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artyartieTitle: "A Man's Character"
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Brutus/Cicero, if you squint through the spyglass
Words: 3491
Spoilers: Through 1.8 "Caesarion"
Summary: When Antony and his daemon do the unthinkable, Cicero's life depends upon Brutus' faltering courage. (AU, fusion between 'Rome' and 'His Dark Materials). For an introduction to daemons, click here.
Many thanks to my beta,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cerebel!
Eurymosune – Cicero’s daemon, a white goose
Aleiessa – Brutus daemon, a pine marten
Aristalkys – Antony’s daemon, a panther
Eumatheia – Tiro’s daemon, a small, terrier-like dog.
Author’s Note: Historically, the Senate would have been meeting in Pompey’s Curia at this time, located on the Plains of Mars, some distance from the city. In the series, however, the Curia is explicitly located in the Forum, so when writing for Rome….besides, it makes one scene so much better.
***
“If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.”
-Julius Caesar
“Brutus and Cicero! How strange! I was just thinking of you! I received some happy news and my first thought was to come and tell you two.” Brutus and Cicero scatter like children, clutching for their daemons like they were their mothers’ skirts. Antony can only imagine what they’ve been plotting – no, that Cicero has been plotting and pouring into the boy’s ear.
He bounds up the steps, reaching to embrace Brutus before he can scurry away like his overgrown weasel of a daemon, who leaps atop the benches, keeping her beady eyes fixed on Antony.
Brutus trusted him once, loved him once, and now it was this overwrought coward, whose daemon cranes her neck, glaring instead at Aristalkys, who leisurely, deliberately prowls up the marble steps.
“And here you are! What a coincidence.” He embraces Cicero, and the man stiffens in his grasp, and he can’t help but lick the satisfaction off his lips. “Amusing how often that happens. I was walking across the Forum, thinking of a particular creature and whom should I see but the woman herself! Savage little Spanish creature, hair down to her arse.”
Brutus’ daemon is still fixated on him, ears forward, tail twitching slowly. Cicero’s daemon is perched at his feet, her gaze never leaving Aristalkys once.
Cicero may be many things, but he’s certainly not naïve.
“Everyone misjudges you, you know.” Brutus and Cicero are judging him now, Cicero most of all, his eyes bright with suspicion. “I’m a merciful man. I know that’s not my reputation, but I am. Now everyone’s entitled to a few mistakes. I should know, I’ve made one or two myself. I’ve done things…things I’m ashamed to think of.”
He leaves the rest of the sentence unsaid, but there is an entire future full of the potential for shame. What he is going to do right now, however, he will not grieve it, and he will not feel shame.
It’s difficult to regret something entirely deserved.
“We are all of us imperfect in our way,” Cicero says, in that silky, treacherous voice, the words as hollow as his heart. He descends the steps, in a laughably casual manner, his daemon keeping to the far edges of the steps, away from Aristalkys.
Antony lifts up his foot, imperiling Cicero’s escape, his daemon doing likewise by merely imposing the sheer bulk of her body in the only escape path.
“We are all of us, imperfect,” Antony repeats, but it’s no concession. It’s a bitter accusation, wrapped in cloying tones.
Brutus looks like a child, his eyes wide with fear, and his daemon’s tail cuts a rapid swath through the air. He’ll thank Antony for this later, truly he will.
“Give me your hands, brother Cicero…” Cicero offers them, unthinking, and Antony’s fingers close around his soft, fleshy wrists. Below, Aristalkys lowers her head and bares her teeth at Cicero’s terrified daemon. “With all my heart, I forgive you.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Cicero’s words waver, like a leaf in the first killing breeze of winter.
“Nothing escapes me. If a pigeon died on the Aventine I hear of it.” Antony won’t stand for such a callous abuse of Caesar’s pardon. It smacks of ingratitude, and it reeks of treason.
Words are hardly enough to stop a man like Cicero, who can dance around them or twist their meaning into something unrecognizable. No, words won’t do at all, and Aristalkys looks up, but she needs no permission from him.
In a blur of sleek black fur and a flurry of white feathers, his daemon has Cicero’s clutched within her jaws, hissing and shrieking in fury. Antony drops Cicero’s hands, a mere afterthought, leaving the man to stagger against the benches, eyes bright against the shadows.
Brutus is still as Pompey’s statue, his daemon writhing in his arms, as his eyes fix on the floor. He’s as much a coward as the old man – or Cicero’s cowardice is as virulent as a plague. He can’t even bring himself to watch, much less to save his so-called friend.
It will all be over soon enough.
