©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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Twenty days went by with great rapidity. Ana was pleased to see her patient improving daily until he could walk short distances without aid, then longer distances, then even sit a horse, although that had frightened her half to death at first. Maximus, practically born on a horse as he informed her, merely grinned at her from the back of the dapple gray stallion he borrowed from Antoninus, and cantered the horse around the encampment for a short time. Back at the stable row, he slid down, patted the horse and whispered in its ears, then came over to Ana, who was waiting for him.

"See? I survived," he informed her unnecessarily. His color was a bit high and his hands trembled a little, but he did appear to be fine.

Ana relented and agreed that he had survived. "But you must be more cautious, sir. You were very, very ill."

He made an impatient face, "But I'm better now. No longer at death's door." They walked up the hill to his tent.

"And that's another thing," she changed the subject. "Why didn't you allow your things to be moved to the Praetorium where you belong?"

"I didn't want to be there," he explained patiently. He stopped and faced her, "Ana, I was a slave. Everything was taken away from me, including my ego about such matters. It's just not important for me to have my belongings in the Praetorium in a fancy tent. I like where I am just fine."

Ana sighed. "What am I going to do with you?" He wore the plainest of garments, serviceable boots, a plain wool cloak - the only ostentation he allowed himself was in his weapons and his books. He had sent for books as soon as he was able to sit up and read, spending the first monies that came to his hands from the empire's restitution on a chest full of scrolls and folios, maps and parchments.

He gave her a brief smile, "Do with me? Why - let me have my way, of course, what else would you do with a man as stubborn as I am?" He resumed walking, boots crunching over the fallen leaves. When she didn't walk with him, he paused and looked back, holding his hand out toward her, "Don't hang back, I'm not so recovered yet that I can climb this hill more than once after riding Antoninus' horse."

She relented and caught up to him, drawing her cloak around her shoulders with a shiver. "There's a nip in the air," she commented. He held the tent flap open for her and she preceded him inside, hanging her cloak on a hook by the cabinet where her medicines were. "When will the legion march?"

Maximus looked up from his map table where he was studying something. "No doubt not until after I return from Rome. I could wish they had already left, it will be a cold march now that winter is coming." He rolled up the map and she saw it was the one of Emerita Augusta.

"And will they be welcomed there, do you think?" She gestured at the map. "After all, I hear there has been discontent there."

He slid the map into a leather map case. "I'm not sure. I'm told that there have been some unpleasant incidents involving the auxiliary legion and the locals, who feel the auxiliary is overstepping their authority regarding taxes and trade fees. I'll have to see and judge for myself, however. There are always some malcontents, Ana, but perhaps if a disinterested party listens to both sides of the argument. . ."

"Disinterested? You?" she laughed and went to her bed chamber.

Maximus looked after her, liking how her auburn hair moved as she walked. She was a pretty woman, he thought, petite and fine-boned, and those exotic blue eyes! Then there was her buxom figure - breasts like a little Venus. He shook himself out of his musing with a stern reminder to himself that she was way too young and no doubt would be horrified if she knew what he had been thinking. He sighed and went to wash before dinner.

In the morning, a wagon arrived from Rome, trundling up the hill to come rattling to a stop outside Maximus' tent. Hearing the racket, he stuck his head out to see the cause of the noise, blinking in consternation. Ana and Varrus, just leaving to check some patients down in the main part of the camp, stopped and stared with him.

The wagon was piled high with chests and boxes and bundles. A very plump bald man was just climbing down from the seat, and another man, as thin as the first man was round, was busily unloading those chests, boxes and bundles into a stack in front of Maximus' tent.

"What is all this?" Maximus asked the plump man.

The man eyed the dark-haired, somewhat thin man in the plain red cloak. "Not that the likes o' you needs to know, but this is the general's stuff, sent on from Rome."

"What general?" Maximus inquired politely, winking at Ana and Varrus to keep them quiet.

The plump man wiped his face, sweating despite the cold morning. "General Maximus, who else? This is his stuff. Clothes and shit like that." He yelled at his assistant, "Don't dawdle back there, Gaius! And don't drop anything like you did when you loaded it."

"Clothes? I had no clothes in Rome," Maximus commented, looking around at Ana, who was as in the dark as he was.

Plump man straightened and faced him, extreme patience on his features, as though he were explaining to a dim wit. "Of course you didn't, General Maximus did! These are his things, sent to him from General Quintus himself, at the Praetorian Guard."

