#going on

Rome is the enemy, this is what you have known, ever since childhood. The empire had been fighting your state, a neverending conflict. You uncles had died fighting, their helmets brought over whilst their widows wailed in despair, cursing the gods above. You had held your aunt’s hand as she had heard the news that none of her sons would return from the front. You had known loss at the hands of the Romans, felt the blood of the fallen on the battered pieces of armour that survived. You had felt the silence and the empty seats at family feasts. Missed the voices of the names that will now never be spoken of. 

“They are the masters of the sea, and the land.” Those are the whispers you caught, when you hear of the Romans, when your mother speaks with her friends, mending fishing nets. Her fingers steady as they weave the twine, and she had taught you how to do this, knotting each thread. They sat behind the curtains, away from the men in the house, and you sat with them, pricking your hands with the needle as you kept attempting to learn how to repair. 

Most days, you are thankful that your father had escaped being more blood spilt, because he could talk. Talk, charm, convince, he helped forge difficult treaties, soothed the rages of the royals, and stood by the throne, not with a weapon, but with gentle words that could calm the fits of the most stubborn of kings.

For his service, in your childhood, your family was given a house in the city walls, a gift as a reward from the royal dynasty. To be near them, protected, but not quite part of them. The city was full of narrow streets, bustling markets and merchants, and it was different from the villa that sat on the coast where your family lived. It was smaller, taller, mud brick so the heat could have a chance to cool before it burnt you.

Jasmine curled on the frames in the garden, and the smell of their perfume surrounded the house, carried through every room by the salty breeze. Your mother loved the garden, and you came to love it too, sitting beside her as she never let the servants plant flowers. Never let you plant flowers either. She would do it herself, and you would watch, it was for the best anyway, your hands never could quite bless the earth to plant new life.

Your memories of the sea are few and far between, the sea was just a stone’s throw away back from the villa where you once lived. You could wade into the shallow coast, and feel the fishes nip at your feet in the clear water. White sand that encrusted your hands as you dipped them in the water, feeling it pass through your fingers. There the world was smaller. 

Over here, in the capital, you could stand in the courtyard of your house, up on the terrace and you could still not see the sea. The city stood on high cliffs, the walls surrounding it were ancient, immovable, colossal. You could hear the sea crash against the cliffs, and your heart ached to see it again, to touch the sun-warmed water again, but the walls were there for protection. Outside the walls, the Romans could come, and burn everything down.

Sometimes you wonder if your villa by the sea has been burnt down yet. 

You were with nothing quite to do in the house, back in the villa there was always a cousin to play with, an aunt to annoy. Here it was only your mother, and your two baby twin sisters, which were a blessing to your parents, unexpected and almost a decade after prayers. Your mother doted over them, with a softness in her face that you could never remember she had for you, you were always knocking over plant pots with your uncoordinated hands, pricking your fingers with needles, never quiet. You loved your sisters, but they meant that you were no longer the youngest, and now you found yourself with nothing to do in the summers that lasted for months. 

Other advisors had sons to bring to court, and your father had none. He had three daughters, and you were desperate to be seen as someone beyond the caretaker that you were. Beyond the one who would attempt to sew the frayed hems of the clothes in the house, beyond the one who would fetch the ink and papyrus and leave quietly once the men started talking. 

He saw you, lingering outside the chambers when any meetings were held at his house, within the city. Diligent in what you studied, you always had a scroll in your hands, unassuming, sitting on the bench outside. Perhaps hidden behind the bushes, under the swooping branches of the tree. You never intervened, simply listened, knowing you would be dismissed if you ever spoke up.

It was one night when your mother saw you, sitting outside, ears pressed to the closed door. She was drying fish in the courtyard, a village habit she would simply not exchange for the habits of the city. You know she saw you, and you worried she would be angry, but there was simply a smile on her face, with that softness that you craved for.

It was only after then that your father left the doors to the meetings open, enough to let you hear the murmurs, and to let the sound of shuffling maps through.

The years passed faster, and you asked a hundred questions to him after, he smiled as he answered them for you. A quiet smile, brimming with pride, he would reply to all your questions with patience. Sometimes he would catch your mistakes, and point to the maps and treaties to amend them, he would sip tea, and offer you some.

Then, the door was left open wider, sometimes a scribe would be ill, and you would be called in his place, and you would take minutes of the meeting. Your father would ask you for your opinion, sometimes ‘forget’ a figure, and have you call it out instead. The other advisors and diplomats looked amused, a little astonished, and a few looked with disgust and disregard. But they all looked at the girl with plaits chiming into a meeting, you were not the only woman in court, but it was not exactly a woman’s place. 

