Duty

Marcus always dreamed in Roman. It wasn't until after he was invalided that he started to dream in Esca. Companion fic to Destiny.

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This fic is made specially for ForzaDelDestino. You requested a follow-up or sequel, I give you a companion fic. Hope you like it!

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Marcus had always dreamed in Roman.

His mother laughed whenever he told her that. Her 'little soldier,' she would call him. From his youngest days, Marcus had always wanted to be a soldier of Rome, like his father. He revered his father, loved his father, feared him. It was expected of him, but it was also his joy.

He missed his father when he went away; during the long battles and endless crusades. Even so young, Marcus never questioned why his father had to fight. It was simply the Roman way. And his father was the perfect Roman. Marcus wanted to be just like him.

When he was eight, his father handed him a carved wooden eagle, a smaller version of the large golden eagle that symbolized the Ninth Legion – his father's legion. It was both the happiest and the saddest day of Marcus' short life. His father would be gone for many years this time, but his father had given him charge of the estate while he was gone. It was an honor worthy of a man, and he'd given it to Marcus.

For two years, Marcus helped his mother run the estate. He had slaves and tutors and trainers, becoming a better soldier and a learned man of Rome, even in the lands of Britain. Life was rather simple, and Marcus found himself overcome by the urge for battle. All Roman soldiers talked of battles. They had scars and wounds and stories of war and hardship and victory and honor. He wanted that. Gods, did he want that.

He prayed every day, holding his beloved eagle in his hands, for the gods to find favor with him and his family, to honor them and keep them, to help them prosper and be good Roman citizens.

Two years to the day after his father left, word came that the Legion had vanished.

Marcus' mother cried only once the messenger was gone, in the solitude of her own bedchambers, where no one could see. Marcus didn't shed a tear. Oh the pain was excruciating, but he took it out on his practice dummies and sparring partners and lashed out at the livestock and yelled at the slaves. He did not cry. Roman soldiers did not cry.

They lost everything. Their honor was forfeit, their livelihood was gone. They sold the estate and took up residence in a smaller house, though still larger than was typically average. Marcus joined a real solider's school and trained every day, all the time. He wanted to be the perfect Roman soldier and win so many battles that no one would ever dare say his family had no honor. They were Romans!

There were times, sitting in the evenings just before curfew, where Marcus would look upon the lands surrounding their training grounds and would wonder what was out there. Myth told him there were monsters and beasts to be found in the wilderness. Roman battle culture taught him there were Britons out there. They were the same thing at heart.

When he was fourteen, Marcus caught a Briton slave escaping the compound. He was rewarded for his troubles and the slave was publicly whipped. Standing in the crowd, watching as impassively as all the other trainees, Marcus couldn't help but pity the slave. The cries that escaped him upon each lash of the whip sounded just like the cries the younger boys let out when they were injured while training.

The Britons were humans too.

This thought latched itself to Marcus. While the Roman way spoke of honor and duty and spouted long tirades on the lawlessness and savage way of the Britons, Marcus kept thinking back to that slave boy. Britons were depicted as soulless, or at least with souls as black as deepest pits of Orcus. That boy had cried and pleaded in a language that Marcus didn't understand. He'd shamed himself. Did that mean he was evil?

His mother died when he was barely sixteen. It was an ache he hid within his heart and it spurred him on. For his mother. For his father. He had to succeed here.

At twenty, Marcus was already good enough to lead his own squadron. However, his family history blocked him. No one wanted to give him a leading position, afraid of his dishonor leading his men to ruin. So Marcus trained harder, longer, more intensely than any other soldier around him. It took him five years, but finally his dedication and prayer paid off.

He was asked where he would like to be posted and he accepted a position as the Commander of a little known, run down, and chaotic division farther north than he had ever traveled. It was the closest to the Wall he had ever been, and it was where he intended to make his mark as a Roman.

Within a year, he'd been invalided out of his Commander position and honorably discharged. He had not gained any honor for his family as far as he was concerned. He'd done nothing! And with his injury, he was as good as dead as a soldier. Had his whole life been meaningless?

He sat in his uncle's estate and ordered around his uncle's slave and leeched off his uncle's kindness. In an effort to comfort him, his uncle took him to an arena match. Marcus was in pain and he was unhappy, but that day changed his life forever.

It was there that it seemed his life truly began. He saw a slave who rejected his position in life. He saw a slave who would rather die than be subject to humiliation. He saw bravery where any other man would have fled. It surprised him and he managed to spare the young man's life.

He didn't expect to own a slave himself, but then he did. And it wouldn't be long before he'd decided that there was no other slave he would have ever wanted.

Shortly after the surgery on his leg, Marcus had a dream. It wasn't of the Roman way or the Roman soldier. It was of a grassy field over stone in the sunlight, with large hills and knolls in every direction. There were wildflowers he'd never seen and the sound of a river running gently just beyond his sight. And there was Esca, his slave, standing at the edge of the field and looking down into a lower field beyond. Esca leaned away from the edge and turned to look back at Marcus. The sun glinted off his hair and made his eyes shine. And Marcus felt a peace seep into his very soul that he had not felt since he was a boy, not even big enough to ride a horse.

After that, Marcus spent a lot of time talking with Esca and watching Esca and simply being with Esca, even when he had no logical reason for it. When he decided to go north of the Wall, he took Esca because he trusted the younger man with his life. He didn't know if Esca felt the same.

There were trials above the Wall, but he and Esca faced them all together. When Esca left him, Marcus knew not a day of peace. His soul warred inside him, raging and lashing out, and crying. He shed no tears, but his heart wept. When Rome had failed him, Esca had been his paradise. But it seemed even that had been a lie.

But Esca came back to him. Even when Marcus was unreasonable and ignorant and angry, Esca always came back to him. And when he was there, Marcus was happy. But when he was not, Marcus felt no joy. Esca had become the sun of his life, and Marcus swore a silent duty to him: To stay with him and protect him, for forever and always, no matter what. He only prayed Esca would do the same for him.

Beyond his duty to Rome and his duty to family, Marcus knew this was a duty in which he would never fail.