Rome: "Learning to Make Fire"
May. 18th, 2007 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
artyartieFinally! Evidently, my Muse was lured back by the chocolate yesterday at a women's conference, and I finally finished tweaking the 'Posca and Jocasta in Alexandria' fic. The title is taken from the excellent poem Habitation by Margaret Atwood.
Title: Learning to Make Fire
Pairing: Posca/Jocasta
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through 2.9
Summary: When they have no one but each other, Posca and Jocasta find something deeper in their marriage of inconvenience.
“What’s this?” Posca looks scathingly at the fabric in his hands, and the sumptuous silk feels like the coarsest homespun. Antony wouldn’t dare ask his soldiers to wear it, but as for him-
“Her Majesty requested it – and since we’re here at her pleasure...” Antony’s own gown is long, foppish, brazenly open at the chest, and Posca swears he sees a tattooed serpent, coiling around Antony’s breast. An all-too-fitting image- “This is hardly Rome.”
“No, but Egypt is a vassal state of hers, not the other way around, the last I noted.” Posca’s tone is measured but his words are sharp as arrows, and they hit Antony with deadly accuracy.
“And are you in charge?” Antony appraises Posca, cool, calculating, but where lesser men would cower, Posca merely raises an eyebrow.
“No, but when Caesar was here-“
Antony may be a humiliated man but he’s no fool, and his face flushes purple in rage at the unspoken insult.
“ He tolerated your insolent tongue far too much– you might be a freedman now but I’ll have it cut out if you say so much as a word against me.” Antony is barely a breath away, his spittle hot on Posca’s cheek. “You had best learn that I’m not Caesar.”
As he leaves the room, Antony’s silence weighing on him more than any hurled invectives, Posca could not agree with Antony’s assessment any more.
***
“This is an outrage!” Jocasta is stalking their humiliatingly small quarters like a cat.
“Of course it is, my dear.” Posca frowns, realizing he doesn’t know what is such an outrage to his wife. He had tuned out her endless litany of complaints on the journey to Alexandria, but with each passing day, as his dissatisfaction grows and festers, he humors her ill humor.
“Romans, aping around like Egyptians! At least you don’t have to wear these ridiculous wigs.” She kicks savagely at what looks like a coil of black rope on the floor. “I asked how I would possibly fit my own hair under that monstrosity, and you know they told me? To shave my head! A Roman woman, to cut off my hair like-“
Posca reaches over and takes a lock of Jocasta’s dark curls with a tenderness that surprises even himself. Theirs was no love match; he still remembers Atia’s scarcely contained malicious laughter when she proposed the marriage. The Egyptian sun must be softening him.
“Let me think of something,” he says, and Jocasta curls into him, yielding as a reed of papyrus. Posca blinks, touched and surprised at her gratitude, and he kisses her forehead with an almost paternal affection.
“Do you think Antony would make an exception?“ Jocasta’s question sputters on her lips; she must see the disgust in his eyes.
“He won’t do anything that would anger-“ Posca has a thousand insults on his tongue, but his wife knows them all.
“His royal whore? I would take the worst of Rome’s patrician bitches any day,” Jocasta says, and Posca knows she is speaking from bitter experience.
***
The last time, Alexandria was a city of wonders – the delirious scents of the markets, broad streets that gleamed in the sun and seemed clean enough to eat from, compared to the filth of Rome.
Caesar, smitten with his pregnant mistress, allowed Posca to do as he wished most days, and doing as he wished often led him to the magnificent library. The wisdom of the world passed through Posca’s hand to Caesar’s library – with more than a few scrolls for his own use.
If Antony is beholden to his pregnant queen, however, Posca is beholden to Antony. No task is too small to escape Posca’s attention, and Posca is pressed to say who has the most volatile mood – Cleopatra with her swelling belly or her anxious lover.
Posca seethes at this treatment; being Antony’s freedman is infinitely more humiliating than being Caesar’s slave. When he leaves home the city is lit by the eerie, still light of dawn; when he comes home, the torches are already sputtering, in need of more oil. Jocasta would still be awake, her smile tired yet warm enough to lift Posca’s flagging spirits over the threshold.
Posca’s tongue is still too free as far as Antony is concerned, and when Posca comments on the dark smudges around Antony’s eyes with evidently too little respect, Posca finds the repugnant kohl added to his own ridiculous dress code. He comes home in a quiet rage, his hands trembling, and Jocasta knows well enough that asking what was wrong would merely be a waste of time
Jocasta has far the steadier hand when it comes to such womanly arts, even without the angry tremor still setting his fingers aquiver, and so she traces the kohl around his eyes with her light, delicate hand.