When your father took you to court, you were elated. You were angry and sharp, you debated with most of the other advisors. And you lost, oftentimes you lost. Your father would laugh, but not unkindly, you were opinionated and angry enough to prove yourself. 

You were desperate, desperate to be seen, heard, when a girl like you should be neither. Your sisters were talented in song and dance, and you were talented in rage. In breaking things, throwing things. A cutting tongue developed, words said with some semblance of remorse coming after.

And as you turned twenty summers, you had made a name for yourself in your kingdom, your father’s daughter. With the same tongue, yet icier words, shorter temper, but the acumen was still the same. You knew kingdoms, understood the whims of men in power. It was all you had seen growing up.

And it is why your father refused to have you married at an early age, have you by his side, assisting him advise the king. You despise the idea of being married to someone, weighed down by a rock, you wish to speak, to debate and learn and engage. 

He had never let you debut, never had you parade in court with the fancy dresses you saw the other girls wearing. You were grateful for the freedom it afforded you. 

You could go anywhere, no hand of a husband leading you; walk the palace unescorted, stand in court and speak your mind. No in-laws to disappoint. Simply your own family, but your father brought you here just to argue and your mother saw the joy it brought you, and that was enough. You had been taught what daughters are rarely taught to do, think. The court had a few species for women, and you slotted into them. 

You were no good at teasing men with a gentle voice, there was no flattery or flirtation. Screw that, you were taught to listen, and your stomach would not rest until you retorted backc backed with political techniques from scrolls.

The freedom, you liked that freedom. 

But you would only be speaking Latin after that. Rome attacked in your third year of attending court, and had been fighting at the borders of the state for years. It had sucked parts of the state, first it was far flung villages, then cities, slowly creeping up to the capital, like poison in veins. 

And here you are, your family part of the entourage that follows your king to Rome itself. To debate for a better treaty for the state, the capital was under siege and could not hold much longer. Peace talks, for autonomy if nothing else. 

The stillness of Rome is striking, from seeing the swaying sea and the passing forests. There are majestic buildings, as if Rome was built by the gods, for the gods. They are rooted in the ground, marble and gold, as if they grew on their own, for a better class of people. 

The horse stops, the carriage stops, and the scene finally comes to a still. 

Your father asks you what you think of Rome. 

Rome is beautiful, and Rome will kill you one day, just like poison in your veins. 

In court one day, you sit. The peace negotations are happening unsuccessfully, the senators act as if they do not care. They speak of matters that are irrelevant to what your state requires. Three hundred Roman men shouting and discussing, raising their hands, with their greying hair, so obviously in their twilight years. They speak of finances, taxation, and they do not speak of the suffering your people will go through with the tax rates so high. They do not speak of citizenship for the citzens of your state, they speak of nothing of relevance for your kingdom, and you see your father’s face fall with every hour spent here. They speak in Latin, fast and difficult for your state’s entourage to translate, and they look down at the group of women who walk into the senate. There is no shame being a woman in your state, but there is an inherent shame of being one here.

You have half a mind to run, hands cramping over the stylus as you write the notes and minutes for your father. There is nothing left to say, nothing left to write of worth, Rome has never cared for any of the kingdoms it devours. The senators speak as if they have won, and they have. The army approaches, the fields have been burnt, the coastline all but seized. There is nothing left to do but give up, and yet the thirty of you that have been brought to court so desperately try to find some sort of deal which will favour your people, rather than the Romans. 

Your hands rub your face, nails scraping against your skin. The stench of Rome is disgusting, and you can’t bear it any longer. It is despicable, it is horrible, and you are going to snap the wooden stylus in your hand if you have to hear another sixty year old man drone on any longer in a language that you hate.

Your eyes stay on the papyrus, writing away in your native script, of the things that Rome is simply unwilling to concede. 

You need to leave this room, full of failure and desperation. Of Roman superiority.

There are no women in the senate, politics is strictly a man’s world. The legions have spilt over the continents, and have managed to chip away more states that held their own against others. The Roman army does not fail, never fails as it continues to seep through the lands. 

Caracalla does not have any care for politics, he who is so indulgent in his ways. He sinks deeper into his lust, with concubines and wine and sugars and substances. He is an addict, in every sense of the word, and his younger brother regrets that it has come to this. In a better world, Geta would have been born first, fitter to rule and fitter to command. He sits into the senate sessions, at least listens into the laws the empire passes and the lands the legions advance into. He is not fit to rule, simply a better fit than his brother. 

