2 Roman Oneshots
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tr_ficTitle: The Mist of A Memory
Fandom: Original
Characters: OMC & OFC, several other original characters
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: “Tell me the secrets of a world you used to live in” for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
writerverse
WARNINGS: violence, implications of underage noncon & noncon (not explicit)
Words: 1,717
Summary: The Roman General asks his wife about her life before she came to Rome.
A/N: this is sort of the Roman Empire, with maybe a few accidental geographical/tribal differences.
If you asked who the greatest living general was, they would tell you that since Cesar’s death, Maximus Lucius would be the next. He had gone to Gaul and conquered a rebellion, not just one, but three. He was wise and agile enough to avoid the snares of politics. Kind, gallant, and pleasant company were the things many of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the Empire would say. He was a frequent dinner guest for many and had never once given cause to outstep his bounds.
But it was his critics that would be quick to speak of his one flaw, the one that could rile his temper and flare his aggression. That flaw would be of the beautiful slave he bought from the Senator Severus, and who he later married.
She was an oddity for Rome. A pale ghost with unblemished skin and dark hair who never spoke. She was no mute, however. The aging Severus had warned Maximus of her quick tongue and sharp nails that she had often used against him. Telling him that he was making a mistake of his purchase, she had a temper and was violent. Still, Maximus had bought her anyway and found that all the things Severus had told him about her had been false. She had not once spoken to him to tell him violent things, nor, in their close proximity to one another on a frequent basis, had caused him injury.
She had been his slave for a year and a half, his wife for the last half of the second year. Still, she did not speak often, no matter how often Maximus encouraged her to.
They lay there together, in the moonlight of their bedroom chamber in Rome. Neither were asleep; Maximus knew her breathing like he knew his own. He watched her with greedy, lust-filled eyes. The smooth skin of her back that moved slightly with her breathing and the way she rested with her head on one arm and the other tucked under herself. She reminded him of a cat, relaxed but easily able to spring into action quickly and without resistance. She was fascinating to him.
He moved closer to her in the bed; she did not react.
She had not given him her name until the week before he had married her. In all the time he had known her, he had simply called her Fata—Fate. He hadn’t wanted to call her girl, the word Severus had given her. It seemed unnecessarily rude and coarse. He had wanted Fata to like him of her own accord, but since she had never given a name, he was forced to make one.
Now, he could murmur her true name along her skin and he did, with a reverence he saved only for her. He loved her, as much as he never thought he would love anything but duty and honor. His lips traced along her spine, her name, Aislin, fell sweetly from his lips as he moved upwards toward her shoulder. He felt her shiver under his mouth and he sucked softly at the skin of her shoulder, even paler in the silver light around them.
Maximus moved his arm around her body and pulled her gently onto her back and captured her lips with his own. Her eyes stayed open, he noticed once he had reopened his. They were dark, impossible to tell what color in this light but he knew of their blueness. He would always know that color, so burned it was into his memory from staring at her for as long as he had.
“Aislin,” he murmured again and kissed her skin softly. She felt like velvet, the smoothest and softest thing he had ever held. She would be his downfall, he had known it from the beginning but still, he would not let her go. He would never let her go.
Her hand came up to touch his face, holding his cheek lightly. She was watching him again; they always watched one another, a silent, continuous study that would never end. Maximus turned his head and kissed her palm.
“Tell me,” he asked softly, “tell me of your home and the secrets of the land you once knew.”
It was a question he was curious to know the answer to. Britain was a dream not many had seen. A Roman such as he, with his thirst to search out and conquer, needed to know what Britain was. What it looked like, who the natives were, what it was that was hidden in the mystical mists that everyone who had been there reported seeing.
She shifted again, and he could see from the look on her face that she didn’t trust him with this. It was the closest secret she had ever kept from him, apart from her name. She didn’t trust him, for fear he would use it against her, or her people, one day.
He kissed her neck softly. “I will tell no one of what you tell me. Nor will I harm any Briton with it. I swear it to you, on my honor.”
