©2002 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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To Maximus it seemed he was in the kind of fever dream he'd experienced before in his life. When he was badly wounded in Germania, for instance, and Cicero worked to keep him from death's grip. That was before he'd married Selene - it seemed centuries ago now. When he was hurt while escaping the Praetorians before his break-neck ride across Germania, Gaul and Hispania to get to Trujillo and save little Marcus and Selene. He'd nearly given up so many times on that journey, but the thought of his little family being at the dubious mercy of those same Praetorians had kept him going.

Then there was after the arena and his vengeance on Commodus. He had almost died then several times; but for the small hands of his beautiful Ana probably would have. He had been miserably weak and ill for months then, but she had sustained him with her talents, her wit and her beauty. He wanted her now. He called for her whenever he awakened from the dreams that had him in their grip, but she never came. "Ana!" he rasped again.

Antoninus shushed him and lifted his head to feed him sips of water as they rumbled southward in the largest of the baggage carts. The general was not doing well since being wounded in that last action against the mutinous legionaries. The military doctors - none of them of the quality he was used to when he was in active, full time service - shook their heads, tried cauterizing the wound, poulticing it, applying one after another noxious medicines to it, all to no avail. Antoninus was convinced Maximus would arrive back home wrapped in a shroud, adorned with his finest parade armor, but unfortunately, quite dead. He wondered how he would face Ana and their children.

"Edepol!" He cursed as they bumped over what must have been mud ruts a foot deep. Maximus was awakened again by the jolting and moaned hoarsely. "Shhh," Antoninus soothed him and when he quieted, he climbed forward onto the seat by the driver to get a breath of fresh air. "He's not good," he said in answer to the driver's low voiced question. "Where is Gaius? I need to ride for a bit. He can sit with the General." He spotted the young aide and waved him over. Shortly, Antoninus was cantering along on Gaius' horse and the younger man was adjusting Maximus' bedding and checking to see if the water jar needed topping off.

It seemed to Maximus that this jolting, uncomfortable ride was nothing like what he'd assumed the journey across the Styx would be. He pondered that for a while; dreamed about it; thought about it when he could bend his mind to it during his short periods of lucidity. He concluded that somehow or other, he'd ended up in a baggage cart instead of the boat everyone thought took you over to the Afterlife. Typical of him. It was almost funny. He even laughed about it, confounding the men taking care of him, who, of course, had no idea what he could find amusing given his wound and what was probably fatal lung fever. Laughter led to coughing spells, and whoever was taking care of him would have to prop him up and help him expel the infected matter from his chest. He was grateful for their care, but he sometimes wished they would just leave him alone to die in peace and comfort.

That was when he'd dream of the auburn-haired woman with the pansy eyes. She was beautiful. She was also furious with him and she would shout at him not to be such a coward, to get himself together, to keep fighting, that every roll of the heavy wooden wheels brought him closer to her and the care she could give him. "Don't give up!" she would say over and over. He began to believe that he should follow her advice.

He came to himself again abruptly. It must be night, because the wagon wasn't rumbling southward for once, and his pallet was still and warm. Night and a fire, then. He opened his eyes slowly, eyelids edging up over dry eyes. Lamplight. It had to be. No camp fire or brazier cast such a lovely golden-tinted aura over things. Why, Ana used such delicate oil in their lamps at home that the very air seemed to shimmer with light and scent. Why - yes. Like this. He took a breath, fighting not to cough, and another. Yes, that delicate spicy scent, that was Ana's own lamp oil. Who had brought that with them, he wondered. "Light," he said in a wispy voice that he barely recognized as his own.

A small, cool hand immediately stroked his forehead, touched his scruffy bearded cheeks. He struggled to focus and saw only a thin-boned, pale hand - obviously feminine - and wondered what camp follower had such a sweetness of touch, and who had let her near him. "Who?" he asked, wanting to form a complete sentence but that somewhat dull-witted query was all that would come out in words.

"Shh, rest, you're here now. We're going to get you well." He couldn't quite place that voice. He dropped back into the black well of his interminable fever and didn't wake again for a long time.

He wished they would leave him alone. Just now, for instance, someone was jarring him, rubbing his body with firm, hurting strokes that managed to pain him in every joint and muscle. "S-stop," he ordered. Of course, all that came out was a pitiful little whisper. And it didn't work anyway. They kept on doing it. He figured out that they were washing him. There was the trickle of water splashing back into a basin as they wrung out their cloths or sponges, and then the strokes of the bathers as they washed him clean of road dust, dried blood and whatever medicaments were crusted around and under his wounded side. "Stop!" he said a bit louder when one of them really hurt him pressing on his ribs.

"Stop," he heard a familiar, feminine voice order, then he felt her soft breath on his face as he struggled to open his eyes. The wet sponge touched his face and he fought his eyelids up enough to focus. Pansy eyes looking back at him from a stern, pale face surrounded by dark auburn tresses with silver shot through. "Ana?" he managed to croak out. It couldn't be, of course, he was in Gaul somewhere in a baggage cart bumping over the frozen mud ruts of the Roman road south.