“So be assured, brother, if I ever again hear your name connected with murmurs of treachery, I will-“ Aristalkys shakes her head, and Cicero sinks to his knees, sweat beading at his temples. He looks up at Antony, pleading, but he doesn’t feel the least scrap of compassion, only a dizzying, heady sort of triumph. Gods only know long he’s wanted Cicero on his knees. “Maybe I should show you.”
In Alesia, the Romans bound their daemons to themselves with leather cords, hemp, chains if they could, but the Gauls were ruthlessly determined. No one could say that Caesar’s men feared death, but this barbarism made death itself shudder. Antony remembers one centurion, an empty leash swinging from his belt, screaming until his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed in the sea of mud that surrounded them.
Cicero’s strangled cry isn’t half as so loud as they storm through the door to the Curia, into the bright sunshine. But it has no less horror or anguish than the young man who died, utterly and incomprehensibly alone, at his feet. The keening wail of loss sets Antony’s hair on edge, and for a moment, he nearly turns around.
But even if they had all put away their swords, this is still war. There is no place for compassion any more.
***
“No courage is so bold as that forced by utter desperation.”
-Seneca the Younger
Antony doesn’t make it hard to find him. He and his daemon, cutting across the Forum like a trireme, leave humans and daemons alike stunned and frightened in their wake. Brutus can still hear Eurymosune, her hiss more like a death rattle, and sees the terrified flapping of her wings is nothing more than a spastic twitching.
She’s dying, they’re dying, and a vision of Cicero’s pale, still body splayed against the cold floor of the Curia flashes in Brutus’ mind. Antony cannot possibly be doing this, it’s murder, it’s beyond murder, but as for his daemon-
At Pharsalus, Aristalkys fought like a beast out of Hades, ripping through his forces’ daemons with a savagery that went beyond fury. She had a hunger, Gods only knew for what, and the carnage of that day hardly sated it.
“Caesar pardoned him! What will happen if you kill him?” Aleiessa dashes ahead of him, and Antony’s daemon turns so fast, her tail cracks above her head. Brutus catches his breath not out of any actual pain, but of the fear of it. Antony turns, with deliberate hesitation, to meet his untimely opponents, and the promise of fear becomes a guarantee.
The gleam in Antony’s eyes is ravenous as he closes the distance between them, as if it is his teeth sinking into the daemon’s slender neck. He draws his hand across his mouth, and Brutus expects to see a smear of red.
“Maybe he’ll give me a space in his triumph when he comes home, and put that little whore’s head on a pike for everyone to see.”
The fur at the nape of Aleiessa’s neck bristles, and she growls, low and deep in the throat. No sound comes out of Brutus’ mouth this time, no defiant answer, not even a plea for mercy, only a bubbling of panic fluttering in his chest, rising into his throat.
Eurymosune hangs limp in her captor’s jaws, rivulets of red dripping onto the pavement. At least she can’t see the shame frozen on his face, at least Cicero will die blissfully ignorant of the depths of his cowardice.
“If you try anything like him, if you send your mother’s spies after me, by Juno’s cunt, you’ll wish I had killed you as quickly.” Antony envelops Brutus, one hand rough against his cheek, nails digging into the skin. If he can kill a man in the harsh light of day Gods only know what he’ll do to him. Brutus clutches at Antony’s wrist, and as fingers cinch around flesh and bone, teeth sink into skin and the world turns itself inside out.
Thoughts are swirling in such a maelstrom in his head it takes a heartbeat before he realizes they aren’t his own. His fingers feel like fangs as Antony’s rage and confusion spirals, sick and red, in his brain.
It feels so wrong it sets Brutus’ teeth on edge, but he has a precarious advantage, before Antony realizes what he’s done, even if he never intended anything like this. He inhales, and for a second he can feel the tickle of whiskers on his cheek. For a moment it’s as if he and his daemon are one, inseparable and invincible against the blind fury lashing against them.
That fury coalesces, takes shape, darker than shadows yet anything but insubstantial. Aristalkys, and his breath catches in his throat, but there’s something beyond her, so faint he can barely feel it, and yet so familiar he cannot doubt it for a moment.
Eurysomune is alive, Cicero is still alive, and while he breathes Brutus has hope, which if he could hold it in his hands, would shame the sun. His own helplessness tumbles away, and the flicker grows into a flame, into an inferno, and he sends up a prayer to the divine fire before unleashing the conflagration into the darkness.
Aristalkys roars in pain, and Antony’s nails rake his cheek as he rips his hand away. Brutus’ world swims for a moment, but he doesn’t waver, unlike Antony, who staggers like a drunkard. Aleissa, making a stuttering growl, crouches over Eurosymune, lying free but so very, very still, but Aristalkys can hardly stand, much less make another attack.