“What would a Roman be, without his honor?” She asked him in her softly accented Latin.
“Nothing.” He replied, looking into her eyes.
She watched him again, before relaxing completely into his hold. She let him kiss her throat, encouraged it by placing a minute amount of pressure on his head and a soft tilt of her neck to reveal more skin. He kissed her neck with a grateful mouth and savored the tasted her soft skin.
He felt her fingers tangle in the dark curls that covered his head and groaned softly. He loved whenever she touched him. Perhaps he was foolish, after all.
“It’s cold,” she spoke softly, words that he felt through his lips. “Colder than any winter you have ever known.”
Maximus stayed silent and kissed his way back up her throat to watch her face. She had an almost trance-like look on her face as she recalled her home. It had been almost a decade since she had been taken as a girl, Maximus knew that already. He wondered just how much she could actually remember, and how much she had romanticized into being.
Still, he wondered what she saw in those dark eyes that were no longer looking at him, or at anything else in the room. He wanted to know what she saw, what she felt, who she was with. He wanted to know, desperately.
“Wet, the rains are constant. The forests are thick and hide in mist, villages can be in open ground or hidden away to be found only by those who know where they are. Food comes and goes depending on the seasons and what animals come.” She closed her eyes and licked her lips. “The taste of salt from the sea, the spray on my skin. It’s cold, cold like ice and warms only slightly in the summer sun.”
She opened her eyes again and she had to blink to remember her surroundings. He guessed that part, when he saw the disappointment in her eyes. For a moment, Maximus wanted to return her to the sea, to the land of her home. He did not want her to be disappointed, ever, but that was something even he, the great general, could not do. At least, not immediately.
“And of the people, what do you recall?” He asked when she was watching him fully again.
Aislin turned her head slightly, her eyes flicking to the moon above her their heads. He wondered now who it was she was thinking of. Her parents? Her village community? A sweetheart, perhaps? The thought turned his stomach, jealousy spreading quickly through his veins.
Aislin turned her head back to him and smiled slightly, a rare sight for her.
“Warriors painted blue, naked as they were born, fierce and terrifying.”
Maximus raised his eyebrow and gave her a skeptical look. She let out a small amused breath, an even rarer thing.
“I’m serious. The Celts in the North paint themselves blue. They cannot be beaten in battle, not even by a Roman.”
“We will see about that.” Maximus said, flexing his muscles absently.
She turned her body in the bed and kissed him softly. His response was eager and passionate, pulling her close enough so she could come over his body and have his arms wrapped around her waist.
“Do you miss it?” He asked and watched her face.
She was quiet again, the smile gone as if it had never been and she was studying him again. Still not trusting him, she was calculating whether or not he was worthy. Maximus held her gaze and waited, hoping that he could pry into her secrets just a little bit further for one night.
“More than you can imagine.”
Maximus swallowed at the sincere depth of her confession and tightened his hold on her body. He could guess. After all, a girl of ten taken into slavery into the Roman Empire with not a single companion by a general who only had a lust for her flesh and who was forced to grow up sheltered in his household with only his company and that of his slaves, was bound to miss the peace and village comforts she had known.
He let himself believe that he was a better master, and husband, to her than Severus had ever been. He quickly went through a list in his mind. He had not struck her, ever. He had not forced himself into her bed. He had not spoken harshly to her, or about her. He did not tolerate such behaviors from his friends, family, and acquaintances. He allowed her to come and go freely from his villa, a privilege she had earned once he had made her swear not to run away. She hadn’t. He allowed her an opinion, a voice she had not been given in Severus’ household. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t so cruel a master? A lover, a husband?
Maximus turned his head and kissed her softly. “Perhaps we will see it again, together.”
When Aislin didn’t smile or seem even the least hopeful, Maximus wondered whether or not she truly wanted his company at all.
Title: One Day We Will Be Free
Fandom: Original
Characters: Rian, Aislin
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: “Deep Breath” forwriterverse
WARNINGS: violence
Words: 1,444
Summary: The Warrior remembers his true love.