Maximus frowned at the name Quintus, especially when it was uttered in the same sentence as the term Praetorian Guard, but he still didn't enlighten the plump man as to his identity. Ana decided he was both pumping the man for information General Maximus would never get, and having a bit of fun at the same time. "You say so?" he murmured and bent to look inside one of the larger chests.

Plump man slammed the chest shut, narrowly missing taking Maximus' fingertips with the edge of the lid. "That's not for you! Now, suppose you fetch me your master, quick smart, so I can get on my way?"

Varrus made a strangled noise and turned his back, shoulders quivering in an effort not to laugh aloud and ruin General Maximus' fun. Antoninus walked up at that moment, come to fetch Maximus to break his fast with the cavalry officers, and Ana put her fingertip to her mouth, hoping he would get the idea and keep quiet.

"I have no master here, " Maximus said, totally truthfully. He didn't. He was Legate of this entire legion, and more besides, although he had not taken it over from Donatus since Donatus was more than capable of running the day to day operations of an encamped legion on friendly ground.

Plump man eyed him, hands on his wide hips. "All right then, whoever you may be, suppose you tell his Lordship, General Mucky-Muck Maximus that his stuff is here, and I'll just be on my way."

Maximus grinned, "I'll tell him."

"See that you do," the man said, climbing back up on the high seat of his cart.

A courier galloped up just then, pulling to a halt in front of Maximus. He held out a scroll to the general, "Sir, this is for you, a report from Hispania." Maximus took it, his fun forgotten as he scanned it quickly. "Thank you," he said, releasing the courier to continue his duties. He looked up at the puzzled wagon driver. "And thank you, as well. Be sure to inform General Quintus that I appreciate his gifts."

"Here now!" the plump man said, indignant. "That isn't your stuff, that's for General Maximus!"

Antoninus stopped him from climbing back down, "You fool," he said softly, "that IS General Maximus!"

Plump man turned red, then white, then an interesting shade of gray, made some gobbling noises, shook his head at the vagaries of the elite and started his horses moving. The cart rumbled down the road toward the main encampment, both driver and assistant craning their necks to look back at the group around the obviously crazy man who claimed to be a general. "Loonies," he commented to his helper, who agreed with him, chewing on a blade of dried grass. "Loonies."

Maximus chuckled, then laughed, joined by the others. "He didn't believe me,"

Antoninus said when he caught his breath. "Did you see his face? He thinks we're all moonstruck."

"No doubt." Maximus opened the previously slammed chest again and took out a roll of handsome wool cloth. It unfurled - a very fine winter cloak in deep red. He handed it to Ana, delving into the chest once again and removing a similar garment, only in a brown weave. "Two cloaks," he muttered, "what do I need with two?" He took out tunics and linen shirts, piling them up until the chest was empty. "This is enough for ten men," he commented, obviously unused to having more than one clean garment.

Ana found that touching, given that for several years he had only had the rough blue slave tunics of the gladiator school to wear unless he was in armor for the arena. She refolded everything and put it all back in the chest while he opened and explored the next one. "Don't put that on the grass!" she warned him, seeing that he held a white wool toga in his hands, staring at the purple border.

He looked up, "I won't, but this cannot be mine." He gestured at the border, "This is for someone of senatorial rank."

Antoninus cleared his throat, "Um, sir…weren't you adopted by a Senator?"

Maximus sighed in resignation, "Yes, you're right. I suppose I am entitled to wear this." He handed the beautiful garment to Ana, "Here, you can perhaps help me figure out how to drape this later." She smiled at his wry grin, and thought she would have held any number of garments for him just to have him look at her with laughter in his eyes like he just had done.

Further exploration of the chests and boxes revealed more clothing - everything from flannelled wool trousers to short cotton underdrawers to several padded leather tunics such as a general would wear under his armor to keep the metal from abrading his flesh. A small chest held wide hammered brass cuffs to protect the wrists and forearms in combat, a fine necklace of gold with a pendant in the shape of the Felix Legions' crest, and several rings, one of gold with a silver wolf's head. "My ring," Maximus exclaimed, and slid it onto his left ring finger. The last time he had seen it had been the morning Marcus Aurelius was murdered. When he had awakened from being struck over the head, all his personal jewelry was gone, no doubt stripped off him by the Praetorians before they loaded him on the horse to take him into the woods to kill him. Now, he stood gazing down at it, slowly closing his fingers into a fist, a strange look on his face.

Ana shifted uncomfortably, and he looked up, relaxing. "I'm fine," he reassured her. "Just . . . just some memories come with this." He gestured at the boxes, "Varrus, would you put all this in the tent for me? I'm going with Antoninus for breakfast."