“You fucking-“ Antony grips his head and whatever curse he intended is lost in a low, agonized groan. His eyes are bright, anger and pain in equal measure, and the memory of the maelstrom gusts about in the back of Brutus’ mind. If he opens his mouth, he’s not sure whose voice would emerge.
But there is a sea of other voices, murmurs, gasps, mumblings, and sharp growls, rumbling and heaving like these were the streets of Herculaneum and not Rome. The Forum mob, their terror quashed, for the moment, by their curiosity, have recognized bloodied heap beneath Aleissa. Brutus doubts they truly care whether Cicero lives or dies, but they care, very much, of the utterly barbarian method of his attempted dispatching.
Antony may be many things but he’s no fool, and he lays a hand on his daemon’s head, and she rouses, but slowly, and the mob senses blood. They close in, and no doubt the last of those loyal to whoever is left fighting are at the forward ranks. They hurl insults and curses sharp as stones, and yet none of them hit their mark – Antony’s pride is stronger than any armor. Aristalkys roars, and however halfhearted the sound, the crowd scatters back, and flings their abuse from a safer distance.
“Brutus!” Aleissa’s sharp yelp of alarm skitters off the stones, and he suddenly feels as if those stones, as if the very earth, is vanishing beneath his feet. The danger has passed and yet it hasn’t passed at all.
His daemon nuzzles the frozen curve of Eurysomune’s neck, her paws brushing across bloodied feathers, and her eyes are wide, panicked. “I can’t…she’s not…” Beneath Aleissa’s claws, Brutus can see a faint shimmering of gold, and a terrifying memory leaps into Brutus’ mind and into his hands as he reaches to cradle Eurysomune in his arms.
She’s as fragile and unyielding as glass, her feathers cold to the touch, and even as his sense of reason screams at him that what he’s doing is unforgivably wrong, he realizes there’s nothing that could possibly affront his rationality.
Where a soul should have been, there was nothing, only the faintest hints of a bitter, chill wind. The golden sparkle glistens, hangs in the air, and now there is nothing beneath Brutus’ feet but a yawning chasm.
Faces and buildings blur as he races back to the Curia, willing his legs not to falter and the faint spark of life not to flicker out in his arms.
***
“Over here! He’s – I think he’s still alive!”
Cicero is lying far too still against the marble, draped across the steps like a sumptuous and forgotten shawl, slipped from a woman’s shoulders. His face is anything but peaceful – it’s shadowed by a ghost of agony and with a twist of guilt, Brutus wonder’s if it will haunt him the rest of his life.
But he’s alive, and the relief at those words washes away any worry for the future, if only for the moment. Brutus, with a somewhat painful reluctance, gently places Eurymosune so that she’s cradled in the arc of his prone body. The golden sheen on her bloodstained wings spirals into the air and vanishes before Brutus can even blink, and beneath his feet Cicero exhales, the pained lines easing from the corners of his eyes.
Relief floods through Brutus, making his knees buckle, and he staggers to his knees, ignoring the pain as his limbs meet unyielding marble. And yet he reaches out his hand, not trusting the proof of his eyes alone. His fingers nearly brush against Eurysomune’s down before Aleissa looks at him with such guilt that he lays them across Cicero’s temple instead, brushing away disheveled, dampened tendrils of hair.
He can’t possibly begin to explain the tumult of emotions, burning beneath his skin – any explanation would simply vanish into oblivion, like the shimmer of gold before it.
***
“Change in all things is sweet.”
-Aristotle
Cicero doesn’t know how long he’ll last under Brutus and Tiro’s ministrations.
Brutus refuses to let him leave so long as he shows the slightest sign of weakness, and Tiro refuses to await him at home. Eumatheia, Tiro’s daemon, a small canine with bright eyes and quick ears, shows Aleissa civility only out of respect for her patrician rank, and Aleissa has enough tact not to snap at daemon of a slave.
A day or so more and the last symptom, a tremor in his hands that has turned numerous glasses into future mosaics, should subside enough for both Tiro and Brutus’ brooding, watchful gazes. Brutus says little to him, and what passes his lips is piffle befitting neither of them. But Cicero listens, smiles when he feels Brutus desires it, Eurysomune bows her head sympathetically when the words warrant it, and yet it’s all an elaborate dance, a prologue that’s worn out its welcome when the dialogue refuses to show its head.
Neither of them are rash men, by any means, but when Brutus’ every gesture is filled with a lingering shame, Cicero is left with the choice between bold action and leaving the suddenly gaping gulf between them unbridged.
Eurysomune has not left his side since the attack, and yet there’s a keen ache in his heart when Brutus’ hands clasp his, when Aleissa tends to his daemon’s lingering wounds with the gentlest touch. He cannot let this chasm linger, he cannot let Brutus continue thinking he’s done something wrong.
