"Pietas," PG, Gen, HL/Forever Knight.
Also at the AO3:
Pietas
France -- 2005
August in Paris is hot, hot enough that most who can leave, do. Marcus did.
His last wife, dead at Nefertiri's hands these eleven years, left him this house in the country when she died. It holds, and held, too many memories of her for Marcus to consider selling it: laughing arguments resolved in bed about what colors to paint or paper rooms; debates over pottery (which she loved) and sculptures (which he preferred over pottery); long weekends working on the gardens.
Angela had laughed every fall when he insisted on coming to trim back and mulch the roses, but she'd helped anyway. By their third winter together, she was the one pulling out seed catalogues for the spring garden. She'd called him old-fashioned when he insisted on companion planting flowers and herbs in the garden and around the foundation, but she fell in love with the way the sun-warmed scent of herbs drifted through the kitchen all afternoon, the way the roses and lavender filled their bedroom with perfume on summer nights.
Tonight Marcus can smell the lavender hung to dry on the exposed beams in the kitchen, and he can smell the basil, thyme, and rosemary Lucius brought in from the garden. Mostly rosemary, which Lucius has been coiling and weaving into wreaths between sips of wine.
A painting Angela loved and Marcus thought indifferent is hanging opposite the kitchen table, in Marcus' line of sight. If not for the Eiffel Tower at sunset there in front of him, the pervasive scents and Lucien's use of Latin might almost be enough to make Marcus Constantine wonder which century it is.
Almost.
Marcus hasn't drunk that much of the wine, although he's been thinking about investing in the vineyard and wanted to ask Lucien's opinion on it. Marcus reaches down, plucking a branch of thyme to strip the leaves off the branch. The sharp smell of the herb finishes kicking him out of the heat and wine stupor he now suspects Lucien had intended him to feel. Time he woke to whatever game Lucien is playing this time that he's giving opinions, ostensibly, on wine -- in their old mother tongue.
"A pleasant night, old friend, and a pleasant enough vintage for its age. I have my doubts as to how it will mature, however." Lucien tilts the glass, rotating the barrel between fingers that always look too thick to be that dexterous... nothing about the man was ever anything but deceptive, however. His name ought to be devious, not Divius.
Marcus sips it, hand and gaze both steady as he rolls the wine over his tongue. Reply to the obvious while considering the undercurrents; simple enough. "It has potential. It's hardly undrinkable now, Lucius."
"Short-sightedness has never been one of your flaws, Marcus." Lucius raises an eyebrow, the old mocking motion that used to warn Marcus of an enemy's misstep.
Marcus dislikes having it aimed at himself. "A tendency towards an excess of finesse has, on notable occasions, been one of your flaws, old 'friend'. I'm listening, Lucius. What missive do you bring from some front I didn't know was under siege?"
Lucius smiles, sips his wine again -- the only color his lips will hold until he feeds again -- and rolls the glass in his fingers again, studying it rather than Marcus. "Fair legs, a gentle, fragrant body. It might have potential."
'Might but probably won't,' the choice of words and too level tone say. Finally, his mind pieces together the words with Lucius' request that they meet alone and away from the city. Now Marcus knows what the topic really is, although not why it should be any business of the vampire's.
"I find your interest in my companionship... distasteful." Marcus' grip on his wine never tightens enough to threaten the glass. There's space enough between this house and the next -- Angela's family had money -- but even spoken words can carry across calm nights. Marcus keeps his voice level and the words in Latin for the privacy and the precision.
He may yet resort to shouting at Lucius, of course. It would hardly be the first time.
"I've seen your Gaelle. She is... lovely," Divius admits, husky voice nonetheless insinuating any number of flaws, innate or acquired. "And yet, unworthy of you. You could -- and have -- done far better, old friend. And so I wonder why this one."
"Leaving aside your nonexistent right to interfere," Marcus finally says, "what precisely is your objection to her?" He refills his glass, then Lucius' as well. Meddling, interfering, arrogant -- but still a guest.
"I object more to your lack of control, Marcus. I don't ask what you see in her. Any man can see it and would see it. I ask why you give in to what you see. You are far too interested in burying yourself in her softness, and I do not mean only that obvious softness between her thighs." Lucius never looks away as he speaks, those odd light eyes finally appropriate to him as they never were when he was still human.