Varrus nodded, and Maximus walked off down the hill with the cavalry centurion, leaving Ana and the big solder in front of the tent. "He doesn't know how to take this all," Ana commented.

Varrus barked a short laugh, "He doesn't quite trust it, and who can blame him?" Ana sighed, knowing he was right. Who could trust gifts from a source that had just as quickly snatched everything away at the first opportunity?

"I couldn't," she agreed. She helped put the things into the tent and set off to do her daily chores with the sick and injured of the legion.

That evening, Maximus stood, arms held out from his sides, while Ana draped the toga around him. "It goes like so," she said, tucking one upper end under his wide leather belt, "Then this long part wraps around here, across your shoulders in back, and then this drapes down here. . ."

"I cannot move my arms," Maximus said, grinning. He couldn't. She had wrapped him like a mummy.

Ana stood back, pondering, then realized her error. "Oh, I see. Wait a minute." She put a low stool in front of him and stepped up on it so she could both reach him more easily and see what she was doing and not drag the toga on the tent floor. She leaned toward him, intending to adjust the folds of wool and lost her balance. "Oh no!" She tipped off the stool and he caught her in both arms. "Oof!" She grabbed hold of his shoulders to keep from falling any farther.

Maximus, whose face was pressed against the front of her stola, let her down slowly, trying not to notice the nice curves of her body as it rubbed down the length of his. He set her on her feet, clearing his throat nervously. "Umm, I don't think that's how this goes," he said quietly, hands tangled in the wool.

Ana, caught up in his blue-green gaze, blinked, shook herself mentally, and said quickly, "No, that's not it either. Maybe you can just not wear it."

The disconcerting moment past, Maximus chuckled. "You want me to go naked in front of the Emperor?"

She blushed deep red. "N-no, but nothing says you have to dress like a senator. Can you not wear your uniform?" She tried to chase the mental image of a naked Maximus striding into the imperial palace from her head before she got into trouble for what she was thinking.

He folded the voluminous toga and set it back in the chest. "I suppose, though I don't think I'm up to the lorica yet."

"No, you aren't," she agreed. It weighed almost twenty pounds, and he was still very thin. "But there are several fine leather breast plates in those chests, you could wear one of those, they're much lighter."

"I suppose I could," Maximus agreed, his nerves still oddly jangling from the feel of her small person as she slid down him. And her jasmine perfume was now on his tunic. His nostrils flared, taking in her scent. His body reacted, and he turned away from her, hoping she hadn't noticed. "Well, Ana, um, thank you for helping, or rather, trying to help with the toga."

"Oh, that was no problem at all," she said brightly, cheekbones red. She had seen his body's reaction, noted his quick turn away from her, and realized he was embarrassed. No less than she. Her nipples were hard little nubs against the inside of her soft wool stola. This would not do! She told herself firmly to get her mind onto her work and off a man she could never hope to aspire to. He would no doubt be given a wife from some high family, and not a half-Greek, half-Egyptian woman such as she, although she was from a very good family in Alexandria. She was not a roman lady, and she envied the one who would be given to Maximus.

When Ana left to retire, Maximus stood outside for a while, looking up at the stars, puzzling over the strangeness of the day. He had been given rich gifts by someone he no longer counted as his friend. Some of his own things had been returned that he never expected to see again. And now, his body decided he was well enough to lust after a woman, and a woman who had taken such kind care of him when he was in desperate need of it. Even now, his sex was still swollen and aching as he thought of her fine-boned body against his. "Arrggh," he huffed at himself, and went to bed.

He lay awake a long time, still aching, wanting, until finally he eased the ache with his hands, surprised at the intensity of his release. He rose and washed himself, then lay back down with a sigh, and finally, mental and physical turmoil soothed, he slept.

The shadowy figure outside his bed chamber remained still until his breathing evened out into sleep. Ana, also unable to sleep, had crept to his room, intending to do. . .what? She had lost her courage and just stood like a lovestruck ninny, listening outside his door. She heard him toss and turn, then his moan of frustration, then the rustle of the bed linens, followed shortly by a rhythmic creaking of the bed frame. Her cheeks flaming in the dark, she could picture exactly what he was doing. Her nipples were hard again, and she throbbed low in her belly, moisture oozing from her core as she listened. She heard his harsh intake of breath, then a groan as he achieved his release, and then, a short time later, heard the splash of water as he washed himself. When he had settled back in the bed, she still stood, thinking about going in to him, telling him she cared for him. "Silly!" she chided herself, and went to her own bed to stare up at the tent ceiling for a long time before she slept.

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Copyright 2001 by wildbearies