sixthiterationlogs | † mihi aqua et igni interdirectur

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† mihi aqua et igni interdirectur

WHO: Gaius Gracchus
WHERE: Main east-west path in 6I
WHEN: March 15
OPEN TO: ALL
WARNINGS: none

Gaius still misses Rome every day. Not just the city itself, though of course he misses that, but the life of the city, the excitement of the courts, the thrill of the people's assembly, the sounds and sights of the forum, going about the morning's business under the gaze of the Capitoline temples and the Palatine houses, the feeling of being in the heart of the most important city in the world. Rome hadn't just been his life, it had been his reason for being, its service his purpose in life from his earliest days. He'd been away from Rome before, of course, on trips to his family's estate, but even much of the time he'd spent away from the city had been in its service: visiting his clients or supporters, serving in the provinces with the army or on the governor's staff, traveling to oversee road building or the foundation of a colony.

It's a stark contrast to this place, where there are dozens of people, not hundreds of thousands, where there is no government and much resistance to establishing one, where his name and his family mean nothing. There is a reason it is one of the Roman state's greatest punishments to banish a man from the city, and though Gaius has had to accept being here instead of home, acceptance is all that it is. The fine toga Kate Kelly had made for him is no cover for that reality.

He tries not to miss the crowd of people that used to surround him when he left his home on business, and he's come to accept the solitude that he can usually find on a walk here as a daily occurence instead of an exception. The walk along the village's main road is pleasant enough, and the river at least is clearer and cleaner than the Tiber.

Gaius has crossed back over the river and is on his way back to the Inn, until he's not.

In front of him rises a colonnaded building, eight grand columns reaching up towards a carved frieze: the temple of the goddess Diana, oldest and grandest of the temples on the Aventine hill. He stares, dumbstruck in a way he very rarely is, at the magnificent edifice and takes a step forward. Behind him, someone screams, and voices shout, and he turns to look behind him, but he's stopped by a hand on his arm and a voice.

"We must go!"

"Licinius?"

But his friend and relation isn't there when he looks back, nor is the temple.

Nor are the screams.

Gaius turns on the spot, around and again, grasping for the vanished man, the temple, the moment. He'd been there, in Rome, and the sounds he'd heard and the urgency in his kinsman's voice had spoken of that last terrible day.

He's left standing there in the middle of the path, wide-eyed, his breath suddenly racing to match his heartbeat as Licinius' fear grips him and only slowly subsides.

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After the rush of lunch there's a lull. People need to go back to work, mostly, which means they won't be trampling back and forth from the Inn. It's a time that, today at least, Kate is devoting this moment, here and now, to sweeping dried mud off the porch.

Which means she hears Mr Gracchus' yelp.

It's not a sound, it's a name.

And now, now Mr Gracchus is turning and turning, all wild-eyed and frantic, like he'd seen some ghastly apparition or run a marathon, whichever. Or, maybe, both.

"Mr Gracchus?"

Leaning her broom against a pillar, Kate steps lightly off the porch and hurries towards the strangely stricken man. As she moves, she scans the surrounds in case whatever, whoever, it was is still here. But there's nothing.

"Mr Graccus, you all right?"

He's not usually one to let unease show. That doesn't go well in politics; the people follow confidence, certainty, not this. Not madness, or whatever made him see the temple, hear his friend and the sounds of chaos on the Aventine.

There is nothing left to see now, no sign of Licinius or the temple, just the path through the village that has become so familiar now. He stops at the sound of another voice, one more immediate to him: Kate Kelly's. She calls out his name, asking if he's all right.

"Did you see that?"

He takes a couple of steps forward, his face tense, eyes bright.

"The temple, the city?"

They do not tend to discuss matters of deep import, nor would Kate say that they are close. But she has a measure of the man who is Gaius Gracchus, and this frantic, upset tenseness is nothing she's seen since he's been settled in. On him, anyway. On others.... on others, when something badly has gone wrong.

Shouting at nothing, spinning around like a child's toy, that all counts as 'wrong' in her books.

