DISCLAIMER: I have no part in this brilliant show …I wish I had! PLEASE ..Make the 2nd season!!!
NOTES: Companion-Piece to TISIPHONE
Took me a while to finish it! I'm sorry! I hope whoever reads this will like it
Fate
She is mist and shadows …light and dusk. A fleeting shadow that might be held and yet remain untouched. She watches him …out of the corner of her eyes while her hands keep working the loom. Her hair is bronze…bright in the flickering light of candles and torches. Her hands work without a sound, faster ...surer than he has ever seen. Yet they make no sound, the loom glides effortlessly and she smiles to herself because he is watching.
Octavian knows it is a dream.
He has dreamt it many times, again and again ...walking the corridors of this empty house …each and every one leading into this room filled with light, holding nothing but the loom …and the silent girl.
She is not a woman yet, in marriageable age, but neither old enough to be compared to his mother or sister. Her hair is pulled up on her head, exposing a long white neck. Her skin is cream in the golden light. She hums ever so softly while working the loom…
Her eyes are the aquamarine blue of the sea, so bright …glittering like sun on water. Something tells him she is real …and yet …not real at all.
He dreamt this dreams so often since …since they left Rome.
Since Servilia taught him how pure, unbridled hatred felt. He thought he knew …he thought he'd felt it before….but he had not. Not until that day.
Something is different today…this time her hands stop and she turns her queenly head to look at him fully with a smile on her lips.
"Have you finally found the heart?" she asks…she looks young but her eyes are old and knowing, sparkling with a wisdom as old as time.
She should be a crone, his analytic mind tells him.
She is supposed to be a crone…some hag in rags, weaving the yarn her sister spins until the other cuts it off. She should not be comely and enchanting. She should be hard and bitter, befitting someone who deals out fate …
Her smile is sweet.
"The heart for what?" he asks, carefully. And her smile grows. There is a look in her eyes, some strange sense of pride.
"To know me, to know your fate …"
He looks at the loom; he can not resist the urge to turn his head at the complex, colourful design. There is no pattern to discern for him.
She shakes her head, laughing. "That is not for you …I've woven for you a long time ago. It has been finished for years, waiting for you to make it truth."
"I do not believe that someone else decides my fate."
"That is good." She answers, shrugging as though it means nothing. Her eyes still watch him, shining with some eerie light …as she watches him, regards him as though he were a master-piece, a priceless thing…
He feels a stab of dull pain, understanding that it derives from the knowledge he can read in her eyes. For a moment he resents her, because when she looks at him, her eyes see something his mother cannot see.
"Will you ask? Will you know?"
Ocatvian shakes his head. "You would not tell me." He returns.
She nods, smiling again, proud like a mother. "No …but fear not, my sweet boy. Me and my sisters have put a lot of work in your design. I have woven great deeds for you…great victories and glory."
"At what price …" he asks, bitterly. He knows he already paid too much.
"Every thing has its price."
"I did not ask for this."
"And that is why it will be given to you …"
"I do not want it!" he tells her, his words bitter.
She tilts her head, a graceful movement that makes the light catch in her hair.
"Yes, you do." She says calmly, her face serious now.
"You should be a crone!" he spits at her.
She raises one flawless brow in question, her skin perfect like cream-coloured marvel.
"Would that scare you less?" she asks, her voice tinged with a hint of amusement. "To see me as a tattered old woman, with grey hair and blind eyes…Is that what you really believe?"
"I don't know…" Octavian answers, unsure of what to say. "I never believed in you …I never thought you could be …this way."
"What way?"
"Magnificent."
"What other way then, could I be? I am the hand that wields the loom. I am one of the unborn, I am Decima, I am fate. Fate will not be denied."
She smiles again and her voice softens. "You may think you do not want this ...now. But you will. Soon. You want revenge and I and my sisters have put the means into your own hands. One day you will rule all he conquered and more. Your name is written in the stars next to his. We put the crown on your head before you were even born, Octavian. Great things await you …it is time you stop hiding and claim that legacy."
