AN: Super short Caesar chapter
"She what?"
Vulpes, never one to back down to Caesar's furious twist of a brow, crossed his arms behind his back and repeated.
"She was in Nipton. She didn't seem all too pleased to see us."
Caesar shot out of his throne, fists clenched at his sides.
"Why didn't you bring her back you incompetent fool?"
"I didn't believe we could bring her back...undamaged," Vulpes nearly sighed, seemingly bored by the repetition of events. Caesar would have punished him for that, but that was his default mood. "She held a gun on me. She was prepared to fight. I thought it better to let her go and take her by surprise next time than possibly injure her this time. I thought you would be pleased, mighty Caesar. We know she's here. We can find her again."
"You were too scared to pick a fight with a child," Caesar growled, displeased.
He sank back, with a defeated sigh, a throbbing warning of a headache rising to the forefront of his skull. He tried to knead the pain away, but it was verging precariously on the border of a migraine.
"You're absolutely sure it was her?" This hadn't been the first time someone came to him with information about Miriam and the daughter she stole away. For weeks after they left, men came forward with any black haired woman and child they came across to say they'd captured his runaways. A few brought only severed heads. Those ones he'd made carry the rotting skulls around their necks for weeks afterwards for their idiocy.
"Absolutely," Vulpes secured firmly, "Dark skin, black hair, green eyes. Her mother has renamed her 'Cato', but she still bears the scar on the left side of her brow."
Caesar's pain ebbed slightly, as did his stern expression. The scar she'd gotten when she was only a baby. Antony's imbecilic mongrels knocked her to the ground when she was nearly a year old and a pebble imprinted on the soft tissue in her forehead.
His hand still clinched into a fist.
"Then why are you standing there? Find her, and do not let her slip through your fingers again, Vulpes. You know I don't tolerate failure twice."
The frumentarii bowed curtly and was gone.
Though he normally would have hesitated diverting valuable resources and men to anything but the war effort in times like these, this was a chance Caesar could not waste until after the Second Battle for Hoover Dam was over. That was how he lost her the first time. Miriam used the catastrophic failure at the Dam and the subsequent chaos at the camp that night to run, and she still had her claws in his little girl, he was sure of that. She would never be his again unless she was liberated of that woman.
Cato, he thought bitterly.
An unfitting name for his child, and one he was sure was just a ploy to enrage him. She was prone to historical barbs whenever she was sore with him. His concubine was too well-read for her own good at times. Always had been.
That had been his draw to her at first, she was a whore with a beautiful mind to match her body. She knew not only of ancient Rome, but the histories of early man, civilizations before and after Julius Caesar's reign. She'd beg to him in broken Latin sometimes. He always wondered why she didn't put her knowledge to better use than seducing men.
"Easier to make a living on your back than your trivial knowledge of dead societies," she had told him once.
He rested his chin in his palm, suddenly curious if Julia inherited her mother's silver tongue and bald-faced wit since he last saw her. As furious as Miriam's witticism made him at times, it made her strong, her gaze defiant even after he'd strike her for her impudent remarks. He admired her for that. It was only fair that his daughter was strong like that too.
Although it sounded like she was already strong. He smirked, trying to imagine his timid little bird holding a gun on the imposing frumentarii with enough vehemence to frighten him into retreat with his tail between his legs.
The image made him laugh aloud, startling the praetorians at the mouth of the tent.