A/N: this takes place in the same world as the first story.
The memory was as clear to him as any that had her in them could be. They were shrouded in a haze of time, but quick enough to clear with the distinctive sharpening of repeated thought. This one, though, it was special.
In the field above their village, the spring sun—when it finally broke through the chill and clouds of winter—would bring warmth and life to the meadows. The farmers of their village would begin to plant their crop and life would stir new activity. This had been the routine for all he had known of his life, all nine years of it.
Aislin had been almost a year younger than he, born in midwinter and not in the early spring as he had been. He could not recall so much of those early years, of course they were to be forgotten. He had been a babe, the sun of their chief, and learning to hunt small things as well as fight like a young man.
When he had been five, that’s when he could first distinctly recall a long braid, the color of charred wood and eyes that shone as brightly blue as the sky when the clouds were gone. She was always around, or perhaps, he just always noticed her. Rian made it his personal mission, it seemed, to be around her as constantly as he could.
Perhaps even then, at age five, he had loved her.
By his ninth year, they were inseparable. Even if he were to go hunting, Aislin would find a way to join him, no matter what her mother or his father would say. She was a quick learner, quicker than he had been. She had a knack for tracking large animals, such as the deer that they needed for food and fur. Rian could easily remember how she would study the ground and almost instantly know which way to go. He envied that about her.
While she had the gifts for tracking, he had cornered the talent of fishing in the river. She couldn’t do it, and he remembered laughing at her for her lack of skill. That earned him many a splash to the face as a boy.
The day in the meadow, that had been special. The tall grass surrounded them, the soil damp and slowly making their clothes wet, but they couldn’t bring themselves to care. They would dry. They both stared at the sky, at the clouds that swirled above their head. To the east, in the direction of where their feet pointed, the sound of the ocean was loud and ever-present. They often watched the sun rise together, that day had been no different.
Aislin had stopped speaking and continued to watch the clouds. Rian shifted his body, the earth having soaked his shoulder, and in the process brushed his hand along hers. He tensed for only a moment, before letting himself take hold of her hand. He relaxed immediately when her fingers wrapped around his as if it were the most natural thing that had ever been. It was natural, he had thought. Why shouldn’t he hold her hand?
He had smiled, pleased with himself, and had kept his hold until she had pulled away from him to stand up. Rian had frowned and looked at her, but she was already moving through the grass. Deciding not to be left behind, he stood and followed after her.
She twirled around in the grass, with her arms open and eyes closed. The sea breeze was cool as it moved over the cliffs’ edge and across their skin. The sun warmed them as he watched her moving. Rian smiled and felt himself compelled to move forward and hold her. His arms came around her waist and he hugged her, never wanting to let go. Aislin smiled and hugged him in return.
When they had separated, Aislin moved close to the cliff’s edge and looked out. He stayed close by and watched the waves separate their island, large as it was, from whatever lay past them on the horizon.
“What do you think is out there?” She asked in their native language, Parisii.
Rian thought about it for a moment before he looked back at her and smiled slightly. “Nothing better than what is right here.”
He always wondered if she knew that he wasn’t talking about their island.
Rian opened his eyes and looked out across the ocean again. He wasn’t a lad of nine any longer. The years that separated the present from those beautiful days of his youth to his present were long, hard, and chilling. It seemed that not even the sun had returned to the North.
The cold was ever-present and didn’t relent. The crops and harvests were minimal and not very sustaining. By the Gods mercy, the animals had stayed, but for how much longer that was not known. It seemed everything had changed the day the Romans had raided their village.
Rian’s jaw set as he thought back to that terrible day, when he had been eleven. He could say that he had held a sword against the Roman empire, but he could not take pride in it. He had been a lad, small against a Roman soldier and far outmatched. The Roman hadn’t killed him, but left his mark—a scar that ran the length of his arm. The soldier had also left his mark in other ways: an empty space that would not, could not be filled.
