Slave To Rome

CHAPTER NINE - SAME FACE, DIFFERENT NAME

Three years had passed since the last time I had seen Livia. I rode back home to my lands, and found my tribe again. Many had survived the slave traders, but some, like Shalaya, didn’t make it. It was those who thought that they would die a slave... did. We organized a rescue mission for my sister, Tura, but she didn’t make it either. I cried for what seemed like forever, angry with myself that I couldn’t keep my promise to her. I was told she tried to escape, and died during the beating they gave her for it. I wanted revenge on Gurkhan, but my sisters talked me out of it. Going up against him in his fortress was suicide.

Our tribe flourished over the years, and I finally began to become an Amazon again. Marga, our Queen, appointed me as her second in command, and I learned the art of fighting quickly and very well. I became one of our tribes best warriors, and I was proud of myself. I finally was living, and serving a purpose in my life.

Not a day went by when I didn’t think about Livia. Of course I told my tribe I escaped, and that Livia was a horrible monster. I never told them about what happened between us, or that I grew to fall in love with the woman who captured us all. I never told Livia I loved her either, not that I ever planned to. While I knew she had feelings for me, I doubted they ever grew to become love, because I wasn’t entirely sure if she was capable of that emotion.

One day, while in the middle of a battle, some strangers came onto our lands and started fighting off our enemies with us. After the battle had ceased, the three women approached us, and Marga spoke to them.

It was the legendary Xena, the Warrior Princess, and the famous Queen Gabrielle. With them was another woman, though I couldn’t quite get a good look at her. Marga introduced both of us, and Xena replied with: “Xena, Gabrielle, and Eve.”

I looked at the woman named Eve when she stepped out from behind Xena, and I gasped. Marga looked at me questionably, but my eyes were on Eve. When her eyes went up and met mine, they grew as wide as saucers.

It was Livia. Eve... was Livia.

I didn’t say anything, and neither did she. I didn’t want the whole tribe to know who she was, so I turned my gasp into a cough to cover it and kept quiet. I just stared at her, and she just stared back at me.

She looked so different. I was so used to her under all this armor, and a scowl always on her face while in the presence of others, but she was... soft. She wore loose clothing, and her hair was down around her face in curls, and she looked almost happy. If Livia didn’t react to my presence the same way I did to hers, then I would have thought it a freak coincidence that someone in the world was out there looking almost identical to Livia. Because in a way, that would have made more sense than what stood before me.

As Marga spoke to Xena and Gabrielle as we made our way back to the village, I fell in step a few paces behind them and in sync with Livia’s foot steps. There were Amazons on all sides of us, so we didn’t look at each other while I whispered out of the side of my mouth so no one but her could hear, “What are you doing here?”

Her eyes were focused on the path ahead of us, and she replied with a hint of amusement in her voice, “I said I would find you, didn’t I?”

I cocked an eyebrow automatically and I whispered back, “Yes you did, but you were just as surprised to see me, so I know this wasn’t planned.”

The village was up ahead in the distance now and Xena took a look back in Livia’s direction, then her eyes flickered over to me. I tried to play completely natural, but Xena was just as intimidating as all the stories. When she turned back around, Livia answered me quietly.

“Can we meet somewhere private to talk tonight?”

I stayed silent for a moment. I knew that was best, because playing these whispering games could only lead to the risk of Livia’s exposure here, and if the tribe know who she really was then she was dead. Not to mention myself, for my betrayal.

“Midnight, directly north of the village a little ways is a riverbank.”

She shifted her eyes to look at me for a moment, and I dared myself to look back at her. For the few seconds our eyes met, all those feelings in the pit of my stomach started to go nuts. She gave a slight head nod, barely noticeable, but it was there. When our eyes tore apart, I took a deep breath, and I tried to calm all the rushing thoughts that were invading my brain.

I had convinced myself that I would never see Livia again. She said she would find me one day, but I never thought it to be true. I never thought I would lay eyes on her again, or that I would ever have the chance to tell her the things I should have told her so long ago. But then here she was, in my village, looking completely different and going by a different name all these years later. She was so different... yet still the same. The feelings I felt when I was around her didn’t change in the least, even though clearly so much had changed. I never thought for a moment that even if by some miracle this did happen, that she would still feel the same for me, that she would have moved on. And while she clearly didn’t depend on me anymore for a tiny taste of happiness, she still had feelings for me after three years. I could tell, I could see it in her eyes, and I just needed midnight to get her... and quickly.

*******

It was dark, and the only light around was the reflection of the moon being cast off of the waters. I leaned against a tree, staring out at the deep blue water, my heart pounding so hard in my chest from anticipation that I was sure Livia would be able to find me just from hearing it. I was nervous and excited, and I was having trouble keeping still. I kept playing with my hands, just waiting for her to show up.