He clears his throat and Tiro all but apparates at his side, with the swift silence only the best of slaves possess. “There’s a volume of Aristotle I would like – the Peri Daemonos.” He smiles softly, hoping to appease the jealousy he can see in the twitch of Eumatheia’s ears. “No one knows my library so well as you.”
“Is there anything else, Dominus?” Cicero shakes his head, and Eumatheia’s tail slinks between her legs, but not before she growls accusingly at Aleissa, who has the grace to look mildly affronted.
No, he cannot possibly have Tiro here to transcribe this conversation.
“I think you’ll appreciate this volume,” he says to Brutus kindly, and the younger man takes his well-worn seat in the chair besides Cicero’s bed. “If you can look past his arguments on the nature of the soul, of course, his discourse on the nature of daemons is quite illuminating.”
Brutus cocks his head, but Cicero can see his hands, fidgeting fast as his own, in his lap, yet there’s only the slightest twitch in Aleissa’s tail, and her eyes fix calmly on his.
“You’re familiar with his theories on friendship?” Aleissa nods rapidly, and Brutus’ assent isn’t far behind her own. Cicero feels the tension in his daemon’s wings, still healing beneath his hands, and he reassuringly strokes around her wounds.
“They’re rather touching, his sentiments on friendship, but a little implausible.” Brutus smile is hesitant as his voice, as if he’s afraid of offering up the wrong answer. The space between his eyes furrows, making him look far older than he possibly should. “Even if a single soul could inhabit two bodies…” He looks between their daemons and then as if the topic of their conversation has struck him for the first time, quickly away, studying the mural on the opposite wall.
“I thought it was philosophical foolishness myself until-“ Cicero chooses his words carefully, for just the wrong one and all would be undone. “You could not have done what you did if it wasn’t true.”
Brutus’ apology comes tumbling out, but he quiets as Cicero lifts a hand, blessedly free from tremor. “Even I don’t have as much concern for my life as you do, and there are simply not enough words to ever thank you. But knowing that you won’t carry around this shame - I must that ask of you, if only to appease my guilt.”
Aleissa leaps onto the bed with a single graceful bound. She reaches to nuzzle her head into the curve of his daemon’s neck, yet as Cicero respectfully pulls his other hand away, she fixes him with such a commanding stare his hand is frozen where it is, save for the single twitch of his ring finger.
“No, please, I don’t require anything to make us even-“ Now it is his voice that breaks like a gawky youth’s, but Brutus’ hand is suddenly entangled in his own, warm and reassuring, and the keening ache is gone, even if another, deeper longing still remains.
“You can’t demand something that I’d gladly offer, even if I seem to be making a fool of myself doing so.” The corner of Brutus’ mouth twitches into a smile both shy and inviting, and Cicero thinks he can glimpse his astonished countenance, mirrored in Brutus’ eyes. “You don’t even have to, and if you did, it could be an experiment – theoretical metaphysics or whatever they’re calling it-“
“Experimental metaphysics,” he says, unable to keep the pedantry from his voice, even as his lips quirk to match that of his frightfully eager student. “And you are only a fool for bestowing your friendship – for bestowing...this…on someone so unworthy of it.”
His fingers curl above the space between Aleissa’s ears, and even the tentative first brush of his hand raises a shiver all up his arm. He can feel Brutus’ hand tremble beneath his, but it goes far beyond sinew and muscle and bone. He cradles the nape of Aleissa’s neck, and a light that isn’t light and a heat that isn’t heat bursts into his head.
Past these cheap cages of words and thoughts he glimpses something that would make Aristotle weep, and he wonders if he has wept at this sensation that defies all definition. The other light-not light envelops his heat-not heat and memories and emotions that are not his and yet so dear race beyond his ability to comprehend them all. There is no fear, no breathless panic, only philia, painfully shy and genuine, extending to every horizon. With a burst of laughter that leaves a arc of silver stars dancing overhead, he realizes whether this love is for him or from him is immaterial, a matter only for those playing at philosophy.
Reality sets in with a shuddering jolt as they break the connection, but it still lingers, like the last hovering of light after sunset. He opens his mouth, but what are words to this but liars and deceivers? Brutus’ laughs, his shoulders trembling, and Cicero can only smile impudently at the younger man’s rebuke.
“You don’t have to say a word.”
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Brutus/Cicero, if you squint through the spyglass
Words: 3491
Spoilers: Through 1.8 "Caesarion"
Summary: When Antony and his daemon do the unthinkable, Cicero's life depends upon Brutus' faltering courage. (AU, fusion between 'Rome' and 'His Dark Materials). For an introduction to daemons, click here.