Using this language, holding this discussion, Marcus' mind insists on thinking of Lucius as the officer he'd commanded rather than the vampire he's become. The strategy and tactics are still the same, however... and his eye for vulnerabilities. That curbs Marcus' tongue. Mostly. He sips the wine, barely tasting it as he pries his mind from memories of Gaelle to Lucius' flanking attack.
When Marcus realizes his thoughts are that scattered, he takes a second sip, paying proper attention to it, then another while he controls his temper. "So, Lucius. How long have we been 'old friends,' then?"
Lucius tilts his head, that slow, knowing smile that drove senior centurions (and more than one praetor) half-mad. "At least a thousand years, Marcus. Since the night I looked up and realized that no man around me knew how the mother tongue should truly sound and that no woman around me understood the true balance of responsibilities in a marriage. Tell me, old friend -- are there so many of your kind left who would sit and speak to you this way, on this topic? Who remember not only Rome but what it is to be Roman?"
Marcus breathes in slowly, glances down at the table where his index finger is tracing an apparently idle pattern. It's not idle at all; it's the opening sigil for a circle of protection that would throw Lucius out of his garden walls. Wishful thinking as of yet. Marcus doesn't care to make an enemy of a man who knows his tactics as well as Lucius does.
He can't argue against that point, either. "No," he finally admits. "There are precious few." More dryly, he adds, "And that's if I do count you." He catches the rosemary wreath Lucius tosses to him, puts it on the table. Drinks more of his wine and settles the glass down amid the herb at last, closing his eyes ostensibly to think and partly from sheer frustration with the man across from him.
The most annoying thing about the bastard is when he sounds like a man he never met: Marcus' father, Servius. Marcus can almost hear his father talking, lecturing Marcus and his younger brother Tiberius about the necessity of duty, responsibility, and strength. About the necessity of maintaining family, city, and state -- usually in that order. Damn it.
Much as Marcus hates to admit it... Lucius Divius always did have an eye for a weak point. He also had, and has, more sense than to antagonize Marcus over something minor. Marcus looks up, pulls down a bundle of dry lavender, and fetches a bowl. He brings back another bottle of wine, too: an older bottle, of a trusted, superior vintage. "If you don't mind opening this, Lucius?"
Lucius nods and takes their glasses to rinse the dregs down the sink, returns with glasses nestled safely in one hand and the corkscrew hanging between the fingers of the other. "Of course, Marcus. I must say, I don't miss being able to tell fortunes with wine lees."
"I never had the knack of reading them, or tossing them to form a lover's initial either." Marcus smiles for a moment. "Well, I could usually do a passable 'A'."
"Yes. I did like your Angela." Lucius pours wine for them both, swirling the glasses in turn to aerate the wine more quickly -- first Marcus' glass, then his own. He also falls silent, to Marcus' surprise.
Marcus finishes stripping that stalk of lavender: flowers into the bowl, stems and leaves onto a towel, and then the bowl in front of the lares and penates' niche. He looks into the petals and doesn't try to read the patterns; looks up again at a family shrine reestablished more times now than even he can count. And he concedes to his conscience and lights the waiting votive candle. With an old pocket knife, he sacrifices a single drop of his blood onto the flame.
Lucius simply appears at his side without a sound, something he rarely does around Marcus. He, too, cuts his thumb and drips blood onto the candle -- more precious than Marcus' donation, given how much more trouble blood is for a vampire to acquire. Lucius also scatters rosemary leaves across the lavender, and sucks away the second drop left on his skin.
Marcus returns to his seat, sitting upright now instead of leaning back in annoyance, and picks up his glass. He lifts it to Lucius without actually saying anything. After they've both sipped, after Marcus has swallowed his anger and pride with the rich, subtle wine -- then he asks, "So, old friend? You were saying?"
The smell of lavender drifts up with the rosemary, stirring memories and readying him to both hear and remember as Marcus forces himself to relax. He has no wish to hear this advice, much less take it. But he will listen, and he will both consider what Lucius has to say and reconsider what he wishes to do.
He also knows beyond a doubt that the approving light in Lucius' eyes has more to do with his self-control than with the improved quality of wine.
