[Author's note: A little background, first... this was a deliberate departure from WW canon that began with wondering what vampires would have been like in the pre-Christian era. Yes, we're talking ridiculously low generation Kindred, here. And yes, that Troile, though we Romanized his name.
I endeavored to get my Latin correct, right down to the swear words.]
----
In Principio
-------
147 BCE, Rome
"...She should have been born a boy." Allecta could say such things, having borne the child -- Decima Isata had come out of the womb too full of curiosity to ever be happy as a woman. Allecta knew -- so had she. Her husband, Lucius Decimus, did not understand, being Roman born and a man besides.
"But she is not. What need has she for all those books, that reading? She can read Latin, and write it well enough. That should be sufficient for her. She will marry some man, settle down and have children. It's a waste of the slave's time to teach her." Said husband, back on a brief visit to Rome, was not happy to find his youngest child not in the house embroidering like her sister -- but rather out under a tree someplace, translating some Greek poet or another.
Her mother's tone was calm, level, implacable as the sea. "It does her no harm to read and to learn. She will likely run a household at some point -- she may as well have skills for it." Allecta had taught Isa her accounting as well as her weaving -- for it was she kept the accounts while her husband was away. He found her brains an asset. And he rarely questioned her judgement -- this new tantrum about Isa's schooling annoyed Allecta intensely.
"Reading Greek will help her run a house?" Lucius Decimus himself spoke Greek beautifully, but it was his business to do so -- not the concern of his second girl-child, who had entirely too much of her own will about things as it was. Damned curious girl, with eyes that hid nothing -- blue and the prettiest thing about her. Her looks would not get her married off, and her brains would make her intimidating to most suitors. And Lucius Decimus did not want an unmarried daughter.
Allecta had not survived a lifetime with her husband by losing her temper -- that she left to him. So again, patiently, "Why do you object to an educated daughter? She weaves, she spins, she cooks. Her arithmetic is solid, if not inspired. She simply enjoys learning Greek -- "
Growl. "Enjoys her tutor, more likely."
"Nikos?" Allecta laughed. "That young man is no threat, he would not dare touch her. And Isa is no fool, to compromise herself for a slave. Do not be irrational."
"He is handsome enough."
"Isa is no beauty and she does not value such things." Nor was Allecta herself -- too German in features, nose too small and mouth too full for Roman tastes. Decima has inherited her father's good Roman looks, but Isa was Allecta's child in all things. "It is not a matter of attraction -- Isa likes to learn, and Nikos likes to teach. And she learns so quickly, she is a joy as a student." And not only that, she suspected, for she had seen Nikos watching her blithely unaware daughter -- but the slave would not, she was sure, speak of it to anyone, much less Isa herself.
"Nikos ought to be spending that time with Rufus!" Never mind that Rufus had rather be at weapon-work and riding his pony. Never mind that Rufus had to struggle to assemble Latin grammar, let alone Greek, and that he hated sitting for more than ten minutes on something that did not gallop.
Allecta did not spare him and said what they both thought. "She shows more aptitude than Rufus, and that is why you are so angry."
That was the crux of the problem -- and Lucius Decimus did not want to be reminded that his daughter showed more intellectual promise than the son who would inherit. He smacked his hand into the stone of the sill. "Nikos is kept to teach our son, not our daughter, and her aptitude be damned!"
Allecta dared to approach his tantrum, put a hand on his arm. "You can give the order if you want, husband, but you will be making a mistake. Isa bored is far more trouble than Isa learning Greek."
"Isa will learn her place is to obey my commands," Lucius Decimus muttered. And Allecta shook her head. Isa would not learn any such thing.
And she turned out to be right, because Isa did not stop pestering Nikos for lessons, father's orders or no, and Nikos, against all his good sense, could not refuse her. Allecta knew -- the house steward was a wise man, and reported such things to her -- and chose to ignore it; Lucius Decimus was not in Rome often enough to make a bored Isa worth the discipline it might take to separate the two. But she kept an eye on them, did Allecta -- because Nikos was young and handsome, and Isa getting to be the age where her mind might turn from books to other interests of a sudden. And even if Isa did not notice -- Allecta was not blind, and she knew love when she saw it in a man's eyes when he looked at a woman, and Nikos loved Isa. And love might make a man be a fool.