Auburn hair that has been lightened with the years, pale, pale skin and black kohl that is a stark contrast to everything on his face, today he sits into the senate’s session, because of his brother’s whims. 

“Dondus wishes to listen to the senate!” Caracalla had pleaded, knocking on Geta’s doors, with that small voice of his that could convince Geta to do anything. Because he was his brother, and he would move the world to make his brother smile, especially when his sickness grew, and festered in his body. 

He, too, should be interested, the senate brings an entourage from another small state, one on the coast, with an impressive port city. Well-made shipbuilding docks, with trade connections. And Rome was to have it. The entourage today was here to plead their case, negotiate better terms for themselves and their citizens. He had seen it a dozen times before, and every time the senate was merciless. 

There would be no change today either, and there was no point in going. The senate’s control was wrapped within itself, and as the Emperor, he barely had a say. Not that he had anything to say. But Caracalla begged, and so he had dressed himself in the purple of the imperial family, and had shown his face to court.

And Caracalla is drunk. The sun had not even reached its peak, and Caracalla is drunk. 

He sits on his throne, eyes flicking over to his brother with worry, wondering if he would throw a tantrum, shout incomprehensible words. It was not his fault, never his fault, simply the fault of the sickness that ravaged his insides and ate away at his brain. The gold is stiff against his back, and he would rather be in bed right now, perhaps a concubine with him. Or just in bed, asleep. Sleep is an escape, perhaps if he dreams well enough, he can imagine his mother’s lap, all soft and full of care. 

There are no women in the senate, politics is strictly a man’s world, and so it surprises him that the state’s entourage comes with a few women. There are thirty men, and some women too, walking in with the same men. The senate looks at them with disgust, and distaste. Caracalla smiles with interest, like he would if he saw a new flavour of wine, and Geta…watches. He tilts his head to the cool of the throne, and attempts to watch. 

Caracalla sips on wine, the senators argue, and he.

His eyes are drawn to the one with the stylus, the scribe, keeping minutes of the meeting. Her hair in a braid, lying over her shoulders. She is listening to the words the senators are saying, and she is occasionally glaring daggers. There is something in her eyes, something that is set on fire, like a pyre of rage and anger, and her hand grips on the stylus so hard, even Geta can see it from the head of the room. 

The youngest, probably, in the room. As old as him, listening to the senate, and instead of ignoring it, she is listening and getting angrier. Perhaps if he were on the other side, he would be paying attention to the senate too. 

And she is pretty, with the mouth set in a permanent scowl – he sees her first. Caracalla too drunk on the wine, too caught with the concubine in his arms, disease in his mind. His thoughts are not clear. 

But Geta’s are. And he sees her, all sharp edges and lines, with hands that look like they’re itching to hit, and he sees her, all softness and curves, hair delicately plaited and wearing a Roman stola to match with the rest of the women in Rome. With the entourage she comes, so she must be an advisor herself. 

What advice comes out of her mouth? He wonders, and before he can wonder any further, he hears the snap of wood. The stylus is broken, mumbled words in a language he does not understand – but which sound distinctly like an apology – to an older advisor, and light steps that lead out of the senate. 

The palace gardens are like those out of a dream, and you wish your mother would leave the villa to see them. But she does not leave the villa, she despises Rome, much like you, and she cannot set foot outside. Having the whole family come to Rome was enough, your father could not function without her. 

Sometimes you wish you could find that, the way your father looked at your mother as if she hung the moon and the stars in the sky, the way your mother smiled when your father showed, like the sun basking her face. 

You tug at the spot of grass that grows where you sit, twisting and pulling with your aching wrist, before throwing it beside you. Something ridiculously childish, and there is no outlet for your rage. Your father tells you you cannot raise your voice with the Roman senators, no matter what they say. 

You debate them as level-headedly as possible, trying to wrangle out a better deal for your state, but it is failing, the empire has sunk its claws in and it wants it all. 

You hear steps behind you, but do not bother turning behind. The sound of wooden sandals against marble is nothing new, especially not the steps of the palace garden, a hundred slaves pass by these halls, officials, nobles, the damn senators. 

“Do you enjoy committing vandalism?” A voice breaks through the idle sound of birds murmuring, haughty.

Your fingers tighten around another few blades of grass, before pulling them out of the ground, roots and dirt with them. You don’t bother rising, nor looking back. You already know who it is, what with the way he speaks, a silent power woven into his words, he owns this palace, all of Rome, and now, you too. 

However free you were, however much you valued your freedom, you would all be speaking Latin now.