Self-control. Duty. Responsibility. Family. These are the important things, and Marcus settles in to listen, as another decade he might have to settle in to talk. One of them has been a vampire for almost two thousand years. The other has been an immortal for half a millennium longer still. By now, those differences are as irrelevant as who's speaking this time and who's listening.
What's important to them is that they're both Roman.
~~~ finis ~~~
Comments, Commentary, and Miscellanea:
Written for Crossovers100, prompt #16 -- purple. Beta'd by Devo and Draconis this time around; Devo and Vaznetti were kind enough to look over a much earlier version and tell me it needed to be unpacked. All remaining flaws are, of course, my fault, not theirs.
Really, Vaznetti set this off, years ago, in a meta discussion about John Winchester as a Roman father and Sam and Dean Winchester as Greek sons which ended up covering the concepts of virtus, pietas, and patriapotestas. Thanks, dear. I think. (What? I don't watch Supernatural. That doesn't mean I’m not interested in my friends' fannish interests! Meta is over here.)
The paragraph that really set this off was this one: "The thing about pietas is that it means duty and it means love: the Romans sometimes have trouble telling the two apart. That probably has something to do with the way Roman family relationships involve love and obedience in equal measure, and that translates into Roman public life -- you owe a duty to the state and to the gods as well as to your family, and the three are equally important. And (coming back to Aeneas), if what you want, or what will make you happy, isn't what these demand, well, too bad. Aeneas would rather have died at Troy, have founded a little copy of Troy somewhere in the east, have stayed with Dido -- well, tough. That's not what Rome needs."
Lares and penates: Lares are local guardian deities, where local could be a family, a set of boundaries, or an area's fertilities. The family lares would be moved from its shrine to the table for important family meetings, for example. Penates were family, household deities, sacrificed to at each meal with a little bit of the meal tossed into the fire. They were associated with Hestia/Vesta, the goddess of the hearth. Marcus keeps his lares and penates in a niche in the kitchen, where he can give them a bit of each meal and have company with his morning coffee.
What can I say, even in fandoms with long-lived characters, there can't be many who were raised in Rome the way those two were.
If I've missed covering something in the comments, please feel free to ask.
Original post on Dreamwidth | Leave a comment on DW | Read
comments on DW
Given the new LJ 'design' decisions, please comment on DW if you can.
Pietas
France -- 2005
August in Paris is hot, hot enough that most who can leave, do. Marcus did.
His last wife, dead at Nefertiri's hands these eleven years, left him this house in the country when she died. It holds, and held, too many memories of her for Marcus to consider selling it: laughing arguments resolved in bed about what colors to paint or paper rooms; debates over pottery (which she loved) and sculptures (which he preferred over pottery); long weekends working on the gardens.
Angela had laughed every fall when he insisted on coming to trim back and mulch the roses, but she'd helped anyway. By their third winter together, she was the one pulling out seed catalogues for the spring garden. She'd called him old-fashioned when he insisted on companion planting flowers and herbs in the garden and around the foundation, but she fell in love with the way the sun-warmed scent of herbs drifted through the kitchen all afternoon, the way the roses and lavender filled their bedroom with perfume on summer nights.
Tonight Marcus can smell the lavender hung to dry on the exposed beams in the kitchen, and he can smell the basil, thyme, and rosemary Lucius brought in from the garden. Mostly rosemary, which Lucius has been coiling and weaving into wreaths between sips of wine.
A painting Angela loved and Marcus thought indifferent is hanging opposite the kitchen table, in Marcus' line of sight. If not for the Eiffel Tower at sunset there in front of him, the pervasive scents and Lucien's use of Latin might almost be enough to make Marcus Constantine wonder which century it is.
Almost.
Marcus hasn't drunk that much of the wine, although he's been thinking about investing in the vineyard and wanted to ask Lucien's opinion on it. Marcus reaches down, plucking a branch of thyme to strip the leaves off the branch. The sharp smell of the herb finishes kicking him out of the heat and wine stupor he now suspects Lucien had intended him to feel. Time he woke to whatever game Lucien is playing this time that he's giving opinions, ostensibly, on wine -- in their old mother tongue.
"A pleasant night, old friend, and a pleasant enough vintage for its age. I have my doubts as to how it will mature, however." Lucien tilts the glass, rotating the barrel between fingers that always look too thick to be that dexterous... nothing about the man was ever anything but deceptive, however. His name ought to be devious, not Divius.