Unfortunately for Nikos, Allecta was not the only one to notice, and Rufus was enough of a spoiled brat (only boy amidst two girls) to realize that his tutor, whose lessons were indescribably dull, was not willing to cajole and coax him to finish them any more. Now Rufus needed only to complain, to fidget, and Nikos would release him. This seemed paradise, at first -- until Rufus wondered why, since he knew he was supposed to learn, and Nikos was supposed to teach. If there was one thing Rufus hated more than lessons, it was being dismissed.
So he hid one afternoon, and watched, and saw his sister Isa come into the garden to see Nikos, and saw the pair of them bent head to head over books and wax tablets. It was poetry that day, a translation of Homer to Latin, and Rufus saw precisely why Nikos was not interested in the thankless task of teaching him. Isa made him smile.
Next time Lucius Decimus returned to Rome, he received a full report from Rufus on the poor teaching the slave had given him, and where that slave's attentions were going. Fortunate for Nikos Allecta heard that same report, and intervened.
"I told you she would be bored."
Her husband's face was slowly turning crimson. "You knew! You let this happen!"
"I did. She also helps me with the books, now -- Isatis! She is an intelligent girl! Let her have what little pleasure she might!" And she stepped between him and the door for which he headed, between him and Rufus, and prevented what would have been a storming to the slave quarters to deal with young Nikos.
Lucius Decimus rocked back on his heels, stared down at his half-German wife, whose status among the northern tribes of her mother's birth would have been far different. She never asked him for much, his Allecta. She worked tirelessly at his accounts, managed the household beautifully, raised his family as he directed -- except in this one thing. She must have a reason. "What shall I do, then? Allow this flagrant disobedience? Permit a slave to choose his duties?"
Allecta thought, and had her mouth just opened to answer, but Rufus spoke up. "Have him flogged! Sell him! I have seen how he looks at Isa -- " She rounded on him like a cornered cobra. "Be silent! Leave us!" And Rufus retreated, stunned by his mother's fury...but his words had done their work.
"And how," said Lucius Decimus slowly, too slowly, "how does Nikos look at Isa?"
"I think he loves her," Allecta said steadily, mind already leaping ahead. "He has made no overtures, said nothing."
"And she?" Too, too quiet, the words, too still, the face.
"She wishes to marry the next Achilles or Hektor." She squared her shoulders, held his smoldering eyes without flinching. "But Nikos is her friend, Isatis. She does care for him in that way."
"So." He walked away, stared critically at the wall. "So what shall I do with this, wife? Sell our daughter's friend the slave? Flog him, as Rufus suggests, when Rufus only cares that someone prefers his sister's company to his? Shall I cripple a perfectly good slave for that?" He turned his merchant's eyes to her now, full of figures and calculation. "Nikos is an educated Greek, and a very fine slave, and undamaged he is worth quite a lot. But he has been disobedient, and even if I do not tell that to buyers, Rufus will complain because his mouth knows no discipline -- unless there is an appropriate punishment. So what shall I do, Allecta?"
"Do not sell him, whatever you do." Allecta could see in her mind Isa's life without Nikos. The child's spirit might turn inward, or break, or go sour if she suffered that sort of loss. "Punish him as you see fit, but do not take away her learning, or his teaching. They have both risked much for it."
A dangerous light came into his eyes, and Allecta felt a small shiver of trepidation. "I have a punishment in mind," he said after a moment. "But I swear to you -- I will not sell him, nor will I force them apart." And he turned and left the room, and left Allecta staring at his stiff and retreating back. He had something decided...and his temper was a terrible thing.
She heard Isa's single outraged shriek shortly thereafter, and rushed out in time to see her husband dragging her daughter, silently struggling, by an arm out into the sun. Allecta hurried after them, quick steps on stone. Whatever happened, she must be there to handle the aftermath -- her husband's temper often left victims in its wake. When they reached the slave quarters, Lucius Decimus handed his youngest daughter to her brother, whose size provided just enough advantage that he could hold her, though him she did kick and bite and curse in highly inventive language. It was Lucius Decimus who marched into the slave quarters and brought a pale-faced Nikos out into the noonday sun. He leaned over, whispered something to the slave, and Nikos turned his dark eyes on Isa -- who did not see, being intent on tearing herself free of her brother. But Allecta saw, and bit her lip hard against tears of pity -- a man's heart was in that gaze. And a certain degree of steel, too, in the fine jaw, as Nikos turned with lowered eyes and said something back to Lucius Decimus, who pushed him, unresisting, to the dirt. Allecta saw the glitter of metal in her husband's hand, of a sudden understood his punishment.
