It was the moment before I picked up his cross, encrusted in blood and dirt, my children's grasping fingers torn from my sleeve. He had pulled himself to his hands and knees, and with each rasping breath blood and saliva dripped from his torn lips. I was close enough to him now, kneeling in the reddened dirt, that I could smell the reek of him; blood and vomit and sweat and something else that shouldn't be outside the human body. I gagged, the smell furthering the roiling in my stomach at the thought of my boys, swept up defenseless in that sea of crazed bodies.
My shaky grasp on the wood slipped as it met blood, and I heard the warning growl of the whip-bearing soldier somewhere above me. Desperation and fear drew a dry sob as I moved to try again. I had never felt so alone, so terrified and helpless.
And then there was a hand that grasped mine across the cross. Surprised I looked up at last into his mutilated face. It was horrible, hardly human, and only his eyes kept me from recoiling, holding me with a mesmerizing beauty in the midst of such carnage. I watched, the moment seeming as forever, me and him the only two moving as the rest of time stopped around us. He dragged himself into a kneeling position, close enough to touch my face, as he slumped over the cross between us, the muscle play far to visible where it should have been covered in skin. He cradled my cheek, followed my cheek bone with his thumb, and looked at me with absolute tenderness from his one still open eye.
"Don't worry, they'll be alright." He choked out over a mouthful of blood that dripped from his chin. And the unspoken was, I'll take care of them.
And then time came on us again, and the Roman with his whip. But I did not quail away again, and when I stood I not only held the cross, but the man as well.
Surprise flickered in the Roman's eyes, and I knew he saw what I felt; strong and still.
We stumbled up the hill together, and I murmured encouragement to him over the sound of the mob and his own rattling breath. He in turn would look up from the ground every now and again, pulling up his head as if it were a millstone, to blink away the blood dripping in his eye and murmur my name that he shouldn't have known.
When at last we reached the end of our torturous journey, I found that the burden I had so dreaded I now could hardly stand to be pushed away from. I wanted to stay, wrapped around the wood and the man and the blood even as they laid them out and nailed them together. Wanted to stay and listen to his dying voice, remain close enough to feel his putrid, iron-tinged breath as he breathed out my name from his cross. But they pushed me away and I could only watch. And at last I cried, and my boys came and buried their dark heads in my chest. I didn't need to ask how they'd come, I already knew, and I thanked him as he died.