Many thanks to my beta,
cerebel!Eurymosune – Cicero’s daemon, a white goose
Aleiessa – Brutus daemon, a pine marten
Aristalkys – Antony’s daemon, a panther
Eumatheia – Tiro’s daemon, a small, terrier-like dog.
Author’s Note: Historically, the Senate would have been meeting in Pompey’s Curia at this time, located on the Plains of Mars, some distance from the city. In the series, however, the Curia is explicitly located in the Forum, so when writing for Rome….besides, it makes one scene so much better.
***
“If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.”
-Julius Caesar
“Brutus and Cicero! How strange! I was just thinking of you! I received some happy news and my first thought was to come and tell you two.” Brutus and Cicero scatter like children, clutching for their daemons like they were their mothers’ skirts. Antony can only imagine what they’ve been plotting – no, that Cicero has been plotting and pouring into the boy’s ear.
He bounds up the steps, reaching to embrace Brutus before he can scurry away like his overgrown weasel of a daemon, who leaps atop the benches, keeping her beady eyes fixed on Antony.
Brutus trusted him once, loved him once, and now it was this overwrought coward, whose daemon cranes her neck, glaring instead at Aristalkys, who leisurely, deliberately prowls up the marble steps.
“And here you are! What a coincidence.” He embraces Cicero, and the man stiffens in his grasp, and he can’t help but lick the satisfaction off his lips. “Amusing how often that happens. I was walking across the Forum, thinking of a particular creature and whom should I see but the woman herself! Savage little Spanish creature, hair down to her arse.”
Brutus’ daemon is still fixated on him, ears forward, tail twitching slowly. Cicero’s daemon is perched at his feet, her gaze never leaving Aristalkys once.
Cicero may be many things, but he’s certainly not naïve.
“Everyone misjudges you, you know.” Brutus and Cicero are judging him now, Cicero most of all, his eyes bright with suspicion. “I’m a merciful man. I know that’s not my reputation, but I am. Now everyone’s entitled to a few mistakes. I should know, I’ve made one or two myself. I’ve done things…things I’m ashamed to think of.”
He leaves the rest of the sentence unsaid, but there is an entire future full of the potential for shame. What he is going to do right now, however, he will not grieve it, and he will not feel shame.
It’s difficult to regret something entirely deserved.
“We are all of us imperfect in our way,” Cicero says, in that silky, treacherous voice, the words as hollow as his heart. He descends the steps, in a laughably casual manner, his daemon keeping to the far edges of the steps, away from Aristalkys.
Antony lifts up his foot, imperiling Cicero’s escape, his daemon doing likewise by merely imposing the sheer bulk of her body in the only escape path.
“We are all of us, imperfect,” Antony repeats, but it’s no concession. It’s a bitter accusation, wrapped in cloying tones.
Brutus looks like a child, his eyes wide with fear, and his daemon’s tail cuts a rapid swath through the air. He’ll thank Antony for this later, truly he will.
“Give me your hands, brother Cicero…” Cicero offers them, unthinking, and Antony’s fingers close around his soft, fleshy wrists. Below, Aristalkys lowers her head and bares her teeth at Cicero’s terrified daemon. “With all my heart, I forgive you.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Cicero’s words waver, like a leaf in the first killing breeze of winter.
“Nothing escapes me. If a pigeon died on the Aventine I hear of it.” Antony won’t stand for such a callous abuse of Caesar’s pardon. It smacks of ingratitude, and it reeks of treason.
Words are hardly enough to stop a man like Cicero, who can dance around them or twist their meaning into something unrecognizable. No, words won’t do at all, and Aristalkys looks up, but she needs no permission from him.
In a blur of sleek black fur and a flurry of white feathers, his daemon has Cicero’s clutched within her jaws, hissing and shrieking in fury. Antony drops Cicero’s hands, a mere afterthought, leaving the man to stagger against the benches, eyes bright against the shadows.
Brutus is still as Pompey’s statue, his daemon writhing in his arms, as his eyes fix on the floor. He’s as much a coward as the old man – or Cicero’s cowardice is as virulent as a plague. He can’t even bring himself to watch, much less to save his so-called friend.
It will all be over soon enough.
“So be assured, brother, if I ever again hear your name connected with murmurs of treachery, I will-“ Aristalkys shakes her head, and Cicero sinks to his knees, sweat beading at his temples. He looks up at Antony, pleading, but he doesn’t feel the least scrap of compassion, only a dizzying, heady sort of triumph. Gods only know long he’s wanted Cicero on his knees. “Maybe I should show you.”