Isa saw too, and forgot her brother, cried out to her father instead, begging now. "Tata, please, listen to me, tata, do not do this -- " until Rufus cuffed her sharply into silence.
"I have done nothing wrong," Nikos said, just loudly enough everyone in the yard could hear him -- Isa, Allecta, Rufus, the slaves peering terrified from the windows.
"I am the judge of that." Lucius Decimus pushed his legs apart, dragged up the tunic. "And I say that you have done wrong, Nikos, you have done wrong in defying my orders to teach my son in preference to spending time with my daughter. Well, if it is my daughter you prefer, then I must be a responsible father and be sure you are safe company!" The knife disappeared, the arm that held it made a quick motion, and Nikos choked off a scream into the pavement. Blood darkened the stone almost immediately, and Lucius Decimus rose to his feet, something gory in his hands. He cast the bundle at his son and his daughter; it landed at their feet, spattering Isa's dress with red.
"Daughter -- Nikos is yours now. -- Let her go." Rufus released Isa, and she pushed past her father and ran to the man bleeding and moaning in the dirt. She murmured Greek to him, gently, but the single glance she spared her father made Allecta's heart stop. Never had she seen such hatred from a child. No less the glance Isa turned on her brother, and she spat something rapid and in the language her mother had taught her, the language of her foremothers...and Allecta flinched again. Oh, Isatis, I think you have made a mistake today.
If Lucius Decimus noticed his daughter's hatred, he chose to ignore it. He focused his attention on his son; Rufus had gone a bit pale, staring at the scrap of flesh at his feet. "You," his father said quietly, "have also defied my orders, by refusing to learn, by insisting that a mere slave be your taskmaster when I am away. Come with me, boy..." And he stalked away into the house, his fingers biting cruelly in Rufus' arm.
It was left to Allecta to clean up the wreckage, of course. Nikos she had carried to a bed, and summoned a physician for him. Isa would not move from his side, kept apologizing in Latin and Greek, over and over. For his part, Nikos was all of half conscious, and Allecta thought that a mercy. She sent one of the more stoic slaves to clean the yard and be sure that no blood remained on the stones, and to...dispose of things. She chose to ignore the sounds of a beating coming from elsewhere in the house, and the howls of her son, and tried to avoid her daughter's raw and miserable eyes, when they chanced to stray from Nikos. Instead she focused on impersonal kindness, on helping the physician when he arrived, on speaking softly to Nikos when he regained enough awareness during the procedure to cry out -- and mostly by leaving the pair of them alone, once the doctoring was over, to sort things out between them.
And the wretched part of it was...Lucius Decimus had failed. If he had meant to saddle Isa with a resentful, reluctant slave, if he had meant to break Nikos' feelings for the girl, if he had somehow meant to destroy their relationship, he failed utterly. The girl that emerged from a ruined slave's chamber had not the look of someone whose friend had cast her off -- she had the resolute stare of a one who is beaten, but not at all broken. As for Nikos, well, Allecta took herself to visit him later, alone, with Isa safely elsewhere.
And the eyes he turned to her were a little fearful, a little sad, and not at all hateful. "Domina," he said as she walked through the door, "domina, I have never been inappropriate with Isa."
She sighed, and stopped beside his bed. "I know you were not. That does not change the feelings I see in your eyes whenever you look at her."
He swallowed hard, and wore the look of a man who has only one thing left to lose, and is desperately afraid. "Domina -- "
She cut him off with a gesture. "I do not care how you feel about her, Nikos. Nor do I care how she feels about you. I do not care that you spend entire days together muttering over your books and scrolls. What I do care about is this: whatever your opinion of this...punishment -- you are not to foster rebellion in her, not against her father, not against her brother. She will marry, and she will have children, and if she chooses to take you with her, so be it. Your share in her life will not ever be what you dream of. Best she not know of your feelings. Best that she find the strength and the will to live the path before her, because defiance will only hurt her, and you do not want that. Counsel her well, and she may yet be happy. For you -- there can be no happiness, and there is no help for that." She took his hand, held it gently, and let her eyes show him what her sharp words could not. "If you truly love her, you will do this for her."