"Of course, Maximus, who else?" came his answer. She turned away and quietly ordered Gemma and Marcella to resume their bathing so they could get him into a clean shirt and into his own bed. She turned back and found him staring at her, bemused, a slight smile tipping up one corner of his mouth. "You don't believe I'm real, do you?"

A slight shake of the head and a protesting grunt as they began rubbing him dry with rough towels. "Easy," she chided them, "he's sore from inactivity and being cramped in that wagon." They rubbed him much less firmly then. "Better?" she asked after a bit, still close to him, smiling at him.

That was another thing that puzzled him. Somehow, he thought Ana would be less welcoming. There was something - some reason they were estranged, but he couldn't put his thoughts to it. That chapter of his life seemed, for the moment, to be locked away in some corner of his mind he couldn't get to. He just knew, somehow, that she shouldn't be so sweet to him. He hadn't expected it. In fact, one of the last things he could remember about Ana was her being furious with him.

She had actually - "You kicked me!" he said then, in wonderment. He could almost feel the killing ache in his testicles at that moment and he actually tried to cup his hands protectively over his groin. That was a mistake. Not only did the three women working over him stop him from moving, but he realized he was totally naked in front of them - not the thing at all for the master of his household to be in front of servants. And somehow it sounded as though he had said something amusing. He distinctly heard three different feminine giggles. He dropped back asleep then, pondering everything. He was so confused. He would just go back into his nice, dark corner here and ponder all this without having to pay attention to them.

"He's asleep," Gemma said unnecessarily.

Ana glanced up from wiping Maximus' sweaty face. "He thought he was back last year, when I tried to castrate him with my knee that time out in the orchard."

Gemma gave her mistress a stern look, "That was not well done of you, ma'am - what if you'd succeeded?"

Ana stifled laughter, "What if I had? It's not like I'm going to have any more children now that I've had this last one - and anyone else who might want him to get a child on them - well, they can go through me to arrange that sort of appointment."

They all three found themselves studying the unconscious man's reproductive equipment. Impressive, even when flaccid, they all decided. Of course, Ana was the only one who knew exactly how impressive it could get given the right stimulus. The other two could only imagine and blush at their mental images. Gemma broke the contemplative silence first and suggested they put the clean, soft shirt on the man before his chest got any worse. They all shook themselves out of their somewhat inappropriate reverie and finished getting Maximus clean and dry and comfortable in short order. "Take away this bedding and that horrid tunic," she bade one of the soldiers who came at her beckoning. She sent Gemma and her daughter off to the kitchen to prepare some hearty broth for him, and sat down by the side of his old, comfortable camp bed to catch her breath.

It had been totally unexpected when a courier had come galloping to her door two days earlier with the news that the Felix contingent that had gone to Gaul was home in Emerita and that the general was wounded and not expected to live long enough to get home. Furious, she and Lucius Verus had ridden to Emerita and intercepted the baggage cart with Maximus in it just about to set off on the rutted road south to Trujillo. They had transferred Maximus into a much more comfortable wagon from their farm, settling him on layers of soft feather mattresses and warm blankets, and taken him home themselves. Antoninus had ridden alongside, apologizing over and over - unnecessarily - that his skills as a physician or nurse weren't good enough.

Ana had finally shushed him, "Basta! 'Ninus, you did your best - and it seems to have worked better than whatever crack-brained ideas these army doctors used on him - so stop mewling about your failures and feel good that you at least saw him this far."

Antoninus knew when to shut up. He actually pondered her words and did feel a bit proud of all the work he'd done. After all, he reckoned he was a cavalry officer, and not a surgeon. He supposed he had done well at that. And when he had dismounted in the stable yard at Maximus' farm, the first thing he'd seen had been the wide, friendly grin on the face of a young adopted daughter of the house, Marina, who had never given him the time of day before. He almost walked splat into a corner of the stable he was so busy brooding over the meaning of that. Only her soft laughter told him she'd seen his sudden stop and abrupt side step as he ducked before cracking his head on the stone wall. So much for impressing her, he thought dryly.

So here she was, Ana thought, sitting beside his bed while Maximus slept the restless sleep of one with chest congestion and fever. How many times had she done this in the past? She couldn't count the hours spent. She remembered the mustard plasters and percussing his back until he practically swooned hanging head-down over the side of the bed to cough up the pneumonia. She remembered telling him then that she was not going to allow him to die. On an impulse, she touched his arm now and jogged him awake. "W-what?" he wanted to know, obviously disoriented.

"You're going to live, Maximus - I just wanted to tell you that."

"Ana?" he asked again, as if he wasn't quite sure of that fact. Then, "Angry with me?"

She shook her head, smiling, and placed a soft kiss on his forehead, "No, dear, I'm not angry with you anymore." She patted his hand and gave it a soft reassuring squeeze. "You're home now and safe."

Oh, he thought, dropping back into the comfortable nest of dreams and darkness, she didn't hate him any longer. He must be very ill indeed for her to forgive him, but there it was. She said he was going to live. If anybody could get him well again, it was Ana. Nobody was more stubborn that his pocket Venus.

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Copyright 2002 by wildbearies

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