©2001 by WILDBEARIES

This story is based on characters created in the film, "Gladiator" and in no way intended to infringe upon those characters or the story of that film. References to real people are strictly the product of the writer's imagination and meant to entertain the reader.
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"You will drink this, sir, and you will lie still while I put this poultice on your chest." Ana used her firmest tone of voice, the one that had quelled even the most recalcitrant legionaries. Maximus merely stared up at her, lips tightly shut. "A six year old is more cooperative than you," she tried.

"G-give it to him, then," he grated, shutting his eyes. He coughed and turned awkwardly onto his side, attempting to end the discussion.

Ana caught Varrus' eye and he took hold of the general, rolling him onto his back, pulling him to a sitting position, and grabbing hold of his chin before the startled Maximus could even protest. Varrus held him still, nodding to Ana, who put the cup to his mouth. He refused the water, so she held his nostrils shut until he gasped for breath, whereupon she poured as much of it down his throat as she could without drowning him. He flailed his arms, but Varrus had such a grip on him that he couldn't do any damage. Ana took advantage of the situation and made him drink some honeyed wine. He cooperated in that, apparently realizing they were in control of the situation and not he. When he was too tired to swallow more, she relented and took the cup away. The edge of the cup had cut his lip. "Now look what you've done," she chided him as Varrus allowed him to slide back down in the bed.

Panting, he could only glare at her as she dabbed at the tiny trickle of blood.

"Furious, are we?" she asked, smiling at him grimly, "That's good, it takes energy to be furious, that must mean you are getting better."

He said something very rude in gutter Latin, but her smile only widened. "Why, General, how crude of you. You should be ashamed." She untied the laces of his shirt exposing the reddened, chapped skin of his chest.

He knew what was coming and tried to sit up, but Varrus grimly held him down. She really didn't blame him; the poultices burned him, but the vapors helped his breathing, so she felt the good of it outweighed the discomfort. She took up the heated jar of unguent and a wood spatula. "Please, no," he begged, then his breath hissed out between gritted teeth as the hot substance was spread onto his already raw skin. He groaned, hands fisting the bed linen, but she grimly continued spreading the poultice until his whole chest was covered, then she took a heated woolen flannel and placed it firmly over the entire area. "Gods!" he whispered, then just lay still, quivering, while the hot poultice burned him, emitting the potent camphor vapors that eased his breathing.

Ana took pity on him then since he had stopped fighting her. She nodded to Varrus, who gladly let go and walked outside, clearly upset by the lengths they had to go to in order to treat the reluctant patient. She wiped his sweaty face with cool water - brow, cheekbones, mouth, around his eyes - finally placing a folded compress on his forehead where its coolness soothed him. His long lashes were starred with moisture. She blotted his eyes, wiping away the tears of frustration and discomfort. He sighed a little as the poultice cooled, finally opening his eyes to regard her without the glare from before. "I know," she murmured. "And I am sorry, but it's for your own good, sir."

Surprisingly, his mouth quirked in a brief ironic grin, but the cut lip stung, so he didn't smile at her long. "Ana, you'd have made a good drill officer," he whispered, then he closed his eyes and dozed while the poultice cooled. She stroked his hair for a moment, then caught herself and applied some salve to the cut on his lip.

"Thank you," he murmured, and she realized he had felt her caress.

"I was only, I didn't mean," she stopped in confusion as he looked up at her.

"It's all right," he told her. "It was pleasant. Unlike most of your medicine."

"Why, General," she asked, smiling, "was that humor I heard?"

"Hmmph," was her only answer.

She called Varrus back into the tent and they turned Maximus onto his stomach, head over the edge of the bed, and Varrus began pummeling his back. She had taught him how to do it, dividing the back into quadrants and doing one quadrant at a time, until Maximus was coughing, expelling the infectious matter from his lungs. When he was exhausted and still, they stopped. Varrus removed the basin from under his head and Ana prepared warm water to bathe him. He was sweaty and hot, but his breathing was definitely better.

When Varrus returned, they undressed and washed him. After a week of poulticing, medicating, feeding and bathing him, she was past being embarrassed at seeing him nude, though he kept his eyes shut during the whole process, apparently in his own kind of modesty. When he was clean and dry, they put a warm shirt on him and settled him in his bed. He sighed sleepily, finally opening his eyes to regard her with what she could only take as grudging admiration. "It's for your good," she said softly. "I do not enjoy hurting you."

"I know," he answered.

"You're getting better," she added, smoothing his blanket.

"To what end?" he asked, and she suddenly understood one of the things troubling him.

"It can only be to the good," she told him, but she realized she needed to offer him more than that.

He gave her another look that she was positive was at least partly disbelieving and partly ironic, then fell asleep.

She and Varrus exchanged a long look. "He needs purpose in his life," she said softly.

"Yes, but what can we offer him? A dead general cannot command, and that was his whole life before the arena."

"I don't know," Ana mused, "but we must think of something - his friends must think of something. This man cannot live without a purpose and we must give him one."

She went a few days later to speak to Tribune Donatus, who was acting as general of Felix III since nobody had been appointed to take the place of Commodus' tool, General Falco. She was escorted across the Praetorium by Antoninus, who served directly under the tribune and said he was a fair man, one trusted by Maximus, promoted by him in Germania, in fact. She was admitted to the huge tent, seated and given watered wine while she waited for the tribune to finish a briefing of his officers. He came in a few minutes later, a graying man, but fit and muscular. "You've come to speak to me about Maximus," he said right off, surprising her.