He wondered what had happened to her, and if she was still alive. He liked to believe that she was; the alternative was too painful for him to bear. If he allowed himself a moment to think the worst, he would think that perhaps it would have been a good thing if she had never left Britannia, as the Romans called it. If she had died on the roads southward, if she had never made it to Rome, perhaps she would have faired well compared to any fate that would have certainly become her reality in Rome.
Rian always felt a twist of nausea in his stomach any time he thought of her potential fate. She was a slave, he had no doubt of that. Had they been kind to her? Had they hurt her? Had she died? Had she married, Gods he hoped not, and had children?
The questions would never be answered, he knew. That did not make it easy to accept that he would always, always wonder what happened to the girl he had loved, and had been promised to. He had not broken that promise, not ever. Not even though she was a memory. They still might have been children when their parents had agreed to their having a match one day. It was foolish not to have done, not with how close they had been. There had never been anyone else for him, not then and not ever.
He looked out to the sea and knew that his father would come to lecture him again. It was only a matter of time. He had run off again, in search of a ghost that did not exist. Rian wasn’t stupid enough not to know that the future leader of their village shouldn’t be running after fairy tales, but he couldn’t help himself.
Any time a rumor, a possibility of a sighting, of Aislin came along, he had to go see. He had to know. It was a compulsion he would not ever give up, he knew. He couldn’t help himself. Rian had travelled to the North and braved the Celts and the Picts. He had gone west despite the Brigantes, South to the many tribes below. He had travelled hundreds of miles across the island over the years and still, she was nowhere to be found. No trace, no bone, no body, nothing. She had vanished completely.
He inhaled deeply in an effort to fight the pain, but it only constricted in his lungs and put more pressure on his chest. He did not cry, a warrior could not, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel the burden of having his soul stolen from him. Rian had long since been resigned to the only satisfaction of being able to wish the misery of a thousand deaths on the Roman who had stolen her. It was the only thought that could save him from the depths of his misery.
Rian hoped that, one day, he would see her again. It was with a heavy heart that he accepted the fact that meeting would not happen in this life, but in the next.
Fandom: Original
Characters: OMC & OFC, several other original characters
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: “Tell me the secrets of a world you used to live in” for
writerverseWARNINGS: violence, implications of underage noncon & noncon (not explicit)
Words: 1,717
Summary: The Roman General asks his wife about her life before she came to Rome.
A/N: this is sort of the Roman Empire, with maybe a few accidental geographical/tribal differences.
If you asked who the greatest living general was, they would tell you that since Cesar’s death, Maximus Lucius would be the next. He had gone to Gaul and conquered a rebellion, not just one, but three. He was wise and agile enough to avoid the snares of politics. Kind, gallant, and pleasant company were the things many of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the Empire would say. He was a frequent dinner guest for many and had never once given cause to outstep his bounds.
But it was his critics that would be quick to speak of his one flaw, the one that could rile his temper and flare his aggression. That flaw would be of the beautiful slave he bought from the Senator Severus, and who he later married.
She was an oddity for Rome. A pale ghost with unblemished skin and dark hair who never spoke. She was no mute, however. The aging Severus had warned Maximus of her quick tongue and sharp nails that she had often used against him. Telling him that he was making a mistake of his purchase, she had a temper and was violent. Still, Maximus had bought her anyway and found that all the things Severus had told him about her had been false. She had not once spoken to him to tell him violent things, nor, in their close proximity to one another on a frequent basis, had caused him injury.
She had been his slave for a year and a half, his wife for the last half of the second year. Still, she did not speak often, no matter how often Maximus encouraged her to.
They lay there together, in the moonlight of their bedroom chamber in Rome. Neither were asleep; Maximus knew her breathing like he knew his own. He watched her with greedy, lust-filled eyes. The smooth skin of her back that moved slightly with her breathing and the way she rested with her head on one arm and the other tucked under herself. She reminded him of a cat, relaxed but easily able to spring into action quickly and without resistance. She was fascinating to him.
He moved closer to her in the bed; she did not react.