“I look utterly ridiculous,” Posca says, and it is now Jocasta’s turn to comfort him. She cups his cheek, traces her fingers around his jaw. Posca has never expected such tenderness from his wife – he is content with her loyalty and respect. But perhaps she too is realizing here in Alexandria, her and Posca are each other’s only comfort.
***
Only a few months after the birth of the divine twins, Jocasta tells him he’ll soon be a father. Her voice flutters like a sparrow, and Posca kisses her with an almost delirious jubilation, pressing his hands to her soft belly. When she’s further along, her belly as round as a sail in a fair wind, their fellow Romans, even Antony offers their hearty congratulations and well wishes.
But their well wishes, it seems, aren’t enough, and the baby, Posca’s son, is stillborn after a long, agonizing delivery. Jocasta can barely grieve over her child before she falls to a sudden, violent fever. The finest doctors in the Empire are here, and even under their care, Posca is not sure if his wife will live. He remembers Caesar’s grief over Julia, and the memory twists at his stomach, claws its way up his throat.
When he tells Antony he may well lose his wife, so soon after losing his son, Antony claps a hand on his shoulder, his eyes full of genuine compassion. Posca didn’t think the man had any left.
It’s well enough for Antony to have compassion – even the Divine Isis herself shows some regard for a freedman’s wife – but Posca sends his fervent prayers to deities with far more power. Alexandria is littered with shrines to the gods of Olympos, and he remembers all the prayers from childhood, and he offers them to any deity who will listen.
And some deity does listen, and Jocasta’s fever breaks. When her dark eyes, so weak and yet finally clear, look into his, tears come to his eyes and he feels no shame, only a relief so profound he doesn’t think he could stand without sinking to the ground.
It should frighten him, just how much and how deeply he feels for his wife, but in this place where every emotion, for good or ill, is stripped away from him, he is just thankful not only for her survival but for his capacity to still feel.
***
Posca cannot see an end to his torment. It stretches out, infinite as seas of sand or water, and only death will end it. His or Antony’s, what remains of Antony, at least.
The palace is a temple to every vice one could name, and those yet to be defined. Posca makes his visits brief, infrequent, and only as necessary. For a man in a drug-addled haze, parts of Antony’s mind remain razor sharp. He has yet to lose his taste for cruelty.
Avenues for escape back to Rome are too dangerous to contemplate. The boats in the harbor mock him with the promise of returning to a place where his life doesn’t hinge on the whims of a mad sadist. Antony’s spies are as ever present as Posca’s own shadow, and Antony has made painfully clear the cost of disobeying him.
Still, he has a vain, foolish hope that he will not die in this forsaken place. It is his wife’s hope, naïve as it may be, but she believes in it with such cheerful fervor that Posca cannot help but make certain preparations.
Antony must have been incredibly arrogant to entrust his most sensitive documents to his freedman. Especially his will, which will damn Antony far worse than any overblown, long-winded treatise. Posca keeps them well hidden, waiting for even the promise of a chance to expose Antony’s secrets.
That chance seems almost arranged by the gods themselves. Octavian, in a shrewd maneuver worthy of the Julii, sends his mother and his sister, Antony’s lover and his wife, to plead an audience. It’s not surprising that Antony dismisses them without so much a kind or angry word, but when he orders Posca to ensure their departure, shock nearly strangles his reply.
When he tells Jocasta, the look of blank disbelief on her face must have mirrored his own. Her dark eyes widen, her mouth agape in a perfect ‘o’, and Posca muffles her cry of delirious joy with his lips.
“Pack quickly! Tell the guards you’re going to the tailor, if they ask.” Posca slides the document case from its hiding place, ensuring everything they need to secure their status and ruin Antony is inside. “Go to the harbor, ask for the ship Libertas. Wait for me there!”
He kisses her again, her arms wrapped tight about him, and she tastes as sweet as the freedom that beckons so alluringly.
***
Posca cannot help but take a small pity on Atia. Yet Atia must have known that Antony could not be faithful, that if the choice came between her and his ambition, he would cut her loose from very shaky moorings. But Antony’s ambition had deserted him in this place, along with every other virtue he once possessed.
Losing to another woman was a far harder blow to bear.
Posca can’t say how this all will end, though he feels Antony’s life will end on a sword, either his own or Octavian’s. He has the same desperate fatalism so many have shown, even those who were nothing but cowards their entire life, plunging into battles of weapons and words where death was the only likely outcome.