In Alesia, the Romans bound their daemons to themselves with leather cords, hemp, chains if they could, but the Gauls were ruthlessly determined. No one could say that Caesar’s men feared death, but this barbarism made death itself shudder. Antony remembers one centurion, an empty leash swinging from his belt, screaming until his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed in the sea of mud that surrounded them.
Cicero’s strangled cry isn’t half as so loud as they storm through the door to the Curia, into the bright sunshine. But it has no less horror or anguish than the young man who died, utterly and incomprehensibly alone, at his feet. The keening wail of loss sets Antony’s hair on edge, and for a moment, he nearly turns around.
But even if they had all put away their swords, this is still war. There is no place for compassion any more.
***
“No courage is so bold as that forced by utter desperation.”
-Seneca the Younger
Antony doesn’t make it hard to find him. He and his daemon, cutting across the Forum like a trireme, leave humans and daemons alike stunned and frightened in their wake. Brutus can still hear Eurymosune, her hiss more like a death rattle, and sees the terrified flapping of her wings is nothing more than a spastic twitching.
She’s dying, they’re dying, and a vision of Cicero’s pale, still body splayed against the cold floor of the Curia flashes in Brutus’ mind. Antony cannot possibly be doing this, it’s murder, it’s beyond murder, but as for his daemon-
At Pharsalus, Aristalkys fought like a beast out of Hades, ripping through his forces’ daemons with a savagery that went beyond fury. She had a hunger, Gods only knew for what, and the carnage of that day hardly sated it.
“Caesar pardoned him! What will happen if you kill him?” Aleiessa dashes ahead of him, and Antony’s daemon turns so fast, her tail cracks above her head. Brutus catches his breath not out of any actual pain, but of the fear of it. Antony turns, with deliberate hesitation, to meet his untimely opponents, and the promise of fear becomes a guarantee.
The gleam in Antony’s eyes is ravenous as he closes the distance between them, as if it is his teeth sinking into the daemon’s slender neck. He draws his hand across his mouth, and Brutus expects to see a smear of red.
“Maybe he’ll give me a space in his triumph when he comes home, and put that little whore’s head on a pike for everyone to see.”
The fur at the nape of Aleiessa’s neck bristles, and she growls, low and deep in the throat. No sound comes out of Brutus’ mouth this time, no defiant answer, not even a plea for mercy, only a bubbling of panic fluttering in his chest, rising into his throat.
Eurymosune hangs limp in her captor’s jaws, rivulets of red dripping onto the pavement. At least she can’t see the shame frozen on his face, at least Cicero will die blissfully ignorant of the depths of his cowardice.
“If you try anything like him, if you send your mother’s spies after me, by Juno’s cunt, you’ll wish I had killed you as quickly.” Antony envelops Brutus, one hand rough against his cheek, nails digging into the skin. If he can kill a man in the harsh light of day Gods only know what he’ll do to him. Brutus clutches at Antony’s wrist, and as fingers cinch around flesh and bone, teeth sink into skin and the world turns itself inside out.
Thoughts are swirling in such a maelstrom in his head it takes a heartbeat before he realizes they aren’t his own. His fingers feel like fangs as Antony’s rage and confusion spirals, sick and red, in his brain.
It feels so wrong it sets Brutus’ teeth on edge, but he has a precarious advantage, before Antony realizes what he’s done, even if he never intended anything like this. He inhales, and for a second he can feel the tickle of whiskers on his cheek. For a moment it’s as if he and his daemon are one, inseparable and invincible against the blind fury lashing against them.
That fury coalesces, takes shape, darker than shadows yet anything but insubstantial. Aristalkys, and his breath catches in his throat, but there’s something beyond her, so faint he can barely feel it, and yet so familiar he cannot doubt it for a moment.
Eurysomune is alive, Cicero is still alive, and while he breathes Brutus has hope, which if he could hold it in his hands, would shame the sun. His own helplessness tumbles away, and the flicker grows into a flame, into an inferno, and he sends up a prayer to the divine fire before unleashing the conflagration into the darkness.
Aristalkys roars in pain, and Antony’s nails rake his cheek as he rips his hand away. Brutus’ world swims for a moment, but he doesn’t waver, unlike Antony, who staggers like a drunkard. Aleissa, making a stuttering growl, crouches over Eurosymune, lying free but so very, very still, but Aristalkys can hardly stand, much less make another attack.
“You fucking-“ Antony grips his head and whatever curse he intended is lost in a low, agonized groan. His eyes are bright, anger and pain in equal measure, and the memory of the maelstrom gusts about in the back of Brutus’ mind. If he opens his mouth, he’s not sure whose voice would emerge.