She left him with tears running thin lines down his cheeks.
----------------------------------
142 BCE, Rome
Allecta told him of the betrothal herself, alone, to spare him. He did not weep, even at the pity in her eyes. "She loves him," Allecta informed him in that level voice of her. "Can you bear that?"
And he said, voice the faintest bit rough: "She has talked of no one else for months, domina. I am not surprised. Does he love her?"
"One hopes." She swept her eyes over him, cool and blue and so much more enigmatic than Isa's. "Can you bear the move?"
"She assumes I will go. -- I can bear it, domina. Thank you for asking."
Allecta shook her head slightly. "You are a rare and stubborn soul, Nikos. She has asked her father to grant you your freedom."
The bottom dropped out of his world. Allecta must have seen it in his face; she reached a hand to him. "He refused. You will be transferred as part of her dowry to Sextus Cassius' estate. I thought you should know that."'
"T-thank you, domina." He concentrated on a floor tile, unable to meet her eyes any longer. Free him? He had no life, free.
"She means well by it," Allecta said finally. "Do not think otherwise. She feels that you would be happier free, if you yourself could choose your future." He looked up at that, some retort on his lips -- it died unspoken. "She truly has no idea, Nikos. None at all. You are an honorable man."
"Domina," he said, unable to voice anything else, and she had left him to the hollow hurt.
-------------------
139 BCE, Rome
The house was too quiet -- that was his first clue something was wrong. That Miletus was not on hand to greet him at he door was the second. Not a slave on hand -- the problem had to be Isa. "Miletus!" he called, and heard a faint "Here" -- ran to the sound, and found him and the rest of the fools clustered in the hallway outside her door. Their faces turned to him like frightened flowers to a guardian sun.
Gods. "What happened?" He thrust his bundle of packages at Miletus, who was supposed to be a steward, and in charge of things.
"Mus," came Tarixa's voice, when Miletus could manage no better than a flapping of lips. The Gaul woman's face was streaked with tears. "It's Mus, Nikos..."
"Prodi!" Nikos shoved past them, found the door locked, and pounded. "Isa! Isa, open this door right now!" He ignored the horrified stares of the slaves, rounded again on Miletus. "Get Publius Cordius the physician! Now, if you value your skin!" Miletus hesitated, then bolted down the hall. "You!" Nikos snapped at another. "You, get her mother! And you, find Sextus Cassius now!" They fled too, in a pattering of sandals.
And he threw himself against the door, pure futility until Tarixa lent her own weight to it; it snapped open of a sudden, sent him staggering into the room.
In the corner, keening like a damned thing, was Isa. Her throat and chest were bleeding, long bright lines drawn by nails. She turned hollow eyes to him, shrieked in Greek, "Get out, get out, leave me alone!" One hand came up, fingers hooked into bloody claws, and she came up onto the balls of her feet, crouched and poised to leap like some feral cat. Then he saw the bundle she held against her chest with the remaining arm. Mus.
One could see why the rest had retreated. Nikos did not, murmured back at her a meaningless stream of gentle words, and dared the approach. "Isa, Isa, amica bella, listen, I'm here, it's all right, let me see what has happened..." He reached for her carefully, got a hand round her wrist, pulled himself in on the strength of that contact. She shivered in his grip, stared up at him with stricken eyes -- well beyond sense, he could see that. He knelt beside her, released the wrist and put an arm round her shoulders, pulled her hard against him. From there he could see the baby clutched in her other arm, and the blue caste to its face...poor little Mus. Poor Isa.
Tears started in his own eyes, but he held his voice steady. "Isa, Isa..."
"He's dead," she said flatly, her eyes locked on his face. "I know that. I know that, Nikos, but I do not know why." Her body shivered suddenly, and he held her more tightly, afraid she might do herself more injury. He felt her body tense against him, grow very hard and still and angry; he was sure she would lash out, and braced himself for it. And she yielded, of a sudden, just put her face against his chest and sobbed. Her free hand battered feebly at him, until its fingers knotted in the tunic and left smears of blood on the linen. Reach for little Mus, then -- it was not hard to pry the cold little bundle from her hand, now, and she yielded up the baby; that hand, like the first, knotted into his tunic, and pounded in futile, quiet agony against him.