No such desperate urge for glory for Posca. His desire seems so much simpler, so much sweeter. To live, to survive, is not so ignoble a goal.
Title: Learning to Make Fire
Pairing: Posca/Jocasta
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through 2.9
Summary: When they have no one but each other, Posca and Jocasta find something deeper in their marriage of inconvenience.
“What’s this?” Posca looks scathingly at the fabric in his hands, and the sumptuous silk feels like the coarsest homespun. Antony wouldn’t dare ask his soldiers to wear it, but as for him-
“Her Majesty requested it – and since we’re here at her pleasure...” Antony’s own gown is long, foppish, brazenly open at the chest, and Posca swears he sees a tattooed serpent, coiling around Antony’s breast. An all-too-fitting image- “This is hardly Rome.”
“No, but Egypt is a vassal state of hers, not the other way around, the last I noted.” Posca’s tone is measured but his words are sharp as arrows, and they hit Antony with deadly accuracy.
“And are you in charge?” Antony appraises Posca, cool, calculating, but where lesser men would cower, Posca merely raises an eyebrow.
“No, but when Caesar was here-“
Antony may be a humiliated man but he’s no fool, and his face flushes purple in rage at the unspoken insult.
“ He tolerated your insolent tongue far too much– you might be a freedman now but I’ll have it cut out if you say so much as a word against me.” Antony is barely a breath away, his spittle hot on Posca’s cheek. “You had best learn that I’m not Caesar.”
As he leaves the room, Antony’s silence weighing on him more than any hurled invectives, Posca could not agree with Antony’s assessment any more.
***
“This is an outrage!” Jocasta is stalking their humiliatingly small quarters like a cat.
“Of course it is, my dear.” Posca frowns, realizing he doesn’t know what is such an outrage to his wife. He had tuned out her endless litany of complaints on the journey to Alexandria, but with each passing day, as his dissatisfaction grows and festers, he humors her ill humor.
“Romans, aping around like Egyptians! At least you don’t have to wear these ridiculous wigs.” She kicks savagely at what looks like a coil of black rope on the floor. “I asked how I would possibly fit my own hair under that monstrosity, and you know they told me? To shave my head! A Roman woman, to cut off my hair like-“
Posca reaches over and takes a lock of Jocasta’s dark curls with a tenderness that surprises even himself. Theirs was no love match; he still remembers Atia’s scarcely contained malicious laughter when she proposed the marriage. The Egyptian sun must be softening him.
“Let me think of something,” he says, and Jocasta curls into him, yielding as a reed of papyrus. Posca blinks, touched and surprised at her gratitude, and he kisses her forehead with an almost paternal affection.
“Do you think Antony would make an exception?“ Jocasta’s question sputters on her lips; she must see the disgust in his eyes.
“He won’t do anything that would anger-“ Posca has a thousand insults on his tongue, but his wife knows them all.
“His royal whore? I would take the worst of Rome’s patrician bitches any day,” Jocasta says, and Posca knows she is speaking from bitter experience.
***
The last time, Alexandria was a city of wonders – the delirious scents of the markets, broad streets that gleamed in the sun and seemed clean enough to eat from, compared to the filth of Rome.
Caesar, smitten with his pregnant mistress, allowed Posca to do as he wished most days, and doing as he wished often led him to the magnificent library. The wisdom of the world passed through Posca’s hand to Caesar’s library – with more than a few scrolls for his own use.
If Antony is beholden to his pregnant queen, however, Posca is beholden to Antony. No task is too small to escape Posca’s attention, and Posca is pressed to say who has the most volatile mood – Cleopatra with her swelling belly or her anxious lover.
Posca seethes at this treatment; being Antony’s freedman is infinitely more humiliating than being Caesar’s slave. When he leaves home the city is lit by the eerie, still light of dawn; when he comes home, the torches are already sputtering, in need of more oil. Jocasta would still be awake, her smile tired yet warm enough to lift Posca’s flagging spirits over the threshold.
Posca’s tongue is still too free as far as Antony is concerned, and when Posca comments on the dark smudges around Antony’s eyes with evidently too little respect, Posca finds the repugnant kohl added to his own ridiculous dress code. He comes home in a quiet rage, his hands trembling, and Jocasta knows well enough that asking what was wrong would merely be a waste of time
Jocasta has far the steadier hand when it comes to such womanly arts, even without the angry tremor still setting his fingers aquiver, and so she traces the kohl around his eyes with her light, delicate hand.