Marcus sips it, hand and gaze both steady as he rolls the wine over his tongue. Reply to the obvious while considering the undercurrents; simple enough. "It has potential. It's hardly undrinkable now, Lucius."
"Short-sightedness has never been one of your flaws, Marcus." Lucius raises an eyebrow, the old mocking motion that used to warn Marcus of an enemy's misstep.
Marcus dislikes having it aimed at himself. "A tendency towards an excess of finesse has, on notable occasions, been one of your flaws, old 'friend'. I'm listening, Lucius. What missive do you bring from some front I didn't know was under siege?"
Lucius smiles, sips his wine again -- the only color his lips will hold until he feeds again -- and rolls the glass in his fingers again, studying it rather than Marcus. "Fair legs, a gentle, fragrant body. It might have potential."
'Might but probably won't,' the choice of words and too level tone say. Finally, his mind pieces together the words with Lucius' request that they meet alone and away from the city. Now Marcus knows what the topic really is, although not why it should be any business of the vampire's.
"I find your interest in my companionship... distasteful." Marcus' grip on his wine never tightens enough to threaten the glass. There's space enough between this house and the next -- Angela's family had money -- but even spoken words can carry across calm nights. Marcus keeps his voice level and the words in Latin for the privacy and the precision.
He may yet resort to shouting at Lucius, of course. It would hardly be the first time.
"I've seen your Gaelle. She is... lovely," Divius admits, husky voice nonetheless insinuating any number of flaws, innate or acquired. "And yet, unworthy of you. You could -- and have -- done far better, old friend. And so I wonder why this one."
"Leaving aside your nonexistent right to interfere," Marcus finally says, "what precisely is your objection to her?" He refills his glass, then Lucius' as well. Meddling, interfering, arrogant -- but still a guest.
"I object more to your lack of control, Marcus. I don't ask what you see in her. Any man can see it and would see it. I ask why you give in to what you see. You are far too interested in burying yourself in her softness, and I do not mean only that obvious softness between her thighs." Lucius never looks away as he speaks, those odd light eyes finally appropriate to him as they never were when he was still human.
Using this language, holding this discussion, Marcus' mind insists on thinking of Lucius as the officer he'd commanded rather than the vampire he's become. The strategy and tactics are still the same, however... and his eye for vulnerabilities. That curbs Marcus' tongue. Mostly. He sips the wine, barely tasting it as he pries his mind from memories of Gaelle to Lucius' flanking attack.
When Marcus realizes his thoughts are that scattered, he takes a second sip, paying proper attention to it, then another while he controls his temper. "So, Lucius. How long have we been 'old friends,' then?"
Lucius tilts his head, that slow, knowing smile that drove senior centurions (and more than one praetor) half-mad. "At least a thousand years, Marcus. Since the night I looked up and realized that no man around me knew how the mother tongue should truly sound and that no woman around me understood the true balance of responsibilities in a marriage. Tell me, old friend -- are there so many of your kind left who would sit and speak to you this way, on this topic? Who remember not only Rome but what it is to be Roman?"
Marcus breathes in slowly, glances down at the table where his index finger is tracing an apparently idle pattern. It's not idle at all; it's the opening sigil for a circle of protection that would throw Lucius out of his garden walls. Wishful thinking as of yet. Marcus doesn't care to make an enemy of a man who knows his tactics as well as Lucius does.
He can't argue against that point, either. "No," he finally admits. "There are precious few." More dryly, he adds, "And that's if I do count you." He catches the rosemary wreath Lucius tosses to him, puts it on the table. Drinks more of his wine and settles the glass down amid the herb at last, closing his eyes ostensibly to think and partly from sheer frustration with the man across from him.
The most annoying thing about the bastard is when he sounds like a man he never met: Marcus' father, Servius. Marcus can almost hear his father talking, lecturing Marcus and his younger brother Tiberius about the necessity of duty, responsibility, and strength. About the necessity of maintaining family, city, and state -- usually in that order. Damn it.
Much as Marcus hates to admit it... Lucius Divius always did have an eye for a weak point. He also had, and has, more sense than to antagonize Marcus over something minor. Marcus looks up, pulls down a bundle of dry lavender, and fetches a bowl. He brings back another bottle of wine, too: an older bottle, of a trusted, superior vintage. "If you don't mind opening this, Lucius?"