-------------------------
134 BCE, Rome
"What do you suppose he is doing out there?" She asked it idly, in a light tone, from her vantage at the window. One foot dangled from the sill; the other, bent, balanced her propped arm and chin on her knee.
He was not fooled. "What does he call it? Hunting?"
She made a rude noise. "Nothing so honest. He has some grand foolish word for it in some dead tongue or another -- he says it means 'to be worshipped.' I think he believes himself a god." She looked at him then, and the candlelight cast her pale features into fantastic shapes. "If I get that way -- if I ever think that -- you have to promise to kill me."
He met her eyes, smiled sadly at her. "What makes you think I will be able to do that?"
"Stakes, the sun...there are ways."
"That is not what I meant." The words slipped out, truly escaped, and he would have given a great deal to recall them. Or not...with Troilus away two days now, and the night late as it was, it seemed a time for confessions. Let her make of it what she would.
For a moment it seemed she did not hear him. Her eyes rested somewhere past him, perhaps on the statue in the corner, perhaps on the frieze on the wall. "I know. -- I have known for a long time now. And I know that you would find it in you to kill me, if you had to, regardless of how you feel. You are strong enough."
Silence, total and utter. Too much honesty. He shied away from it, crossed and recrossed his legs instead, and rearranged himself in the chair.
A moment, then another, then: "A woman can love two men, you know. There is a body, and a soul, and a mind. There is a heart."
He sighed. "Isa...there is Cassius Lupus to think of -- "
"I have." Her voice was brittle. "He is away on campaign in Africa. Troilus is here. Do you think he will let Lupus come home and find me this way? My husband is a dead man."
His heart skipped, thumped. He did not want that, not really. "Maybe Troilus will use that ability of his to convince him to divorce you."
Her mouth twisted. "And run the risk it will not work? Let us even near each other? Troilus is arrogant, but he is not foolish. A divorce will draw attention from my father...a widowing will not." Bitter, voice cold...a new Isa. Nikos felt himself suddenly bereft. "I cannot find a way to save my husband, Nikos. If he lives through the siege in Africa, he will probably come home to Troilus's appetite, and I will be forced to watch -- so join me, if you would, in praying for a clean death for him." Her eyes came back to him, dark as Stygian pools in the candlelight. "That does not change how I feel about him, or about you."
Damn, that she could track an conversation like that. "What I feel..." He trailed off uncomfortably.
"If you tell me your feelings do not matter, I will throw myself out of this window. It will not kill me, but it will get your attention...and it will be just as stupid." She swung her leg off the sill, sat facing him fully now. "I am cursed," she said simply. "I am not human, and I have not human desires anymore. You know this, and yet you sit here with me and speak to me as I was before Troilus. Do not tell me your feelings mean nothing."
"Then do not ask me for what I cannot do." He met her eyes, suddenly angry. "Do not expect me to be your moral guide in all things, to always stand at your shoulder and tell you to do this, to avoid that. You are so far beyond my reach now -- as far as you have ever been! I am not your parent, Isa -- I do not love you like a parent. I could not kill you even if you handed me the stake yourself! If you choose to become a monster, then so be it, and I will follow you then as I do now, but I will not be responsible for your actions!"
She blinked, and her mouth clipped shut. He watched, heart thumping, as the sudden bright anger drained out of her face. "I see," she said finally, in a much smaller, calmer voice. She rose, approached him and passed him, pausing to look down into his face. "I am sorry." Her eyes, once so expressive, were cool and shuttered -- like her mother's, he thought. She put a hand on his shoulder, a transitory touch, and passed from the room like a breeze.
--------------------------
True to her prediction, she was widowed, a missive of Sextus Cassius Lupus' death sent from the African front, along with an urn of ashes. The missive claimed he had died in the siege of Numantia. She chose to believe it, and grieved appropriately.
She did not ask Troilus about it.
She did not come to Nikos about it either, simply locked herself in her room in keeping with her new practice of avoidance and solitude. She emerged an hour later with red eyes and torn flesh already healing. He had been waiting, crouched there in the hall, jumped to his feet as she opened the door.
