92A/N: So I've been nursing this idea for a while now – Ancient Rome would have to be my favorite historical era, and though I know I'm not the first to tackle this idea, I hope I can bring a fresh and intriguing plotline to the table. The title, I know, is hardly creative, and despite sharing the title and the cover art with the HBO show, it won't really have many similarities.
So while some elements of this fic will be historically accurate, there are a handful of details I've had to fudge just to make our beloved characters more recognizable. Names, for instance, is the biggie (The Latin language doesn't even technically have the letter 'J ' lol). Romans had a very set way of choosing and passing on names, and the selection of names didn't really include the names of our beloved characters, regardless, so I've taken the liberty of "Romanizing" their names just so they appear to fit into the time period more accurately. If any of the names are not obvious, I'll make sure to mention them in an A/N before the chapter they make their debut in so you can follow along. Jane and Maura's names are going to appear as Jane and Maura, just because it'd be too weird to not use their given names – but even their names will have an explanation that you'll see as I write more.
This story will be told switching between present time and flashbacks, so there will be ambiguity at times, but I promise that your questions will be answered in due time
This story takes place in the early Roman Empire, during the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero is emperor and it's roughly around 60 AD. As needed, I'll leave some historical/cultural notes in my A/Ns, and the limited Latin I use is typically explained or easy to infer from the context. But for now it's about time I let you read :]
Prologue
Her face hit the ground with thud, slamming her cheek against the hard earth. The taste of dirt mixed with blood and sweat assaulted her tongue as she bit down on her lip, struggling to breathe.
"You bastard," she hissed, feeling his weight press against her, keeping her pinned to the ground. A small distance off, she heard a scream, causing her stomach to clench with hatred. "Don't you dare touch her."
"Fight me, Janus," he hissed, kneeing her hard in the stomach. She bit her lip harder, rupturing the skin, warding off her dizzying symptoms. "Fight me for her. Fight me if you love her."
The woman whimpered, and she writhed beneath his grasp. He tightened his grip, digging his nails through her tender skin. She let out a yelp, momentarily stunned to submission.
"Jane," the woman sobbed, the familiar nickname coaxing the strength from her. She was imbued with a rush of adrenaline, jamming her own knee into his gut. He grunted, his grip wavering for a moment, but not enough for her to overcome him. He throttled her back to the ground, her head slamming hard into the earth. Her breathing grew shallow, her head lolling to one side.
"Don't hurt her," she begged softly, her voice barely more than a hoarse whisper.
"I'll do with her what I please," he cackled tauntingly, earning another jab in the stomach as she summoned what strength she had left. He reached for his dagger, keeping her firmly against the ground with the weight of his body as he dragged the jagged blade against her throat. She let out a sound equivalent to that of a wounded animal, the sound mixing with the woman's heavy cries.
It was not the first time she had faced death. She had taunted it many times throughout her years – and at times somewhat too willingly. She had thrown herself into the battlefield, pursuing triumph but never shying from imminent defeat. Even the bravest men trembled, even if only inwardly, at the thought of losing their lives, even in the noblest manner, but she had stared death head on, unwavering, her stony heart braced for even the greatest downfall. But she had carried on with a fierce perseverance, an ugly knot of anger and the promise of revenge boiling deep within her core, encouraging her despite all she had lost.
But now, as she felt the warm blood spill from her neck, a new feeling pulsed throughout her. A sense of determination not fueled by the ugly hatred that had consumed her, but instead by the soft fluttering of love. She let out a sob, not from the searing pain, but in response to the grief that slowly melted away.
"Maura," she whispered softly, hoping her voice would carry.
Her eyes fluttered shut, and she knew she'd meet her end soon, and she was more frightened than she had ever felt in her life. Before, she would have gladly taken a spear to the chest, a sword to the gut, an arrow to her heart, letting them each tear through the bitter ugliness she harbored. But now she had a reason to live, a reason to love. She wished the cost of her life would save the one she loved, but her death would do little to protect her.
She let out another sob as he pressed the dagger more firmly against her neck. "Te amo," she fiercely whispered. "Te semper amavi, te semper amabo…"
Chapter I
It was high noon, and the sun beat down mercilessly on the cobblestoned streets. The stench of sweat, urine, and horse dung rose with the heat, filling the crowded forum. Fragments of shouts could be heard from stall to stall – Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew, all melding together as the shopkeepers conducted their business.
A soldier stood near an alleyway on the outskirts of the forum, leaning up against a heavily graffitied wall, relishing the small patch of shade amongst the open marketplace. He was heavily tanned with a striking face that turned more eyes than he favored. Women young and old were attracted to his sharp features, his prominent brow and his lean, muscular build. Men were often intrigued as well, finding a beauty in his distinctive face, drawn to his dark, endless eyes.
