Edward Crichton - To Crown a Caesar

“I think I understand you as well, Jacob Hunter,” she said as she sat back down, shifting her toga again. I smiled at her as she continued. “Men like you enjoy giving long speeches, letting your words and eloquence engage in battle for you. You are a very intelligent man, adept at reading people and determining what makes them who they are. You like to talk and you use this advantage to overcome your other… shortcomings,” she said with a small grin as she flicked her eyes downwards, but in the next second she grew very serious. “But this also makes you very dangerous, and not in the ways you may think.

“Your mind is an infection, a disease that threatens to reduce it to a bubbling mess of sheer confusion. You lead yourself down dismal paths that you convince yourself are worth traveling, taking others with you, making the poorest of decisions as your paranoia overcomes you, crippling your ability to discern between what’s truly right and what’s truly wrong. But you are very stubborn and will forever fight against this certain eventuality. One that will ruin us all.”

My smile drained from my face along with the color in my cheeks. Agrippina’s face grew sterner, if that were even possible, and she let her arms drop to her sides. In that moment, not a millimeter of cleavage or a sliver of skin along her thighs was showing, and my mind whirled at what that meant. And then I caught myself.

“You don’t know anything about me,” I said coldly, that old sliver of self-doubt slowly clawing its way back into my psyche.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “I know everything about you. That’s why I have to kill you, Jacob; to keep you from destroying what so many have worked so hard to accomplish. Your presence is an offense to my society and my empire. I have to do what’s right by both.”

The elation I’d felt earlier was quickly evaporating, once again replaced by what seemed like my constant companions for years now: rage and fear.

“What do you know about what’s right and wrong?” I asked, trying to go back on the offensive. “You’re nothing but a power hungry fraud who will do anything to ensure your schemes and manipulations succeed.”

“You know me so well, is that what you think?” She asked from her position above me. She let the question linger before leaning down and placing a hand on my shoulder. “But where does this knowledge come from, I wonder? By my count, you and I have spent very little time together. Were you so quick to judge my brother? Or my uncle?”

Of course I had been. I’d judged them against what I’d already known about them, but… that hadn’t turned out very well. They were different when they’d died. They weren’t the men I had read about in history books. I’d always assumed it was the orb’s influence, but that wasn’t necessarily the case. Claudius had been healthy and without ailment well before I arrived in Rome, a historical inaccuracy not easily lost on me.

Did that mean I was misreading Agrippina? Perhaps I was missing something beyond her aggressive foreign policy, blatant mismanagement of client-state governments, irreprehensible murders of potential claimants to the imperial throne, or even in her zealous witch hunt of my friends and me.

In all honesty, I didn’t want to think about it anymore. I just wanted to get out of here with our lives this time, preferably with the orbs.

I looked up at her. “Why don’t you just kill me then?”

She pulled back. “I am not without a cruel streak. Most would agree to that, but I tried to help you before and while you rebuked me, I need you now more than ever. This time, even more than then.”

Because you killed Varus, you bitch.

“Why?” I asked “So that you can have yet another powerful weapon to use against anyone who would dare stand against you?

She brought a hand to her cheek and her eyes were furrowed in dumbfounded disbelief, an expression that couldn’t believe I could even think to utter such words. “You cannot possibly think that I feel any less suspicious of you having it!”

She punctuated her statement by twirling around and moving back towards her chair. I barely even noticed how revealing the movement had been. My head was too busy once again, my brain on the brink of madness. I tried to get a handle on it by reminding myself I could think about it later, but it was difficult.

Was Agrippina simply trying to do what she thought was right? Did she see me as a threat?

Was I the threat?

I shook my head at the thought and glanced quickly to my right. Santino and the boys were already on their knees, all shirtless just the same as last time, so I peeked left. Helena, shirtless this time too, was coming around as well, not quite as quickly as last time, but perhaps more peacefully. My conversation with Agrippina had saved her from the painful beating she’d received last time and suddenly I felt the need to ask myself why Agrippina had been so colloquial this time, far more reasonable than violent. Had my trip through time altered her sensibilities as well?

That didn’t make sense. Did it?

I turned back to Santino as I finally remembered what would soon happen, keeping my voice very low.

“Tell Titus to move as far from Vincent as possible.”

Santino looked at me questioningly.

“Pass it on,” I insisted like a third grader.

He narrowed his eyes but turned to do as I asked all the same.

“Jacob?”

The sound of my name came from Agrippina, and I turned my head to face her. Her Praetorian had returned and I saw Varus’ headless body crumpled at her feet. She didn’t seem aware of its existence at the moment, and since her demeanor wasn’t nearly so cruel this time around, I suspected she wouldn’t even reference it.

“I must know something, Jacob,” she said from her chair, her legs crossed as they always were. “If I offered to give you and your friends — even your Amazon — everything you ever wanted and needed, promising to protect you and keep you from harm, will you help me?”

“I…” for the briefest of moments, I thought about it, but it was never an option. “I can’t do that, Agrippina. There are things about the orb that you’ll never understand.”

“And you won’t tell me?”

I shook my head. “I know what you’re capable of. I’ve seen the kind of cruelty you can do with your own hands. I watched it here myself.”

I winced at the slip, but didn’t think she’d understand what I’d meant.

But she must have because she stood again, this time with purpose. “You have been here before, haven’t you? You used the orb!”

I almost laughed in her face. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

The control she’d exuded for the past ten minutes was gone, but instead of coming at me in a furious rage, she simply smiled, but then the insistent beep, beep, beep noise of Bordeaux’s watch sounded all around us and just like last time, confusion set in immediately.

Agrippina looked at her Praetorians.

“What is that noise?!” She yelled.

They stood just as confused as she was, glancing about the room in search of the nuisance. It was at that point when I started to chuckle and she turned back to glare at me, her eyes wide and angry. My chuckles grew to a rolling laughter.

“Boom,” I said between laughs.

A half second later, I was flying through the air again before slamming against the back wall. The impact knocked the air out of my lungs, but I was ready for it. I kept my head against my chest and braced for it by slowly exhaling as I flew. It took me a full minute less than last time to get to my feet. I saved another twenty seconds knowing where to look for Penelope and another fifteen because the Praetorian I’d fought the first time was still completely out of it. I shot him in the head with one bullet and quickly scanned for targets.