Slave To Rome

CHAPTER FIVE - OVER THE YEARS

Almost two years had past since that conversation in the bathtub with Livia. By now, I had accepted my fate as a slave. It wasn’t like I just laid down and took it willingly, but Livia had me heavily guarded at all hours of the day, and there was never a chance for me to try and escape. Tura probably thought me dead anyway, and at least she was in a beautiful palace, much like I was, but dressed in the finest garments and given every advantage.

It was the day after that conversation that Livia hired guards to watch that I didn’t escape, and to also protect me. I remember being in her bedroom, making it up with Gina, when she told me how extremely rare that was.

“When I came in, there was guards outside, is Lady Livia here?” Gina asked me in a whisper.

“No,” I replied, “They’re for me. Livia doesn’t want me running off or anything.”

Gina’s eyes went wide, and asked, “Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” I said, not understanding what the big deal was, “So?”

“Do you how many slaves in the whole world get personal guards?” she asked me as we started to throw the animal furs on the bed.

“No?”

“Not many, and you’re the only one in Rome,” she replied. “Wow.”

“She just doesn’t want me to run,” I rationalized.

“Varia, sometimes I swear you are so blind,” she said to me, and I just knitted my eyebrows in confusement.

In the two years I had been here, I had begun to not completely despise my way of living. No, I still did not like being a slave, nor serving Livia, though nor would I enjoy serving anyone for that matter. But when it was just me and her, it was slightly bearable. Livia had begun to trust me in a way, and started to talk to me and share her life more.

“My mother abandoned me as an infant,” she told me on day as I brushed her hair, though with no emotion attached to her voice.

“Does it bother you?” I asked, curious.

“Would it bother you?”

“Of course, every child needs their mother,” I answered.

Livia sighed and shrugged, “I don’t really know how I feel about it anymore. I used to hate her for it as a child, but now, it just doesn’t seem important anymore. It’s not like I will ever see her again to make her pay for her abandonment.”

I ran the brush through her long dark hair and asked, “But if you ever did see her again, what would you tell her?”

“That I didn’t need her, that I never needed her.”

“But that’s a lie,” I said.

“A lie to cover my weakness,” she said, justifying it.

“Needing your mother isn’t a weakness, Livia.”

“To me, needing anyone is a weakness. I already am weak enough by needing you, I don’t need to break my walls down anymore.”

I never really understood why Livia needed me so badly, but I never questioned her about it. I did rationalize it and realize that was why the guards were around me constantly, because she didn’t want to lose me. Maybe it was what she said, she needed someone in her life to tell her the truth. Maybe it was for other reasons I didn’t understand. Regardless of what it was, she only showed her weakness in the privacy of her slaves. Everyone outside of her bedroom thought the only purpose I was around was so she could torture me, and she played that up very well in public.

I had begun to regard Livia as two different people. When we were in public and she spat on me and showed me as being less than the dirt that she walked on around others, I hated her. But when it was just me and her, I don’t know, maybe she started to grow on me a little. She fascinated me in a way, she was so strong and powerful outside of her bedroom walls, but when she came in the room and was alone with me she... would break, in a sort. And to be very honest, though I had no reason to, I sort of felt bad for her.

“Are you happy?” I asked her one day while doing her hair for a big palace party.

“Do I seem happy to you?” she countered in her monotone detached voice.

“No,” I replied as I put some pins in her hair to hold it up.

“And why do you think that is, Amazon?”

I thought a minute and replied, “You’re very lonely.”

“I’m surrounded by many people, every day.”

“That’s not the only definition of lonely,” I said.

“Then what is the other one?”

“Everyone around you wants either your power or your approval, but you’re lonely because you want someone’s love.... unconditionally.”

“Yes,” Livia said, “That would be nice.”

“But no one can ever love you, if you don’t love yourself first, and are able to show who you really are to someone,” I told her.

“Then no one will ever love me.”

Livia had a small bedroom built, adjoining hers. That was my room. She never allowed me to sleep in the slave quarters, and she told me it was because she didn’t want their gossip tainting me. The room wasn’t anything fancy, but it was much nicer than the slave quarters. Some nights, Livia would ask me to join her in her bed to sleep, though she never once told me to lie with her. I never really understood it, but in some way, appreciated it. It was like in a small way, she did hold some respect for me other than just as a slave.

I knew why she wanted me to sleep with her. Sometimes at night I could hear her crying, though she never did it in front of me or anyone else. After then, she started to ask me to come in there with her, and I never heard her cry again. Everytime she would get lonely or sad, she would send for me, and all she wanted me to do was hold her while she slept. At the beginning I hated it, but I didn’t mind it so much now. It was just another part of my life, now.

One day, almost a year and a half after she had captured me, she sent for me to sleep with her. While I held her in my arms, she asked me quietly, “Do you still hate me?”

I was silent for a moment, contemplating it. Then I replied, “That’s a complicated question.”

“How so? You used to be able to answer it so easily.”

“I hate who you pretend to be, I guess,” I said, stroking her hair.

She turned in the bed to face me, and for a moment she looked slightly vulnerable, though it was gone as quick as it came to be replaced by her normal emptiness. “But not who I am.”

“No,” I replied, looking at her. “I feel sorry for who you are, but I do not hate you. Your unhappiness radiates off of you in waves. No one should be that way all the time, but yet that’s all I’ve ever seen from you.”

Livia looked me in the eyes, and for the first time, she didn’t have a comment. Instead she moved her hand upwards, and I could tell she was slightly shaking. She touched my face lightly, and ran it down my cheek. It was the first time she had ever really touched me, and I closed my eyes.

“Did you hate that?” she asked me.

“No,” I whispered, “That was nice.” I opened my eyes and looked at her.

Livia nodded slightly and said, “Goodnight,” before rolling over and letting sleep overtake her.

Sometimes I wish I could understand what goes on inside her head, but with how screwed up she had let herself become, I didn’t know if there was anyway I could ever truly know, or if she would ever get out of it. I had heard of this before, warriors becoming so numb to the pain and the violence that they just kind of lose themselves in the process. Though I had never heard of someone who created a completely different personality to the masses, one that was the complete opposite of who she really was, or whoever she became. Maybe she was happy once, but if she was it was a very long time ago. To be honest, I didn’t even think Livia knew what the word happy meant anymore.

TBC....