Her first reaction is to ask, 'what city? what temple?' but she's grown up around people with short-tempers and frayed nerves, so she bites the urge back. Instead, she shakes her head firmly.

"No. I didn't see anythin' but you. What city, Mr Gracchus?"

He knows it, really, that it was some sort of inexplicable vision rather than real. He knows Kate didn't see what he saw, no matter how much he misses Rome and wishes he could be back there. He'd known that was a dream, a dream that could not be. But in that moment it's so real that he has to ask her.

"It was Rome," he says, "the temple of Diana, near to the last place I remember being before I arrived here." There's still steady certainty in his voice, the conviction of knowing what he'd seen, but it's drawn more from years of advocating his ideas and policies to a crowded forum than his belief in his own senses.

It had seemed so real, the temple just as he'd known it, and it must have a connection to that last, terrible day. Why else the Aventine instead of the forum or his home? It is a place irrevocably tied to the rights and fortunes of the plebeian class and their defenders. That was why he'd chosen to rally his supporters there.

What he'd seen, though, had been like the end of a tragedy, not a noble victory of the people.

"You didn't leave here," she says. She's not sure if it'll be an assurance or not. "Not that I saw. A, a vision? Or."

Kate hesitates.

He's uncertain and covering it well; so well, that if she'd just come across him, she'd believe him just concerned. But she hasn't, so she can see the cracks. "This place can make you see things," is how she finishes.

Almost finishes. She doesn't want to pry and press any wounds, but-

"You called out a name. Licinius. Like you were searchin' for him."

The Romans are a religious, spiritual people. The mysterious, the mystical, the unknown is everywhere, and that means here in their exile as well, as far from everything he's ever known as it seems. He'd had visions before, had written of the dream in which Tiberius appeared to him and foretold the life and death politics would lead him to. It hadn't been like this, one moment in one place and another in the longed-for streets of his city.

"A vision while waking," he says, his words slower than usual as he tests them, tasting the suggestion along with each syllable. "Maybe."

He looks back, staring at the spot where Diana's shrine had been. There is nothing, of course, but the dirt path of the village and the park in the distance.

He's been trying not to show how uneasy the vision has made him, but of the two of them, Tiberius always had the better ability to modulate his emotions. It's no surprise that Kate Kelly can see it, that her words suggest concern. He hasn't spoken much about where he'd been before he came here, or what had happened -- or been going to happen -- on that day.

"He is from my wife's family. A friend. He was with me before I arrived here, and I thought I heard him, warning me."

Mr Gracchus has not spoken much of his home, and Kate hasn't pried. Some may want to reminisce, but she doesn't and generally, she extends this to the others in the village. It is simpler, this way. It keeps people from asking her questions in return, and it also seems less cruel. So while she'd known that Mr Gracchus was married, she hasn't asked him much about his wife, or her family. Or the rest of his family. Or his friends. Anything much, really, apart from what skills he had and where he'd received them.

This, then, is something of a piece of him. Something that seems more private than it'd otherwise have been, if she'd asked him more. It adds to the vulnerability of the man.

"Maybe he was," she says, simply. "Why don't you come inside now, Mr Gracchus? If nothin' else, it'll be a bit more comfortable and secure with some walls around ya than standin' out here in the open."

He has little to hide about his life before he came here. He'd been in the public eye his entire life, the son of a censor and dual consul, brother in law of the hero who'd destroyed Carthage, grandson of the savior of Rome from Hannibal. There had been few secrets in his life, and he didn't intentionally keep them here, but he's far from Rome, or so he'd thought, far from his wife and family, and disgraced in a way that would bring shame to them, a shame that he'd already seen play out for his brother's widow and son. From a pragmatic perspective, Licinia was better without him than with him now, if their enemies were going to treat her as Claudia had been treated.

He's aware that Kate Kelly is trying for something reassuring, but Gaius finds himself unwilling, for a moment, to leave the spot where he'd seen the great city. What could the vision mean? Was it truly a warning, and if it was, was it a warning against Rome, or against here?