Lucius nods and takes their glasses to rinse the dregs down the sink, returns with glasses nestled safely in one hand and the corkscrew hanging between the fingers of the other. "Of course, Marcus. I must say, I don't miss being able to tell fortunes with wine lees."
"I never had the knack of reading them, or tossing them to form a lover's initial either." Marcus smiles for a moment. "Well, I could usually do a passable 'A'."
"Yes. I did like your Angela." Lucius pours wine for them both, swirling the glasses in turn to aerate the wine more quickly -- first Marcus' glass, then his own. He also falls silent, to Marcus' surprise.
Marcus finishes stripping that stalk of lavender: flowers into the bowl, stems and leaves onto a towel, and then the bowl in front of the lares and penates' niche. He looks into the petals and doesn't try to read the patterns; looks up again at a family shrine reestablished more times now than even he can count. And he concedes to his conscience and lights the waiting votive candle. With an old pocket knife, he sacrifices a single drop of his blood onto the flame.
Lucius simply appears at his side without a sound, something he rarely does around Marcus. He, too, cuts his thumb and drips blood onto the candle -- more precious than Marcus' donation, given how much more trouble blood is for a vampire to acquire. Lucius also scatters rosemary leaves across the lavender, and sucks away the second drop left on his skin.
Marcus returns to his seat, sitting upright now instead of leaning back in annoyance, and picks up his glass. He lifts it to Lucius without actually saying anything. After they've both sipped, after Marcus has swallowed his anger and pride with the rich, subtle wine -- then he asks, "So, old friend? You were saying?"
The smell of lavender drifts up with the rosemary, stirring memories and readying him to both hear and remember as Marcus forces himself to relax. He has no wish to hear this advice, much less take it. But he will listen, and he will both consider what Lucius has to say and reconsider what he wishes to do.
He also knows beyond a doubt that the approving light in Lucius' eyes has more to do with his self-control than with the improved quality of wine.
Self-control. Duty. Responsibility. Family. These are the important things, and Marcus settles in to listen, as another decade he might have to settle in to talk. One of them has been a vampire for almost two thousand years. The other has been an immortal for half a millennium longer still. By now, those differences are as irrelevant as who's speaking this time and who's listening.
What's important to them is that they're both Roman.
~~~ finis ~~~
Comments, Commentary, and Miscellanea:
Written for Crossovers100, prompt #16 -- purple. Beta'd by Devo and Draconis this time around; Devo and Vaznetti were kind enough to look over a much earlier version and tell me it needed to be unpacked. All remaining flaws are, of course, my fault, not theirs.
Really, Vaznetti set this off, years ago, in a meta discussion about John Winchester as a Roman father and Sam and Dean Winchester as Greek sons which ended up covering the concepts of virtus, pietas, and patriapotestas. Thanks, dear. I think. (What? I don't watch Supernatural. That doesn't mean I’m not interested in my friends' fannish interests! Meta is over here.)
The paragraph that really set this off was this one: "The thing about pietas is that it means duty and it means love: the Romans sometimes have trouble telling the two apart. That probably has something to do with the way Roman family relationships involve love and obedience in equal measure, and that translates into Roman public life -- you owe a duty to the state and to the gods as well as to your family, and the three are equally important. And (coming back to Aeneas), if what you want, or what will make you happy, isn't what these demand, well, too bad. Aeneas would rather have died at Troy, have founded a little copy of Troy somewhere in the east, have stayed with Dido -- well, tough. That's not what Rome needs."
Lares and penates: Lares are local guardian deities, where local could be a family, a set of boundaries, or an area's fertilities. The family lares would be moved from its shrine to the table for important family meetings, for example. Penates were family, household deities, sacrificed to at each meal with a little bit of the meal tossed into the fire. They were associated with Hestia/Vesta, the goddess of the hearth. Marcus keeps his lares and penates in a niche in the kitchen, where he can give them a bit of each meal and have company with his morning coffee.
What can I say, even in fandoms with long-lived characters, there can't be many who were raised in Rome the way those two were.
If I've missed covering something in the comments, please feel free to ask.
Original post on Dreamwidth | Leave a comment on DW | Read
comments on DW
Given the new LJ 'design' decisions, please comment on DW if you can.