“I look utterly ridiculous,” Posca says, and it is now Jocasta’s turn to comfort him. She cups his cheek, traces her fingers around his jaw. Posca has never expected such tenderness from his wife – he is content with her loyalty and respect. But perhaps she too is realizing here in Alexandria, her and Posca are each other’s only comfort.
***
Only a few months after the birth of the divine twins, Jocasta tells him he’ll soon be a father. Her voice flutters like a sparrow, and Posca kisses her with an almost delirious jubilation, pressing his hands to her soft belly. When she’s further along, her belly as round as a sail in a fair wind, their fellow Romans, even Antony offers their hearty congratulations and well wishes.
But their well wishes, it seems, aren’t enough, and the baby, Posca’s son, is stillborn after a long, agonizing delivery. Jocasta can barely grieve over her child before she falls to a sudden, violent fever. The finest doctors in the Empire are here, and even under their care, Posca is not sure if his wife will live. He remembers Caesar’s grief over Julia, and the memory twists at his stomach, claws its way up his throat.
When he tells Antony he may well lose his wife, so soon after losing his son, Antony claps a hand on his shoulder, his eyes full of genuine compassion. Posca didn’t think the man had any left.
It’s well enough for Antony to have compassion – even the Divine Isis herself shows some regard for a freedman’s wife – but Posca sends his fervent prayers to deities with far more power. Alexandria is littered with shrines to the gods of Olympos, and he remembers all the prayers from childhood, and he offers them to any deity who will listen.
And some deity does listen, and Jocasta’s fever breaks. When her dark eyes, so weak and yet finally clear, look into his, tears come to his eyes and he feels no shame, only a relief so profound he doesn’t think he could stand without sinking to the ground.
It should frighten him, just how much and how deeply he feels for his wife, but in this place where every emotion, for good or ill, is stripped away from him, he is just thankful not only for her survival but for his capacity to still feel.
***
Posca cannot see an end to his torment. It stretches out, infinite as seas of sand or water, and only death will end it. His or Antony’s, what remains of Antony, at least.
The palace is a temple to every vice one could name, and those yet to be defined. Posca makes his visits brief, infrequent, and only as necessary. For a man in a drug-addled haze, parts of Antony’s mind remain razor sharp. He has yet to lose his taste for cruelty.
Avenues for escape back to Rome are too dangerous to contemplate. The boats in the harbor mock him with the promise of returning to a place where his life doesn’t hinge on the whims of a mad sadist. Antony’s spies are as ever present as Posca’s own shadow, and Antony has made painfully clear the cost of disobeying him.
Still, he has a vain, foolish hope that he will not die in this forsaken place. It is his wife’s hope, naïve as it may be, but she believes in it with such cheerful fervor that Posca cannot help but make certain preparations.
Antony must have been incredibly arrogant to entrust his most sensitive documents to his freedman. Especially his will, which will damn Antony far worse than any overblown, long-winded treatise. Posca keeps them well hidden, waiting for even the promise of a chance to expose Antony’s secrets.
That chance seems almost arranged by the gods themselves. Octavian, in a shrewd maneuver worthy of the Julii, sends his mother and his sister, Antony’s lover and his wife, to plead an audience. It’s not surprising that Antony dismisses them without so much a kind or angry word, but when he orders Posca to ensure their departure, shock nearly strangles his reply.
When he tells Jocasta, the look of blank disbelief on her face must have mirrored his own. Her dark eyes widen, her mouth agape in a perfect ‘o’, and Posca muffles her cry of delirious joy with his lips.
“Pack quickly! Tell the guards you’re going to the tailor, if they ask.” Posca slides the document case from its hiding place, ensuring everything they need to secure their status and ruin Antony is inside. “Go to the harbor, ask for the ship Libertas. Wait for me there!”
He kisses her again, her arms wrapped tight about him, and she tastes as sweet as the freedom that beckons so alluringly.
***
Posca cannot help but take a small pity on Atia. Yet Atia must have known that Antony could not be faithful, that if the choice came between her and his ambition, he would cut her loose from very shaky moorings. But Antony’s ambition had deserted him in this place, along with every other virtue he once possessed.
Losing to another woman was a far harder blow to bear.
Posca can’t say how this all will end, though he feels Antony’s life will end on a sword, either his own or Octavian’s. He has the same desperate fatalism so many have shown, even those who were nothing but cowards their entire life, plunging into battles of weapons and words where death was the only likely outcome.
No such desperate urge for glory for Posca. His desire seems so much simpler, so much sweeter. To live, to survive, is not so ignoble a goal.