“I wouldn’t consider this vandalism.” You glance sideways, and the figure stands just beyond the rose bushes, dressed in luxurious imperial robes, purple silk draped on his shoulders, with gold woven into them. He glows in the orange of dusk, like he is a gift from the gods.

His brown eyes stare into you, lined with kohl, making them stand out against his pale skin. They are wider, deeper, staring right into you, as if looking past your skin and bones, and looking into the soul inside of you. 

“My lord.” You add, more as an afterthought than anything else, a coin tossed into a purse that you do not care for. He is the emperor, after all.

You have seen his brown eyes wander. The twin emperors sit in court like they couldn’t care less, lions on their gilded thrones. One ready to pounce on an instance, with bright blue eyes, the other who watches and waits. The one whose gaze lingers on people, on objects, and now on you, in the palace gardens. You are pulling at his grass, leaving patches of earth dug up on his grounds. He is not your Lord, he will never be your Lord, and yet now with the way things go, with the way Rome eats away at the states that cannot hold their own, he is to be your Emperor. 

The way he tilts his head, amused, makes something sink in the pit of your stomach. There is no reason for him to be amused, there is no reason for him to be here, he should be in the meeting with the senate. And yet he is out here, with you. You have caught his eye. 

 “I should have you punished.” He steps closer to you, saying it nonchalantly, as if it were to have no consequence. You simply just stare at him, perhaps the consequences are better than the fate that you have now. A woman in Rome is a second class citizen, and you weren’t even Roman. 

You don’t know what possesses you when you continue to pull out another clump of grass, and toss it at his feet, “Then punish me.” You have always been quick to anger, making you a foreboding beast to debate with back at home, and now you are quick to retort back to him, the Emperor of Rome.

He should grab you by the arm, strike you for not even bowing your head for forgiveness. Instead he just laughs at you, it’s a cold sound, and you cannot imagine laughing so mirthlessly. He laughs like something about you is interesting, or stupid, or both. 

“This is a poor way of rebelling.” 

You have a good mind to swear at him, but there is no reason to bite the hand that feeds you, or in this case, doesn’t haul you to the dungeons. Instead you just mutter the swear in your native language under your breath, then look up at him. Your hands smooth the cotton of your dress, streaks of dirt against the pale red of the stola. You wear something Roman, fitting for someone who is to become a citizen of the empire. Fitting for a girl who is meant to be Roman, yet is so obviously, terribly, no. 

“There are better ways.” You retort back, gods help you, you actually snap back. You are a weed, unwilling to be pulled out – especially unwilling to be pulled out by someone like him. 

“Better ways?” He has this interest in his eyes, the same one you have seen when he lounges in his throne, the same upward tilt of his lips when he toys around with council like he toys with his concubines. 

The same open interest he now shows in you. 

“Consiliarius, are you not afraid?” and the word is foreign to your ears. Not only is it Latin, something you despise hearing, but it has never been said referring to you. You are your fathers daughter, a woman in a world that is so clearly made for men. And even your father can’t stand the word himself, can’t stand that he will be an advisor to the Emperor now, not a diplomat for his own coastal state, there is no coastal state left, Rome has devoured the coastline and the capital. 

The Emperor speaks with measured words, yet there is a sharp edge to his tone. A razor close to the veins in your neck, one wrong cut, and you could bleed out freely.

He knows what he is saying, and your eyes flash at him. You are surprised when he sits down, still above you, like all men sit above women in Rome, above you like he is the emperor and you are his subject. He is sitting on a bench, but he’s still, is sitting by you, still towering over you, just from a little closer. 

“I’m not afraid, not of Rome, or you for that matter, my lord.” The my Lord is truly just a formality, because nothing in your sentence asks for respect anyway. He hears the insult hidden beneath the velvet of your voice, he isn’t stupid.

You should be lucky that he doesn’t scowl, or call for his guards. 

Lucky, lucky, lucky. Lucky that he lets you speak, when you have no standing, a member of a court that is nothing but a puppet now. You are sharp tongued, and he lets you speak out your insolence. Perhaps it is because you seem to be the same age, younger than the senate and yet sharpened by it. 

And here he lets you almost spit at his feet with your defiant words. He should dismiss you, at least, instead he just gives you a smirk, holding the confidence of a man who has never been told no. 

“I like how foolish you are, it’s very refreshing.” His smirk is crooked, eyes calculating, as if he is actually assessing how much of a threat you are, and he has come to the conclusion that you are not a threat at all. 