She had not given him her name until the week before he had married her. In all the time he had known her, he had simply called her Fata—Fate. He hadn’t wanted to call her girl, the word Severus had given her. It seemed unnecessarily rude and coarse. He had wanted Fata to like him of her own accord, but since she had never given a name, he was forced to make one.
Now, he could murmur her true name along her skin and he did, with a reverence he saved only for her. He loved her, as much as he never thought he would love anything but duty and honor. His lips traced along her spine, her name, Aislin, fell sweetly from his lips as he moved upwards toward her shoulder. He felt her shiver under his mouth and he sucked softly at the skin of her shoulder, even paler in the silver light around them.
Maximus moved his arm around her body and pulled her gently onto her back and captured her lips with his own. Her eyes stayed open, he noticed once he had reopened his. They were dark, impossible to tell what color in this light but he knew of their blueness. He would always know that color, so burned it was into his memory from staring at her for as long as he had.
“Aislin,” he murmured again and kissed her skin softly. She felt like velvet, the smoothest and softest thing he had ever held. She would be his downfall, he had known it from the beginning but still, he would not let her go. He would never let her go.
Her hand came up to touch his face, holding his cheek lightly. She was watching him again; they always watched one another, a silent, continuous study that would never end. Maximus turned his head and kissed her palm.
“Tell me,” he asked softly, “tell me of your home and the secrets of the land you once knew.”
It was a question he was curious to know the answer to. Britain was a dream not many had seen. A Roman such as he, with his thirst to search out and conquer, needed to know what Britain was. What it looked like, who the natives were, what it was that was hidden in the mystical mists that everyone who had been there reported seeing.
She shifted again, and he could see from the look on her face that she didn’t trust him with this. It was the closest secret she had ever kept from him, apart from her name. She didn’t trust him, for fear he would use it against her, or her people, one day.
He kissed her neck softly. “I will tell no one of what you tell me. Nor will I harm any Briton with it. I swear it to you, on my honor.”
“What would a Roman be, without his honor?” She asked him in her softly accented Latin.
“Nothing.” He replied, looking into her eyes.
She watched him again, before relaxing completely into his hold. She let him kiss her throat, encouraged it by placing a minute amount of pressure on his head and a soft tilt of her neck to reveal more skin. He kissed her neck with a grateful mouth and savored the tasted her soft skin.
He felt her fingers tangle in the dark curls that covered his head and groaned softly. He loved whenever she touched him. Perhaps he was foolish, after all.
“It’s cold,” she spoke softly, words that he felt through his lips. “Colder than any winter you have ever known.”
Maximus stayed silent and kissed his way back up her throat to watch her face. She had an almost trance-like look on her face as she recalled her home. It had been almost a decade since she had been taken as a girl, Maximus knew that already. He wondered just how much she could actually remember, and how much she had romanticized into being.
Still, he wondered what she saw in those dark eyes that were no longer looking at him, or at anything else in the room. He wanted to know what she saw, what she felt, who she was with. He wanted to know, desperately.
“Wet, the rains are constant. The forests are thick and hide in mist, villages can be in open ground or hidden away to be found only by those who know where they are. Food comes and goes depending on the seasons and what animals come.” She closed her eyes and licked her lips. “The taste of salt from the sea, the spray on my skin. It’s cold, cold like ice and warms only slightly in the summer sun.”
She opened her eyes again and she had to blink to remember her surroundings. He guessed that part, when he saw the disappointment in her eyes. For a moment, Maximus wanted to return her to the sea, to the land of her home. He did not want her to be disappointed, ever, but that was something even he, the great general, could not do. At least, not immediately.
“And of the people, what do you recall?” He asked when she was watching him fully again.
Aislin turned her head slightly, her eyes flicking to the moon above her their heads. He wondered now who it was she was thinking of. Her parents? Her village community? A sweetheart, perhaps? The thought turned his stomach, jealousy spreading quickly through his veins.
Aislin turned her head back to him and smiled slightly, a rare sight for her.