"Isa." He had been ready to go to her, stopped short at the cool formality in her eyes. Oh yes, she was still angry with him.
"Nikos." Voice like the winter winds, eyes to match.
It hurt him, that she was so cold with him now; she had to know that. It made him angry, too, and that anger leaked into his eyes, even though his tone remained perfectly solicitous. "Are you all right?"
"I am well as can be expected." He saw an answering anger in her eyes, their first real expression to him in weeks. "Thank you." Her body langauge dismissed him, gaze sliding away and down the hall.
"One worries, domina." He bowed his head as he had not to her for all her life, slave to mistress. And he kept his head down, all bitter respect and deference, waiting for her reaction.
He did not hear her moving; that was Troilus's curse at work. He only felt cold hands lock round his arm far stronger than human fingers, and her voice hiss near his ear, "What do you want from me, Nikos? Not my dependence, surely, for you are not my parent -- are you angry because I deny you this chance to hold me and pretend I am yours? Hmm?"
That hurt, as it was meant to. This new malice...was not his Isa, either. He raised his eyes to her, mastered the hurt, snapped softly instead, "You are not mine, Decima Isata, you have never been, and you are certainly not now. Now you are Troilus's creation."
She slapped him, hard, palm to cheek; his head snapped round painfully and he staggered into the wall. He heard one step on stone, and thought she meant to strike again -- and heard Troilus, instead.
"What's this? Isa, my pet, has this slave displeased you?" Another hand took him, a thousand times stronger than Isa's, dug long fingers painfully into muscle and tendon and bone. Troilus wrenched his head around sharply, fingers firm at the base of his neck. Nikos was all to aware of Troilus's utterly inhuman eyes, staring down at him...and of the proximity of Troilus's face to his own throat.
Somewhere behind the ancient parasitus, Isa spoke. "It is of no matter, dominus. It is settled."
"One sees -- a handprint, is it?" Troilus turned his basilisk's gaze to Isa, then. Nikos found himself wishing for the strength to crack the bones in the fine slim neck bared to him. "Is this not your favorite pet?"
"He is Nikos, yes, dominus." He heard too clearly the sudden fear in her voice for him. And there was no way Troilus could miss it.
"Perhaps he grows too bold, this one. Shall I punish him for you?"
"I have punished him. All make mistakes."
She moved closer now, but not close enough -- Troilus's fingers began a slow clamping, and Nikos felt sinews creak in that grip. His neck would snap in a moment, long before Isa could do anything. He heard Troilus smile -- it gave his words the sounds of insincerity. "Not all, my sweet. What did he do?"
"He spoke a truth to me, dominus, that I did not want to hear." She sounded forced, strained, terrified...and to Nikos' experienced ears, furious.
"A truth? From a gelded slave? Whatever truth might that be?"
He saw her now; Isa's face appeared beside Troilus's, and she dared a hand on his arm. "That I am yours, dominus." Her voice was almost under control again, cool and level.
Isa fascinated Troilus -- had always, and still did, for Troilus discarded what bored him. His fingers relaxed a hairsbreadth on Nikos' spine, and he tilted his face closer to hers in a parody of flirtation. "What, was that in doubt?"
"Isn't it?" Her eyes were enigmatic. "There are layers of ownership. There is the body, the mind, the spirit, the heart. On which level do you think I am yours?"
Muscles tensed in Troilus's shoulders; a tic appeared in his jaw. "I can kill him, you know."
"I know."
"His life is in your hands."
"In my words, and my actions, dominus. Your hands hold his life, and mine. -- Do you want my cooperation, my submission, a pleasant fiction of accordance between us? His life -- his well-being -- is my price."
"Why should any of that matter to me?" But he was intrigued at this new defiance -- Nikos felt the tension run out of him like water.
"Because it is a novel thing, to have so much power over someone with so little effort. Because you do not wish me dead, you wish me to survive, and in order to survive, you must teach me, and I must learn. Is that not so?"
Sneer. "I can make a thousand like you."
"But you want..." Her head tilted, regarded him mildly. "You could have forced anything of me a thousand times before. You have not. I think you want me willing."
Troilus's wrist flickered, and Nikos struck the wall again, neck and shoulders bruised from Troilus's fingers. "What I want is your obedience, Isa."
"You shall have it." Not a flinch, not a hesitation.