Your mouth twitches, and this time you pull out a bunch of flowers from the grass, daisies, putting them on your smooth lap with the grass that was pulled out with them and the dirt. There is a barren patch where you have been tugging at, ruining his garden a little. 

“Glad I could be of interest, Emperor.” Is what you say in the end, you are foolish, going up against him, you know that. Neither of you are soft, you know you were once soft on the coast, with the warm turquoise sea against your ankles as you played in it for hours. You cannot imagine him ever being soft.  

You cannot imagine him ever knowing something that was real, growing up in a palace like this? Full of lies and gold. At least you had a childhood, you can see he is perpetually stuck between being manipulated, and being manipulating. 

His eyes gleam as they look at you, as if you are a shiny object he has found, a special brooch with rubies inlaid into the gold. “Just interest?” One thing sticks out to you as he speaks, his voice sounds wistful, eyes distant yet so focused on you. “That is too humble of a word for someone like you.”

You should run. 

You stay still, rooted to the spot where you sit, daisies in your lap, dirt under your fingernails. You can smell the scented oil in his hair, it smells like something both spicy and cool, cinnamon and sandalwood. 

“Is this how you speak to all the diplomats that visit your palace?” You look up at him, this time holding his gaze, you aren’t a diplomat in Rome’s eyes, but gods be damned if you don’t consider yourself one. You have the dark circles that prove you have stayed up nights, trying to wrangle some treaty, some hope for the independence of your state. You have the papercuts on your fingertips, the ache in your back from being hunched over tables, studying. You have given your days to this, giving up experiences, even damn marriage for this. 

His thin lips stretch into a smile, pale with the white makeup he wears on his face. He has rings on each of his fingers, colourful stones that glitter in the dusk. He looks like he is Midas, everything he touches is gold. A gift and a curse, a gift and a curse that he carries on his back, and it is so heavy, it may break. 

“Not all of them.” 

You narrow your eyes, you can’t imagine a frazzled old diplomat pulling at grass and throwing it at the emperor’s feet. You are a novelty to him, like a lion in the gruesome arena where the Romans find entertainment in death. 

“I must be special then.” 

His eyes still gleam at you, and you know he sees you as a novelty, a shiny new ring. 

“You are a fascinating creature.” 

“I am not a creature.” You scowl at him, mouth a frown, his words leave a bad taste in your mouth, a sweet with too much sugar. He is every warning your mother has said about Rome, he is the master of the land and the sea and he plunders and pillages to whatever extent he wishes. And he stares at you like his brother stares at his damn monkey. 

“Everyone is a creature.” He purses his lips together, and suddenly he looks so innocent, you feel ill. His eyes are so, so  wide, and so brown, like those of a deer, “for the right price.”

His words give a chill down your spine, and your hands tighten around the cotton of your stola, “Emperor, do you not have a court to address?”

“Depends, diplomat,” the corner of his mouth turns up, and he stands, his shadow falling over you, “do you not have a state to save?” 

Oh how he mocks you, how he mocks the failure of your state. 

You wish to hit him with your bare hands, and instead you stand up too. A steadying breath, another one, fighting the rage that often consumed you, often had you throwing sharp insults and proclivities. Your mother often said you swore like a man, which was strange, because they were words, anyone could say them

You’re shorter than him. And you don’t want to look up at him, the empire looks up at him, there is no reason for you to look up any longer. 

“I do, actually.” Your tongue will be the end of you, but until that point, you will continue to use it like a dagger, jabbing at whomever it is directed at, be it a merchant or the Emperor. 

“I hope the gods are in your favour.” 

“I do not need your false gods.”

"They will be yours soon." His voice is gentle in the way hunters are to deer before they kill them. You don't know why he says it, but you walk off, without him dismissing you, back to your father, in the senate.

endnotes: WOW! so i don't know anything about politics actually, or repertoire. i fence with like, fencing foils not words. its so hard writing something u have no idea about. anyway please enjoy this tomfoolery, emperor geta is very down bad for a pretty, angry girl. and reader is also, somewhat into it. but she hates him BAD. and he hates her too. of course they are going to get married. obviously! if you read down to this point at this point u should send me ideas for the next chapter, where reader interacts with caracalla. does he like her?? is he nice?? thank you for letting me unleash this into the world. comment below if u want to be added to the taglist, it's currently on a huge number of one person. we lovee emperor geta and joseph quinn. he is a cutie. my readers are like imagine if rage was a GIRL and she wanted to HIT people and CHASE a man with a HAMMER except whilst CHASING the man they both fell in LOVE. thanks for coming 2 my tedtalk.