“Warriors painted blue, naked as they were born, fierce and terrifying.”
Maximus raised his eyebrow and gave her a skeptical look. She let out a small amused breath, an even rarer thing.
“I’m serious. The Celts in the North paint themselves blue. They cannot be beaten in battle, not even by a Roman.”
“We will see about that.” Maximus said, flexing his muscles absently.
She turned her body in the bed and kissed him softly. His response was eager and passionate, pulling her close enough so she could come over his body and have his arms wrapped around her waist.
“Do you miss it?” He asked and watched her face.
She was quiet again, the smile gone as if it had never been and she was studying him again. Still not trusting him, she was calculating whether or not he was worthy. Maximus held her gaze and waited, hoping that he could pry into her secrets just a little bit further for one night.
“More than you can imagine.”
Maximus swallowed at the sincere depth of her confession and tightened his hold on her body. He could guess. After all, a girl of ten taken into slavery into the Roman Empire with not a single companion by a general who only had a lust for her flesh and who was forced to grow up sheltered in his household with only his company and that of his slaves, was bound to miss the peace and village comforts she had known.
He let himself believe that he was a better master, and husband, to her than Severus had ever been. He quickly went through a list in his mind. He had not struck her, ever. He had not forced himself into her bed. He had not spoken harshly to her, or about her. He did not tolerate such behaviors from his friends, family, and acquaintances. He allowed her to come and go freely from his villa, a privilege she had earned once he had made her swear not to run away. She hadn’t. He allowed her an opinion, a voice she had not been given in Severus’ household. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t so cruel a master? A lover, a husband?
Maximus turned his head and kissed her softly. “Perhaps we will see it again, together.”
When Aislin didn’t smile or seem even the least hopeful, Maximus wondered whether or not she truly wanted his company at all.
Title: One Day We Will Be Free
Fandom: Original
Characters: Rian, Aislin
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: “Deep Breath” for
writerverseWARNINGS: violence
Words: 1,444
Summary: The Warrior remembers his true love.
A/N: this takes place in the same world as the first story.
The memory was as clear to him as any that had her in them could be. They were shrouded in a haze of time, but quick enough to clear with the distinctive sharpening of repeated thought. This one, though, it was special.
In the field above their village, the spring sun—when it finally broke through the chill and clouds of winter—would bring warmth and life to the meadows. The farmers of their village would begin to plant their crop and life would stir new activity. This had been the routine for all he had known of his life, all nine years of it.
Aislin had been almost a year younger than he, born in midwinter and not in the early spring as he had been. He could not recall so much of those early years, of course they were to be forgotten. He had been a babe, the sun of their chief, and learning to hunt small things as well as fight like a young man.
When he had been five, that’s when he could first distinctly recall a long braid, the color of charred wood and eyes that shone as brightly blue as the sky when the clouds were gone. She was always around, or perhaps, he just always noticed her. Rian made it his personal mission, it seemed, to be around her as constantly as he could.
Perhaps even then, at age five, he had loved her.
By his ninth year, they were inseparable. Even if he were to go hunting, Aislin would find a way to join him, no matter what her mother or his father would say. She was a quick learner, quicker than he had been. She had a knack for tracking large animals, such as the deer that they needed for food and fur. Rian could easily remember how she would study the ground and almost instantly know which way to go. He envied that about her.
While she had the gifts for tracking, he had cornered the talent of fishing in the river. She couldn’t do it, and he remembered laughing at her for her lack of skill. That earned him many a splash to the face as a boy.
The day in the meadow, that had been special. The tall grass surrounded them, the soil damp and slowly making their clothes wet, but they couldn’t bring themselves to care. They would dry. They both stared at the sky, at the clouds that swirled above their head. To the east, in the direction of where their feet pointed, the sound of the ocean was loud and ever-present. They often watched the sun rise together, that day had been no different.