But there is a sea of other voices, murmurs, gasps, mumblings, and sharp growls, rumbling and heaving like these were the streets of Herculaneum and not Rome. The Forum mob, their terror quashed, for the moment, by their curiosity, have recognized bloodied heap beneath Aleissa. Brutus doubts they truly care whether Cicero lives or dies, but they care, very much, of the utterly barbarian method of his attempted dispatching.
Antony may be many things but he’s no fool, and he lays a hand on his daemon’s head, and she rouses, but slowly, and the mob senses blood. They close in, and no doubt the last of those loyal to whoever is left fighting are at the forward ranks. They hurl insults and curses sharp as stones, and yet none of them hit their mark – Antony’s pride is stronger than any armor. Aristalkys roars, and however halfhearted the sound, the crowd scatters back, and flings their abuse from a safer distance.
“Brutus!” Aleissa’s sharp yelp of alarm skitters off the stones, and he suddenly feels as if those stones, as if the very earth, is vanishing beneath his feet. The danger has passed and yet it hasn’t passed at all.
His daemon nuzzles the frozen curve of Eurysomune’s neck, her paws brushing across bloodied feathers, and her eyes are wide, panicked. “I can’t…she’s not…” Beneath Aleissa’s claws, Brutus can see a faint shimmering of gold, and a terrifying memory leaps into Brutus’ mind and into his hands as he reaches to cradle Eurysomune in his arms.
She’s as fragile and unyielding as glass, her feathers cold to the touch, and even as his sense of reason screams at him that what he’s doing is unforgivably wrong, he realizes there’s nothing that could possibly affront his rationality.
Where a soul should have been, there was nothing, only the faintest hints of a bitter, chill wind. The golden sparkle glistens, hangs in the air, and now there is nothing beneath Brutus’ feet but a yawning chasm.
Faces and buildings blur as he races back to the Curia, willing his legs not to falter and the faint spark of life not to flicker out in his arms.
***
“Over here! He’s – I think he’s still alive!”
Cicero is lying far too still against the marble, draped across the steps like a sumptuous and forgotten shawl, slipped from a woman’s shoulders. His face is anything but peaceful – it’s shadowed by a ghost of agony and with a twist of guilt, Brutus wonder’s if it will haunt him the rest of his life.
But he’s alive, and the relief at those words washes away any worry for the future, if only for the moment. Brutus, with a somewhat painful reluctance, gently places Eurymosune so that she’s cradled in the arc of his prone body. The golden sheen on her bloodstained wings spirals into the air and vanishes before Brutus can even blink, and beneath his feet Cicero exhales, the pained lines easing from the corners of his eyes.
Relief floods through Brutus, making his knees buckle, and he staggers to his knees, ignoring the pain as his limbs meet unyielding marble. And yet he reaches out his hand, not trusting the proof of his eyes alone. His fingers nearly brush against Eurysomune’s down before Aleissa looks at him with such guilt that he lays them across Cicero’s temple instead, brushing away disheveled, dampened tendrils of hair.
He can’t possibly begin to explain the tumult of emotions, burning beneath his skin – any explanation would simply vanish into oblivion, like the shimmer of gold before it.
***
“Change in all things is sweet.”
-Aristotle
Cicero doesn’t know how long he’ll last under Brutus and Tiro’s ministrations.
Brutus refuses to let him leave so long as he shows the slightest sign of weakness, and Tiro refuses to await him at home. Eumatheia, Tiro’s daemon, a small canine with bright eyes and quick ears, shows Aleissa civility only out of respect for her patrician rank, and Aleissa has enough tact not to snap at daemon of a slave.
A day or so more and the last symptom, a tremor in his hands that has turned numerous glasses into future mosaics, should subside enough for both Tiro and Brutus’ brooding, watchful gazes. Brutus says little to him, and what passes his lips is piffle befitting neither of them. But Cicero listens, smiles when he feels Brutus desires it, Eurysomune bows her head sympathetically when the words warrant it, and yet it’s all an elaborate dance, a prologue that’s worn out its welcome when the dialogue refuses to show its head.
Neither of them are rash men, by any means, but when Brutus’ every gesture is filled with a lingering shame, Cicero is left with the choice between bold action and leaving the suddenly gaping gulf between them unbridged.
Eurysomune has not left his side since the attack, and yet there’s a keen ache in his heart when Brutus’ hands clasp his, when Aleissa tends to his daemon’s lingering wounds with the gentlest touch. He cannot let this chasm linger, he cannot let Brutus continue thinking he’s done something wrong.
He clears his throat and Tiro all but apparates at his side, with the swift silence only the best of slaves possess. “There’s a volume of Aristotle I would like – the Peri Daemonos.” He smiles softly, hoping to appease the jealousy he can see in the twitch of Eumatheia’s ears. “No one knows my library so well as you.”
