Title: Mons Graupius
Author: shadow-walker135
Summary: Rome looked into Scotland's eyes and knew that his heart would forever be hers. Fem!Scotland.
AN: So yeah, this is a oneshot that I found lurking in the documents of my computer and I thought to myself, let's put it on fanfiction. This will tie in nicely with my other story 'The Colour of Whisky' which I am in the process of writing at the moment and may be kinda spoilerish so if you don't want any, don't read it. This is also in third person Rome and is loosely based off of the battle of Mons Graupius (There's a good six minute video clip on the BBC website)
Mons Graupius
The tiny, pathetic whimper of pain escaped her mouth as she fell to her knees on the slippery mud below their feet, the long sword falling from her quaking hands and hitting the soggy ground beside her with a wet squelch that could barely be heard over the torrential rain. Her shoulders slumped, her hands moving slowly to the place where his own sword had just been rammed through her and he suddenly felt a wave of unreasonable guilt crash over him as her hands came away with a fine coating of burgundy blood
"Go ahead and do it. You have already won, so just get it over with."
He could barely understand what she was saying; the language that she spoke was close to what the Cambrians spoke but harsher, with a greater deal more of a bite to them. He looked down at her, her russet hair was soaking wet and hanging wildly in eyes the colour of amber that were thickly clouded with something that Rome had never seen in them before. Defeat. Fear. It was an unsettling sight to see that he, Rome, had been the one to extinguish the near explosive fire had been burning deep in those ochre gems. He looked around, noticing that they were the only ones in this certain part of the mist dusted glen, the rest of his army forcing what was left of the painted Caledonian's up into the hills where they would surely either execute them with the brutality that the Caledonian's had shown them, or lose them when the Caledonian's took advantage of the fact that they knew the land like the back of their well tattooed hands and escaped. He looked down at her again, she could have easily picked up her sword and killed him in his delay to strike her, yet she hadn't even tried to reach for her sword that lay mere inches from her hands. He slowly and with great caution lowered his sword
"Go."
He motioned with his sword up into the heather covered hills that scraped the smoky grey sky, not looking her in the face. She stayed where she was though, eyes trained on him, trying to work out if he was actually going to just let her go
"Did you not here me? Go, now! Before my army come back and one of the soldiers does the job that I cannot bring myself to do."
She stumbled to her feet, mud and rain clinging to her deer furs, calloused hands and lightly muscled arms, pretty face still wary. She chose to leave her weapon on the ground, a show of good will on her part
"Why? Why would you let me go? You could just kill me and make my land yours for certain."
"It would not be honourable to kill you, not after you having the chance to take my life and deciding not to."
She looked at him from under her eyelashes and bowed her head, rapidly straitening hair falling into her face
"I may never say this again, but no matter what I think of you and your empire, I now know that there is a good man in there somewhere and though we may meet in battle again sometime soon, you should remember I said that."
She held out her hand palm up, showing one of the spiralling black tattoos that crawled in a long sharply curved line around her arm and ending just below her elbow. He placed his free hand, the one that his shield had been situated on earlier in the battle but later lost, on top of hers and the pair grasped each other's wrist.* A sign of respect from one of her favourite highland clans and as he looked into her eyes for the final time before she departed, through the icy rain, he could feel something weave its way into his heart and take a firm route there. Attraction? he didn't know for sure, but he knew that from that moment on, no matter how many women he bedded, that he would always remember the woman with the ochre eyes that had not moments ago knelt before him, the woman who had taken part of his heart with her when she ran into her hills of heather.
AN: Good? Bad? Please review. Also, I know it's a bad ending but I wrote it a few years ago and there is only so much I can achieve in the way of editing at ten past one in the morning. Thanks for reading anyway!
*This was my little make up hand thing that my friend and I do for a handshake and since I don't know much about Caledonian hand gestures I just thought to put that one in here instead