But there is a clear reason in Kate Kelly's suggestion that being within the Inn's walls would be an easier place than here, somewhere not in the open where he could speak to her. Once, that would have been scandalous, although less so now that he's aware that she is, essentially, married.

"It seems a wise suggestion," he agrees, and starts towards the Inn. He falters after a few steps, and glances back, but there's no sign of the Aventine, and nothing to show that the vision had taken place. It had clearly been in his mind, and only there.

He's not certain if that is a reassurance or not, knowing as he does how unusual some of the things that happen in this place are.

With the weather turning (comparatively) warmer, Picard has taken to spending more time outside. And in particular, he's taken to making sure that he at least gets in a reasonable amount of walking. That this has come to be something that could almost be called a patrol of the village is something that he doesn't let himself think, mostly because he does feel it warrants the term, when the most he's doing is making certain that no one is in particularly dire straits as a result of anything that the Observers might have decided to throw at them.

(Plus there's the fact that the village is a good deal less structured than anything back home would have been, so surely there's no harm in adjusting what terminology he uses to mentally refer to things.)

Coming across Gracchus standing, wide-eyed, in the middle of the road is mostly chance (Picard could easily have been somewhere else) but even so it's very clearly not anything like what he'd consider normal, and that's enough to prompt him to speak up, once he draws near enough.

"Is everything alright?"

There's a timbre in Picard's voice that Gaius, as an orator, can appreciate, the resonance of a powerful voice wisely used. Some speakers never develop a voice like that, no matter how hard they try or how much they practice. The voice cuts through his disorientation long enough to draw his attention.

This is the village. Not the Aventine, not Rome, and Picard isn't speaking Latin, but English. The temple of Diana is gone, and so are the sounds of the distant disruption. So is Licinia's kinsman, the only person in sight the man Picard who'd shown such interest in Roman prayer rituals.

He shakes his head.

"Briefly, I believed ... I was certain that I saw Rome. You did not see it?"

There's a brief blink at Gaius' explanation of what he's seen - what he's thought he's seen? - but any confusion only lasts for the briefest of moments and then Picard shakes his head. He's certainly not about to rule out the possibility that what Gaius has just seen had been, in some way, real. But even if it had been, it had been something personal. Something that only he'd seen.

"No. Just the village."

Although he might be on the lookout for things not seeming to be as normal, now that Gaius has mentioned it. It never hurts to be prepared, after all.

"Do you think it could have been the Observers?"

It had been so real, as if one moment he'd been here in the village, and another transported back to the city that had been his life. Gaius had had visions before, but not like this: they'd been intrusions into his dreams, messages from his brother from beyond life. This hadn't felt like an image, or a dream, it had been so real he'd been certain he'd felt Licinius' hand on his arm.

That it hadn't been real at all, at least in the physical sense, is apparent from Picard's negative: it had been something Gaius and Gaius alone had seen.

"What could their purpose be in showing me?" he asks, softly, and the question is not merely rhetorical. He doesn't understand the Observers, the beings here that are as good as gods to their captive exiles. The Observers' will is not easily interpreted, and they show little sign of responding to the same prayers and rituals that the Romans used to petition their gods. The Observers, for all their very direct impact could be felt so often here, were difficult to appeal to.

"I wouldn't be able to say."

That there's some reason is easily enough assumed, for all that it might not be right. But if there is a purpose to show Gaius a brief flash of his own home, it's not a purpose that Picard can guess at. Not when it has been so brief besides - it's hardly as if any of them need any reminders of their own homes, and though he doesn't quite know how long the brief glimpse of Gaius' home had been for him, it doesn't sound like it would have been long enough to either impart some new information or give him the time to actually do anything. Or at least, not anything of great significance.

"If we knew where to find them, we might be able to ask, but as it is...."

His voice trails off into a shrug. Whatever they'd had in mind might, regrettably, forever remain a mystery.

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† mihi aqua et igni interdirectur

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