Title: Yearning
Author: Kendra
Rating: PG
Summary: Maximus yearns for another life.
Disclaimer: There's no money gained and nothing lost. This is my first
attempt at Maximus or at least one, which I completed with any resolve.
*****************************
If a man's destiny is forged with his actions, then my life is damned to hell. As I look about me all I see is blood, death, destruction and the feel of cold steel which never warms beneath my hand, it stays as cold as the ice which threatens to take hold of my heart, a coldness I fight daily.
All I wished for in my life was to be happy, but happiness has been replaced with duty, a duty to Rome, which has now become my mistress. An unforgiving mistress at best and one in which I have slowly become disillusioned with as time has kept me from those I love and the things I cherish most.
I give myself over to this relentless duty for my men, they would follow me to hell and back, something they most assuredly will do when all is judged in the final hours. They look up to me for answers and guidance yet they know not that I am as lost in my heart as a man could possibly become, disillusioned and tired of the fighting, the bloodshed, the death... I want to go home.
Home, something I think of each night and something I lust for with such demands it threatens to overpower my reason. It has been far too long, would I even know the surrounding countryside if I stumbled upon it blindly in my own dreams. The sweet smell of the air, the cool breeze from the hills, the texture of the rich earth that gave its abundance to me during the fertile planting season, these memories are burned within my mind and most assuredly burned within my soul. Yet with each battle and every year that passes, I find it difficult to hold these precious glimpses of my real life, the life I crave as I am consumed with so much war...I want to go home.
The simplest of pleasures have become the bane to my existence. Just to watch a bird rest upon dead wood brings a fleeting glimpse of my true self; even amongst the death and destruction at hand life still goes on. If only I had wings to fly, I'd rise above this prison I've been thrust upon and escape it's bindings, for all I want is my release. But as usual my duty calls and this senseless risk of life once again beckons, it is my duty to fight for Rome but my heart lies elsewhere. It lies miles from this hell on earth, it lies with a man who now barely exists yet screams unmercilessly in my soul to be set free, I was born to the land yet my service is governed by the sword.
And so it begins anew...I want to go home.