Aislin had stopped speaking and continued to watch the clouds. Rian shifted his body, the earth having soaked his shoulder, and in the process brushed his hand along hers. He tensed for only a moment, before letting himself take hold of her hand. He relaxed immediately when her fingers wrapped around his as if it were the most natural thing that had ever been. It was natural, he had thought. Why shouldn’t he hold her hand?
He had smiled, pleased with himself, and had kept his hold until she had pulled away from him to stand up. Rian had frowned and looked at her, but she was already moving through the grass. Deciding not to be left behind, he stood and followed after her.
She twirled around in the grass, with her arms open and eyes closed. The sea breeze was cool as it moved over the cliffs’ edge and across their skin. The sun warmed them as he watched her moving. Rian smiled and felt himself compelled to move forward and hold her. His arms came around her waist and he hugged her, never wanting to let go. Aislin smiled and hugged him in return.
When they had separated, Aislin moved close to the cliff’s edge and looked out. He stayed close by and watched the waves separate their island, large as it was, from whatever lay past them on the horizon.
“What do you think is out there?” She asked in their native language, Parisii.
Rian thought about it for a moment before he looked back at her and smiled slightly. “Nothing better than what is right here.”
He always wondered if she knew that he wasn’t talking about their island.
Rian opened his eyes and looked out across the ocean again. He wasn’t a lad of nine any longer. The years that separated the present from those beautiful days of his youth to his present were long, hard, and chilling. It seemed that not even the sun had returned to the North.
The cold was ever-present and didn’t relent. The crops and harvests were minimal and not very sustaining. By the Gods mercy, the animals had stayed, but for how much longer that was not known. It seemed everything had changed the day the Romans had raided their village.
Rian’s jaw set as he thought back to that terrible day, when he had been eleven. He could say that he had held a sword against the Roman empire, but he could not take pride in it. He had been a lad, small against a Roman soldier and far outmatched. The Roman hadn’t killed him, but left his mark—a scar that ran the length of his arm. The soldier had also left his mark in other ways: an empty space that would not, could not be filled.
He wondered what had happened to her, and if she was still alive. He liked to believe that she was; the alternative was too painful for him to bear. If he allowed himself a moment to think the worst, he would think that perhaps it would have been a good thing if she had never left Britannia, as the Romans called it. If she had died on the roads southward, if she had never made it to Rome, perhaps she would have faired well compared to any fate that would have certainly become her reality in Rome.
Rian always felt a twist of nausea in his stomach any time he thought of her potential fate. She was a slave, he had no doubt of that. Had they been kind to her? Had they hurt her? Had she died? Had she married, Gods he hoped not, and had children?
The questions would never be answered, he knew. That did not make it easy to accept that he would always, always wonder what happened to the girl he had loved, and had been promised to. He had not broken that promise, not ever. Not even though she was a memory. They still might have been children when their parents had agreed to their having a match one day. It was foolish not to have done, not with how close they had been. There had never been anyone else for him, not then and not ever.
He looked out to the sea and knew that his father would come to lecture him again. It was only a matter of time. He had run off again, in search of a ghost that did not exist. Rian wasn’t stupid enough not to know that the future leader of their village shouldn’t be running after fairy tales, but he couldn’t help himself.
Any time a rumor, a possibility of a sighting, of Aislin came along, he had to go see. He had to know. It was a compulsion he would not ever give up, he knew. He couldn’t help himself. Rian had travelled to the North and braved the Celts and the Picts. He had gone west despite the Brigantes, South to the many tribes below. He had travelled hundreds of miles across the island over the years and still, she was nowhere to be found. No trace, no bone, no body, nothing. She had vanished completely.
He inhaled deeply in an effort to fight the pain, but it only constricted in his lungs and put more pressure on his chest. He did not cry, a warrior could not, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel the burden of having his soul stolen from him. Rian had long since been resigned to the only satisfaction of being able to wish the misery of a thousand deaths on the Roman who had stolen her. It was the only thought that could save him from the depths of his misery.
Rian hoped that, one day, he would see her again. It was with a heavy heart that he accepted the fact that meeting would not happen in this life, but in the next.
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