“Is there anything else, Dominus?” Cicero shakes his head, and Eumatheia’s tail slinks between her legs, but not before she growls accusingly at Aleissa, who has the grace to look mildly affronted.
No, he cannot possibly have Tiro here to transcribe this conversation.
“I think you’ll appreciate this volume,” he says to Brutus kindly, and the younger man takes his well-worn seat in the chair besides Cicero’s bed. “If you can look past his arguments on the nature of the soul, of course, his discourse on the nature of daemons is quite illuminating.”
Brutus cocks his head, but Cicero can see his hands, fidgeting fast as his own, in his lap, yet there’s only the slightest twitch in Aleissa’s tail, and her eyes fix calmly on his.
“You’re familiar with his theories on friendship?” Aleissa nods rapidly, and Brutus’ assent isn’t far behind her own. Cicero feels the tension in his daemon’s wings, still healing beneath his hands, and he reassuringly strokes around her wounds.
“They’re rather touching, his sentiments on friendship, but a little implausible.” Brutus smile is hesitant as his voice, as if he’s afraid of offering up the wrong answer. The space between his eyes furrows, making him look far older than he possibly should. “Even if a single soul could inhabit two bodies…” He looks between their daemons and then as if the topic of their conversation has struck him for the first time, quickly away, studying the mural on the opposite wall.
“I thought it was philosophical foolishness myself until-“ Cicero chooses his words carefully, for just the wrong one and all would be undone. “You could not have done what you did if it wasn’t true.”
Brutus’ apology comes tumbling out, but he quiets as Cicero lifts a hand, blessedly free from tremor. “Even I don’t have as much concern for my life as you do, and there are simply not enough words to ever thank you. But knowing that you won’t carry around this shame - I must that ask of you, if only to appease my guilt.”
Aleissa leaps onto the bed with a single graceful bound. She reaches to nuzzle her head into the curve of his daemon’s neck, yet as Cicero respectfully pulls his other hand away, she fixes him with such a commanding stare his hand is frozen where it is, save for the single twitch of his ring finger.
“No, please, I don’t require anything to make us even-“ Now it is his voice that breaks like a gawky youth’s, but Brutus’ hand is suddenly entangled in his own, warm and reassuring, and the keening ache is gone, even if another, deeper longing still remains.
“You can’t demand something that I’d gladly offer, even if I seem to be making a fool of myself doing so.” The corner of Brutus’ mouth twitches into a smile both shy and inviting, and Cicero thinks he can glimpse his astonished countenance, mirrored in Brutus’ eyes. “You don’t even have to, and if you did, it could be an experiment – theoretical metaphysics or whatever they’re calling it-“
“Experimental metaphysics,” he says, unable to keep the pedantry from his voice, even as his lips quirk to match that of his frightfully eager student. “And you are only a fool for bestowing your friendship – for bestowing...this…on someone so unworthy of it.”
His fingers curl above the space between Aleissa’s ears, and even the tentative first brush of his hand raises a shiver all up his arm. He can feel Brutus’ hand tremble beneath his, but it goes far beyond sinew and muscle and bone. He cradles the nape of Aleissa’s neck, and a light that isn’t light and a heat that isn’t heat bursts into his head.
Past these cheap cages of words and thoughts he glimpses something that would make Aristotle weep, and he wonders if he has wept at this sensation that defies all definition. The other light-not light envelops his heat-not heat and memories and emotions that are not his and yet so dear race beyond his ability to comprehend them all. There is no fear, no breathless panic, only philia, painfully shy and genuine, extending to every horizon. With a burst of laughter that leaves a arc of silver stars dancing overhead, he realizes whether this love is for him or from him is immaterial, a matter only for those playing at philosophy.
Reality sets in with a shuddering jolt as they break the connection, but it still lingers, like the last hovering of light after sunset. He opens his mouth, but what are words to this but liars and deceivers? Brutus’ laughs, his shoulders trembling, and Cicero can only smile impudently at the younger man’s rebuke.
“You don’t have to say a word.”
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Date: 2008-01-24 03:32 am (UTC)You took on a considerable challenge with this piece, and you've succeeded brilliantly. Congratulations!
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Date: 2008-01-24 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-25 03:49 am (UTC)I can't wait to read what happens next.
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Date: 2008-01-25 04:10 am (UTC)The next chapter should take a lot less time to write, and should bump up the rating a notch! But thanks for reading! Hope you can come back to Brutus once you 'take a break' from Villiers!
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Date: 2008-02-04 10:54 pm (UTC)I don't want to gush or anything, but I love how this written, so beautifully done and paints a wonderful picture.
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Date: 2008-02-05 05:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-05 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-14 05:58 am (UTC)