He spoke rarely, and when his did, his voice was gruff and sinewy but held the hint of a feminine drawl. His face was always smooth, and his arms and legs had only a soft splay of hair, much like those of young boys before they matured. He'd been called a eunuch more than once, attesting for his lack of masculine features, but hardly any suspected that he lacked much more than a castrated young man.
'He' was hardly a man at all, though the soldier made a conscious effort to reveal this detail to no one, and sometimes she found herself forgetting her true identity as well. It'd been years since she'd let her hair grow long, eons since she'd donned a stola, and she had never learned to apply a heavy coating of kohl around her eyes to accentuate them. The grim reminder was always her naked body, bound tightly day after day to stifle her curves, bathing in private to conceal that she was far less than a man than she led others to believe her to be.
She hated her body; she hated the reminder of weakness, of hardship. She hated that she was stuck in an unbearable limbo, not quite defined as anything at all. While she could never physically be the man she had worked hard to form, she also could not imagine embracing her femininity, accepting the smothering role of a housewife, a voiceless citizen.
She spat against the ground, watching her saliva evaporate quickly from the parched pavement. She lifted her gaze, squinting into blinding sunlight, her eyes falling on a venalicius, a slave-dealer,leading a group of African slaves to the auction. They were mostly women, their heads shaved and their bodies bare and vulnerable. The chains binding their wrists and ankles clinked together as they walked at an even pace, their eyes stoic as they kept their gaze straight ahead. At the end of the line, the only male slave took up the rear. His dark skin glistened with sweat, accenting his sinewy muscles. She winced as she registered the raw, fresh slashes on his back, and the venalicius seemed all too eager to further decorate his back as he kept his whip handy.
The soldier followed behind at a distance, knowing that she shouldn't get involved, but the lashes on the slave's back struck a nerve that she could not ignore. Slavery was a common practice throughout the empire, and one that she had hardly given a thought to growing up, taking her own few household slaves for granted, never knowing better. But now she understood ownership. As a woman, she had been destined to belong to her husband if she had not taken it upon herself to free her from the binds of her gender. As a soldier in the army, she had become a pawn of the Roman state, bound to a life with hardly any more freedoms than a slave.
She noticed them now, the thousands of imprisoned individuals, forced into a life of captivity, and it made her seethe, made her ache, and she worried what her anger might cause her to do as she watched the venalicius roughly jerk the chain, leading the slaves into the forum.
"Strong, beautiful slaves from Africa," he announced in accented Latin. "Finest there is, healthy and strong," he began his mantra, earning the attention of the citizens.
She hung back a few steps, blending in easily with the crowd as she watched, her eyes falling on the slaves' faces, their terror apparent as they fought to keep their faces expressionless. The male slave wore grimace, his entire face hardened with anger.
"Do I hear five hundred denarii this African beauty?" the venalicius showcased the first girl who could have been barely more than twelve, her exposed breasts hardly developed. The soldier watched her face in admiration as she kept her gaze fixed ahead, her fear hardly apparent.
A stout middle-aged man took the offer, though was quickly outbid by a finely dressed young man. "Six hundred denarii!"
She gritted her teeth as she watched the display, wondering how the concept of owning a human life had come about. The slave girl was sold for eight hundred and fifty denarii to the young citizen and shoved off the auction block into arms of her new master.
The young patrician jerked the chains, leading the girl away. The woman who had stood along side her let out a small sob, her façade breaking as she watched the girl disappear into the crowd. Her tears were quickly silenced by the crack of the whip, her knees wobbling as she tried to gain her compose.
The African man yelled out in a language the soldier did not recognize, his face contorted into an expression of utter rage. "You say you do not touch them!" he bellowed in fragmented Latin. He rattled his chains, attempting to lunge himself at the venalicius. "I am the only one you touch!"
The venalicius turned sharply on his heal, baring the whip onto the slave's oozing back. "You are a slave, and you do not speak to a freeman this way! Another word out of you, and I will have you put to death!"
The slave doubled over as the venalicius continued to split his back, his resolve wavering as the blood poured from his back. The soldier had seen enough; she shoved her way past the thickening crowd, throwing herself between the slave and the whip. It sliced against her arm, and she bit back a wince, watching as the venalicius stumbled back in surprise.
"What in Pollux's name do you think you're doing?" he spat in her direction, edging toward the trembling slave.
"I'm preserving what little dignity this man has left," she defended, her hand clasped against the hilt of her sword, ready to draw it at any moment.
"He's a slave – a piece of property, as worthless as your filthy tunic," he growled, annoyed when she kept her feet firmly panted. "He has no dignity, no place in this world, and I pity the man who will own this indignant bastard."
She drew her sword, watching his eyes widen as she rested it gently against his neck. A murmur rose as nearly everyone in the vicinity stopped to watch, perplexed and uneasy as they tried to register the taboo display. "I'll take him," the solider stated with clarity.