"Well, yes," she admitted, "He is on the mend at last, but his friends are worried about his future."

"Harrumph," Donatus said, studying some notes on a papyrus before handing it off to his aide. "That's fine," he told the aide, "see that it's done." He looked back at Ana, "Now, where were we? Ah yes, Maximus. The Praetorians have stopped searching for him."

"They believe he is dead?"

"No, I mean they no longer care if he's dead or not. Pertinax is not Commodus, thank the gods, and he has no interest in pursuing the instrument of his accession to imperial status."

This was news. It meant, for one thing, that Maximus would not have to hide and that he could use his own name. But what about the army, she wondered, he had served Rome so well, would he want to resume that service? Would the new emperor fear him more if he were restored to his rank? She voiced these concerns to the tribune.

"Lady Ana," Donatus said, "I truly do not think that General Maximus will want to be restored to his rank. He was counting the days left until he could resume his civilian life when all this began in Germania. If you asked him, I imagine he would tell you he wanted to return to his home and rebuild it."

"I truly do not know," Ana admitted, "but I will talk with him, I'm sure it will ease his mind that he is no longer pursued."

The tribune handed her a scroll with heavy gold seals hanging from purple cords. "This is for Maximus," he said, an odd look on his face. "The last courier brought it from Rome. It bears the imperial seal."

"Do you know what it contains?" Ana asked, examining the rich designs in the seals.

"I have an idea," Donatus said, and smiled widely. "Let General Maximus read it, then I'm sure you will know what it says." He rose from his chair, "And now, Lady Ana, I ask you to commend me to the general, and tell him I will stop in to see him tomorrow. For the moment, I have another meeting of staff to run. In that, I miss the general's touch - he always did it with such seeming effortlessness, while I - well, let's just say, I get impatient."

Ana smiled at the tribune, inclined her head politely, and left. Antoninus, who was practically dancing back and forth in impatience outside the tent, strode alongside her, trying to see the scroll she carried. "What is that?" he finally asked.

"It's for the general," she told him, "and it's from Rome, that's all I know. Oh, except that the Praetorians aren't going to be looking for him any longer."

Antoninus stopped dead in his tracks, his face breaking out in a wide grin. Ana couldn't help but grin back. "I know," she said to him, laughing, "isn't it wonderful?"

Ana could hardly wait to give Maximus the document, but, as he was sound asleep when she returned to the tent, she could only set it aside for safekeeping and attend to some other duties with her father. When she looked in on him at dusk, he was sitting up in bed propped on cushions. "You look much better," she said, "I think the poultices are working."

He grimaced, running a hand over his ragged beard. "How can you tell? I no doubt look like a bear."

"A very thin bear," she answered, "more like a wolf. Lean and dangerous."

He laughed softly, the first time she had heard that sound from him. "Just lean, not very dangerous." He saw the scroll and his smile faded. "What do you have there?" Of course, she realized, he would recognize an imperial seal. She handed it to him.

"Tribune Donatus sends his greetings and said this came with the courier from Rome today."

Maximus turned it over and over, looking at the purple cords and tassels, the gold seals and the fine parchment. "From Rome," he said in a low voice, then sighed, "Ah well, best to get it over with."

"Get what over with?" Ana asked.

He gave her a brief, wry smile, "My orders to present myself for execution."

"What?! Oh, no I don't think so." She shook her head, "Not that at all, Donatus told me the Praetorians are no longer looking for you, why would you be ordered to Rome to be killed?"

"No longer looking?" Maximus said, obviously startled. He turned his attention back to the scroll, broke the seals, untied the cords and unrolled the document. He read swiftly, eyes darting over the lines, inhaled and exhaled a great, shaky breath, and dropped the scroll onto the bed where it lay, curling itself back around the carved wood spindles. He put his hands over his eyes, breathing raggedly, while Ana stared.

"What is it? May I read it?" She scrabbled for the document and opened it as he gestured, giving her leave to read it.

"To Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Northern Armies, General of the Felix Legions, greetings from the Senate and People of Rome. Whereas General Maximus served our former Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, with great loyalty, and whereas, through no fault of his own, he was deprived of rank, reputation, lands and wealth, I, Pertinax, do hereby grant to the said General Maximus Decimus Meridius, full restoration of rank and properties, with the addition of the adjoining estates, once belonging to the Imperium. Further, I, Pertinax, do grant a full pardon for any deeds, actual or implied, that might be attributed to Maximus Decimus Meridius while living under the name The Spaniard and fighting as a gladiator in the arena."

Ana sank down onto a stool, finding suddenly that her legs had gone numb.

"Read it to me," Maximus asked, "I had trouble seeing the last parts." He was wiping his face with his hands, smiling ruefully at her.

Ana cleared her throat, fighting the urge to just sob loudly. "I, Pertinax, do hereby appoint General Maximus Decimus Meridius as Legato of the Felix Legions, and require that he present himself in Rome, twenty days hence, to receive orders regarding the transference of Legion Felix III to Hispania. Be assured, General Maximus, that I hold you in the highest regard, and that no fear of harm should attach itself to this request. Until we meet in Rome, Vale! Pertinax Imperator"

"What it is," he said in a hoarse voice, "is my life back."

"It's wonderful!" Ana smiled, tears of joy running down her face.

He nodded, then added, "The question is, little Ana, do I want it back?"

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Copyright 2001 by wildbearies