The day went by painfully slow, and as I sat by Marga’s side as she spoke to Xena and Gabrielle in the Queen’s hut, I found myself being distracted. I stared out the window, watching Livia walk through the Amazon’s training sessions, watching all of our warriors as they prepared for the next inevitable battle. As she walked slowly through the lines, the slight breeze would catch her hair, making her beautiful brown curls flow back softly and expose her porcelain features.

At one point, Marga noticed that I wasn’t paying attention, and I ended up getting kicked in the leg under the table, and as I refrained from crying out I looked over in her direction and she gave me a pointed look which meant, ‘We’ll talk later’.

After we spoke to the visiting Queen and Xena, Marga pulled me aside and asked, “Is everything okay, Varia? You seem a little distant... and distracted.”

“I’m fine,” I reassure her, trying to be as convincing as possible. “I guess it’s just an off day for me is all. I’m sorry, I’ll try to stay more focused.”

Marga looked me over, as if trying to decide if I was telling her the truth. She didn’t push the issue further, however, and I was able to leave the hut and breathe freely.

I could hear the grasshoppers chirp from the tall grass that covered the riverbank, and I looked up at the moon. I heard a branch snap behind me, and I turned instinctively to face whoever it was, ready to be defensive if need be. But within a moment I was pressed up against the tree, between it’s rough bark and Livia, before she kissed me passionately.

She took me by surprise, but it only took me a minute to recover and wrap my arms around her as I drowned in the feeling of her again. When we broke apart, both of us were breathing a little heavy and we just looked at each other for a long time.

“Livia...” I started, but she put two fingers over my lips to silence me.

“Eve,” she corrected. “Please, call me Eve.”

“Eve,” I repeated, and was silent for a minute before asking my thousand questions that has been running through my mind all day, “What’s going on? Why are you here? Why are you traveling with Xena and calling yourself Eve? I mean I’m so confused, I never thought I would ever see you again, and then you show up here looking completely different and going by a new name and I’m just... I mean I...”

I didn’t know exactly what I was saying anymore, my confusion was taking over at that point.

Livia.... Eve, smiled at my obvious confusion, slightly amused by it, and it was then I realized how hard it used to be for her to smile... even at me during our so called relationship. It was almost as if the muscles on her face never could work out that way. But she was here in front of me, smiling like it was the easiest thing in the world.

“What happened to you?” I whispered, slightly in awe by the woman that stood in front of me.

Eve took my hand and laced our fingers together and it was for the first time that I could really just look at her and take her in how she was, and I noticed what was hanging around her neck. The necklace... my necklace... the one I had thrown to her right before I left. Eve guided me down to the ground to sit next to her on a rock, and I obliged.

We sat there for a long time while she tried to explain what had happened to her in the last few years. She told me how Xena came back, her mother, looking for her after being frozen for twenty five years. She told me how her mother finally saved her from herself, because after I left she felt so lonely and angry that she took out her wrath on the whole world. She had stripped herself of the name Livia, and took on her birth name Eve when she finally realized the monster that she had let herself become was not the path she was meant to walk in life. She had renounced violence as she was initiated into the Way of Love to become Eli’s messenger, which was one of the things that surprised me most of all.

She revealed to me, so quiet it was barely audible as she looked out over the water, that sometimes she felt so lost because she had this whole destiny formed before she was born, and she didn’t think she was going to be able to live up to it. And that sometimes when people looked at her like she was some sort of savior, that the guilt in her chest was barely containable because it was the last thing that she was in her eyes. She was trying to live up to what was foretold, and she seemed to be moving much too fast then what she was ready to handle. She felt like she had no right to tell people she couldn’t handle all of this that fast, because mass murderers don’t deserve to ask for anything.

Eve started to cry as she told me the secrets she held inside of her, and I wrapped my arms around her and held her as she sobbed. I knew her, and I knew this was the first time she ever voiced what she was feeling, and from being bottled up for so long it just kind of felt like an explosion when it came out. And I guess still, some things never change. She was never one to show weakness in front of anyone else... besides her slaves.

It was so different with us now. When once she spoke in nothing but a detached and hollow voice, now she’s finally letting herself feel her emotions, and it was starting to consume her with all the years of it being oppressed. I used to be this child when we met, and Livia always looked so big and scary... so powerful, and so much higher than me. But as Eve lay crying in my arms, I realized we were finally on the same level. Whether I rose up or she fell down was up to debate, but we were finally on level ground.

I wasn’t exactly sure how to handle this new person. When once all I had to do was be truthful to her to satisfy her, now she needed so much more. I wasn’t against it, quite the opposite, but it wasn’t what I was used to. When she finally looked up at me and her sobbing subsided, I kissed her forehead.

Her cheeks were tear-stained and she whispered, in the most vulnerable voice I had ever come out of her mouth, the question she had asked me a thousand times before. “Do you hate me?”

“No,” I said softly to her, looking her in the eyes as I stroked her hair, deciding in that moment to finally tell her. “I love you.”

TBC....