"And your affection -- or an imitation thereof."
"Yours."
"Your body is already mine. You may keep your spirit, if it can survive your bargain." His lips quirked coldly. "Let us walk, Isa, shall we?" He offered her an arm.
She took it, and walked away without a backward glance.
------------------
He heard her approach because she allowed it -- the scrape of sandal on stone, just loud enough to carry over the storm outside.
"He's gone," she said from the doorway. "May I come in?"
"Of course." He did not turn around to face her; part of that was cowardice, because he did not want to see her eyes again, not cold and blank, not at him.
She stopped somewhere behind him. "I am sorry. I was wrong to ask what I did of you."
No wondering what that was. He drew a deep breath, felt wounded muscle and tendon shriek in his neck and shoulders -- a week again, and still injured. "I am sorry I would not hear you."
In days past, he might have heard her breath catch -- now, nothing but silence. Then, quietly, "We survived my father together, and my brother, and Lupus, and little Mus."
"And so we can survive this, too?" An honest question, he thought; but the hurt came through his voice, and he thought he sounded petulant.
"Can't we?" The bitterness was back, and now self-mockery joined it. "I have had a week to think about it, Nikos, and I must confess -- I do not much care for the person I am, or might become, with none but his attention."
He did turn finally, to stare past her face. "You put yourself in his path for me."
"I am already in his path, amicus. I just moved you out of it. It was selfish, you know -- I will not have your death on my conscience."
"As I have your sacrifice on mine."
She made a gesture, sharp and abrupt. "Oh no. You renounced responsibility for my soul, and you were right. Allow me my own satisfaction on the matter. I won that round with him. He has nothing of me but the pretense of capitulation." And when he searched her face for the truth of that, she smiled, small and sad. "I am no one's at all...but what parts of me you want, you may have. Is that fair?"
"Only if you accept the same from me." He was conscious, as he had not been for years, that he was ruined as a man...but she was not a woman anymore, either, so perhaps that was no matter.
"Only if you are free to give it -- Lucius Decimus Nikos. I give you your freedom, and my father's name because that is all I have."
His heart dropped into his bowels. "Isa! Why?" He dared a hand against her arm, let his fingers dig into the flesh in his haste.
She flashed him a glance: predator's eyes, and no doubt to the why. "You see what I am now, what I am capable of becoming. You must be truly free to choose."
"Have you heard nothing I have said? I can no more leave you than I can become a man again!"
Low, tight, angry: "You are very much a man. Butcher's knives cannot make or take manhood."
So she had said many times before. And yet...and yet. "Nor can Troilus take away your humanity. -- I accept your freedom, Isa." There. So simple. Some of the tension ran out of him -- she would not send him away now. "What is it you want of me, now that I am free to give it?"
"Stay with me...always, Nikos. Will you?"
Something in her eyes warned him she asked more than it seemed, and the creature of instinct in him shivered. "I will be with you until the gods call for me, Isa." And as he said it, he knew that was not the answer she wanted.
Her eyes held him now, blue and magnetic. "Beyond the gods' calling, Nikos. Will you stay with me even then?"
Sweat leapt out on his skin, cold in the rain-soaked air. "Isa..."
She pushed past his words. "There is a way, Troilus told me, to preserve a human's life beyond his time, to keep him young. But it involves the blood, my blood, and you would have to drink it. Can you do that thing? Will you?"
Her blood. His eyes closed against sudden tears. "Is that all?"
"Is that not enough -- Nikos! What did you think I meant?" Sharp indignation in her voice -- the Isa he knew. She must see the cold sweat, the fear.
"Nothing, I -- " But her arms came around him, hard, and stopped his words for a moment. "I will stay with you. Had you to ask?" His eyes opened to find hers mere inches from his own. His breath caught again, and he allowed his own arms to wrap round her, in this too-intimate embrace. He wanted...gods. What he had always wanted. What a not-quite-man and a more-than-woman could never have. Fool.
Something touched his lips, warm and wet -- her fingers, red and dripping, came away. For a moment his spirit panicked, rebelled -- I cannot -- and then he did, held her eyes as he let his tongue taste it. Oh gods...oh gods. His senses rapidly deserted him, and her hand came to his mouth again, blood running from her fingers. This time he did not hesitate.
----------------------