"How …"
"You know how. Your mind has known for a long time now…"
He frowns. "I do not like it."
"Because you do not like him?" she asks, still amused. Her hands fold gracefully in her lap. There already is the picture of Marc Anthony in his mind. They both want revenge ...a pact is logical, benefiting both sides. His mother surely would approve. He ponders her question for a moment. He does not dislike Marc Anthony. He is a soldier…in some ways much like Pullo, maybe just a little smarter. He is fond of Pullo …Marc Anthony is not all that different. He had loved Ceasar too, but he is a soldier not a politician …
" No …" Ocatavian finally answers. "But it can only lead to betrayal in the end …his and mine."
"Then that is how it will end."
"It must…"
She smiles again, so proud. "Then you have already learned a lot."
The thought makes Octavian frown. He learned a lot of things he did not care to know. Logic is a well honed blade in his mind …and it never stops cutting. The answer is right there, she had told him so herself.
"I do not like to see people as my stepping-stones …" His mother did that….and look where it had gotten her. I should not bother him, but it did. "If we make a pact now and one or both of us will break it some day …." He mused.
She nodded at him with her superior smile. "Go on …"
" …then one day one of us will kill the other. And since you said…" Don't hesitate now, his mind whispers, say it …an emperor can not shrink from tasks as this. If you cannot say it, how will you do it? But she had already said it ...if this was true, it was already decided.
"You will rule Rome and more …"
"Then one day I will kill him."
She shrugged, a graceful lift and fall of shoulders. "Not with your own hands, but …yes…"
"How can I align myself with him, knowing I will be his downfall?"
She throws her head back and laughs, a warm, womanly sound ….ripe with promise.
"Oh dear boy …you will be his death, but Marc Anthony will be his own downfall. Never doubt that." Her face looked almost sad when she contemplated her words.
"He will know." she tells Octavian with a hint of regret. "When he makes the decision, when he crosses that line, he will know. And he will make the choice anyway. He will not care, because he is fighting for something other than glory and riches then."
Suddenly she looked thoughtful, mournful as she turns to him again.
"Everything has its price Octavian, you know that already. I hope you will forgive the three of us …we give you a bounty, we will give you Rome, we will give you vengeance, we will give you glory and riches and a long, long life. But to give you all that …there needed to be balance, you understand? The scales must be balanced…"
Octavian frowned, understanding her meaning so clearly that it scared a part of him.
"You will give him something …you cannot give me. To balance the scales …you will deny me something." He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. "You will deny me love?"
"You will know love." She said calmly. "You will be loved and you will love…"
"But it will not make me whole." He understood now.
"He will throw his life into the balance, he will die …because something, someone will make him whole, will give him peace. The knowledge to have felt this way … but not for me. I will never feel that …"
Her eyes are sad . "What do you think it feels like?"
Ocatavian purses his lips. He knows exactly how it is supposed to feel like.
"Like coming home."
"I have never felt that way …belonging somewhere. Now I guess I never will."
"You will…know home. Rome is your home …and you will make her great again."
He looks at her. "I cannot thank you for this."
She smiles again, warm, indulging…shaking her head . "I did not think you would."
"Maybe later…when I'm older…"
There is a hint a sadness seeping into her eyes as she regards him. "I do not think so, child. It is a gift …but me and mine also bestow upon you a burden…heavy enough to cripple any man. You should not thank me for that."
Octavian nods, swallowing past the pulse in his throat. Time is running out …he can feel it.
For a moment she leans down to him, her hands are cool around his face and she kisses the top of his head the way a mother would …the way his mother never does.
"It is time now …time for you to go. Now that you know …time to wake up and face fate."
He wakes up in his room in a strange land…He sits up…watching the sun creep over the hills beyond the window.
Face fate ….Octavian smiles, a sigh hitching in his chest. He swallows, forcing it down again…not willing to let the sound escape.
Instead his sad smile widens ….face fate …and suddenly in his mind he knows he already has. He can still feel the soft touch of her lips ….
Just for a brief moment he came face to face with fate….and she was magnificent…