside the house, for it isn't his house, or his place.
Vorenus pours a cup of wine and hands it to Pullo, then drops his cloak on the floor. Softly, he says, "I'll be bringing the children home tomorrow."
Pullo downs the contents of his cup and sets it on the table. "Right, then," he says evenly. Vorenus notices the muscle twitching in his jaw, the way his eyes shift down, away. "I'd best get my things and move them to the yard."
"I said tomorrow."
Pullo raises his eyes in response to the low pitch of Vorenus's words, nods once, reaches to pull his tunic over his head. Vorenus follows in kind.
This time, they are quiet, save for sounds of pleasure; this time, Pullo's hands fit snug against faded bruises, but leave no new ones. This one time, Vorenus draws no boundaries.
Janus, god of beginnings, most honored - I suppose that chicken was enough for three favors, eh? But you've done all I asked and more, that's plain to see. My gratitude. A god who listens, that's all a man can ask.
~end~
February 2006