"That will be seven hundred denarii," the venalicius squeaked, breathing carefully as she kept her weapon firmly planted.
"That's a high price for something so worthless, don't you think?" she countered, jerking her sword just enough the break the skin. He exhaled loudly, stumbling backward a step. "I think you'd better wager the value of your life."
She gave his neck a final knick, watching as the blood from the superficial cut spilled onto the front of his tunic. He backed away, put in his place. He nodded, shoving the man toward her. "You may think you've won, but don't say I didn't warn you when you have a rebellion on your hands," he added with a final sneer.
"I'll take my chances," she confidently replied, feeling the eyes of the crowd follow her as she led the slave away from the forum, a mixture of awe, disgust, and reverence in the atmosphere.
"Why you do that?" the slave muttered once they had walked a fair distance from the teeming crowd. His voice was no longer filled with resentment, but instead held a tone of respect.
She shrugged. "Gets me angry to see any human being treated that way."
"Your law says that I am not 'human being,'" he reminded her as they took a turn down a less congested alleyway.
"The law says a lot of things I do not agree with," she shrugged again, not sure if she appreciated this opportunity to explain herself. She was used to keeping silent, used to harboring her thoughts and secrets to only herself. "I like to live by my own code of standards," she added with a weak chuckle.
The slave smirked softly as well, but he refrained from commenting, his chains continuing to rattle as she led him through the dank alleyway, the drainage of the cloaca maxima hardly stifling the putrid smells intensified by the summer heat.
"Here, let me take those chains off for you," she offered, stopping in her tracks as she turned to face the slave. He wore only a dirty loincloth, and his feet were calloused and bare. His eyes were no longer stony as they met hers fondly, and her stomach knotted with empathy.
"Aren't you frightened that I run off, dominus?" he countered, with a hint of sarcasm in his tone that would have infuriated any other high born Roman man.
But she was hardly a Roman man, even putting aside her obvious physical differences. She was not ignorant to hardship, to pain, or to sorrow. She saw the world in a way that many had never been forced to look upon it. She raised an eyebrow in response, taking her sword for her sheath. "Hell, makes no difference to me if you do. I hardly have a need for a slave – hands out," she commanded, lifting her sword. "I have a good aim," she assured him with a throaty laugh as the slight widening of his eyes.
She swiftly slashed the metal binds, the iron links clattering to the ground. She followed suit with his bound ankles, wincing slightly as she noticed the ugly marks they had left against his dark skin. She replaced her sword. "Coming or going?" she asked, turning her sandaled feet in the opposite direction, giving him the first choice he had been offered since his captivity.
"If I must have dominus, I pick you," he muttered, using the word with a sense of respect now.
"I'm not much a master," she shrugged, but she smiled faintly. It had been so long since she had allowed someone to let her feel even the slightest emotion. She'd become so hardened, so callous, that she'd forgotten what it was like to even have an alliance. "You have a name?"
"I was called Ankhenaten in my homeland. Here, I am called many names, but most call me Nubia for the country that I come from," he answered.
"That's one place I've never been to," she answered. "I've traveled up to the north to Britannia, seen cities all over Italia, gone down to the southern islands of Graecia, and even seen the shores of Asia Minor. What is your home like?" she struck up conversation, curious about the African lands she had never laid eyes on.
"Desert, mostly," he answered. "Miles and miles of burning sand. Many say there is nothing, but I see beauty," he spoke nostalgically. "Have you seen desert?"
"Only in paintings," she admitted. "It reminded me of snow," she added with a laugh. "In Britannia, the winters were harsh, but the snow covered the land like a blanket, stretching for miles upon miles across the barren fields – much like the desert."
"Except cold," the slave contradicted. "Desert is white hot, not white cold. I never see snow before. Only frost when I was in Ostia."
She jerked her head up, the mention of the port city sending a pang of familiarity through her, though she said nothing. "When I was little, I had never seen snow either, but we'd have frost in the winters, and I loved how the tiny crystals clung to the garden outside. I used to dust it off the tree branches before the morning sun had a chance to melt it."
"Frost is strange. Not like sand. But I like it," he assured her, following her as she led him to her insulae, her apartment building, in the heart of the city.
"Frost," she laughed again. "I think that's what I'll call you, seeing as I've already forgotten your name."
"As you wish, dominus," he laughed as well. "I go by many names. Your name, I see, is written here on your sheath. You etch it there," he noticed, daring to reach out and finger the crudely scratched words.
"One of them," she confirmed. "I go by many names as well."
"Ja—" he began to sound out, impressing her by his knowledge. It was rare to see a slave who was able to read Latin. "Jane," he concluded.
"Janus," she corrected.
"You call me Frost, I call you Jane," he muttered with a small smile.
A/N: So I'm really excited about this idea, and I'd love some feedback. Let me know if you'd be interested in reading more!
