artyartie

Two drabbles (one Vorenus and Pullo, one Tiro and Cicero) for this week's

rome100 prompt, Body. Spoilers for 'De Patre Vostro' and 'Philippi.'

Pullo fills every moment of the agonizing journey home with chatter. His son is silent and sulky. Vorenus is-

He’s alive, he’s awake, and even if Vorenus doesn’t have the strength to talk, he can listen.

Pullo doesn’t finish Gaia’s story until they reach the sea. He tells Vorenus about his girls, slender and dark as wheat, in the hold of a leaky ship. Tales of sultry Egyptian nights warm the cold mountain passes.

Pullo’s voice is scratchy as sand by the time they’re home, but this only gives him hope. Silence would mean he was bringing home a corpse.

**

Tiro’s hands shook as he slid a coin into the mouth and closed it, gently. They had washed the body, cleaned the mortal wound, perfumed the cold skin. Tiro could still smell bergamot on his fingers.

Better than the copper tang of blood, lurking in every breath.

They would burn the body that night, for fear that Antony would come to claim the rest. Tiro, futilely, had draped sumptuous blue cloth across the jagged stumps of the wrists.

Cicero was gone, and only this small, broken body remained. But Tiro stayed, faithful, until he lit the pyre, his head turned away.