The Lady Out of Time

15 - Revelation

 Oh, this wasn't good.

Julia wasn't familiar enough with Roman high society to make wild assumptions, but she knew intimately what it was like to walk into a room full of people who had dangerously conflicted feelings about her. It was like walking into a courthouse and running into members of her old graduating class, all of whom had either wanted to crush her into the dirt or tried to ride her coattails in furious, appalling fashion for four straight years.

This was exactly like one of those times, except the people here were a lot worse at hiding the portion of horror that they felt on their faces. Some of them still had their hands at their mouths even now as they stared at her with wide, unblinking eyes. In her experience here so far, garnering the attention of the high and mighty wasn't a good thing, not when she hadn't done something praiseworthy (and sometimes even then).

She didn't dare take a step back. She felt like she was standing on a frail branch on a tree, and the slightest movement might make it break from underneath her. She did reach out, however, with one hand to grab onto the sleeve of Agrippa's tunic under his toga. He had dropped the arm that he had been barring the front of her body with when the emperor came to stand in front of Julia, but surely if something terrible happened here, he could help...?

"What's your name, girl?"

The emperor - the great, grand Augustus who should be far too important to ever talk to a slave - asked the question in a gentle voice, but it carried through the silent hall and echoed along the marble and granite that surrounded them. Her head felt empty and inflated; she couldn't remember the last time she had been this nervous. Not even with her most difficult case, standing in front of a judge who she knew hated her guts through and through, had she ever felt this way.

But she had to answer. It was the emperor, after all, and he had just asked her a question.

"...Julia," she said in a voice that she did her best to inject all her remaining bravery into. If she was going to go down for something, she didn't intend to look like a guilty party. Never mind that she was still hanging onto Agrippa's sleeve and wishing she could grab onto his arm instead. That was for much-needed strength. "My name is Julia."

Augustus was still staring, but now she recognized the look on his weathered face as wonderment, not hostility. She resisted the urge to narrow her eyes and peer closer at his expression. That was sure to lose what little favor she might have with him.

"Your parents - where are they?"

What? She didn't want to answer questions about the young Julia's life, the girl whose body she inhabited like an invasive spirit. But if that was what it took to preserve her life, then she had to make concessions. The young Julia was already dead; she was not. Surely a dead girl wouldn't fault her for intruding on her privacy when it could no longer hurt her. So she dug back and unearthed the names -

"My mother is Scribonia," she answered, and she recognized the name in an instant. That was the one the emperor had uttered before upon seeing her face. Scribonia. And that was supposed to be her mother? How could Augustus be familiar with the quiet, elegant, unassuming woman who had lived on the island of Pandateria for as long as Julia remembered?

"And your father?"

"I don't have a father."

"But a name," Augustus pressed, and he took a step closer. Extended a hand...touched her arm with it. She blinked, hard. "She must have said it. Must have told you at least once. Think hard, young lady..."

She did. She did, even though she had no idea what to expect and feared the worst even though there was a kind, haunted look in the emperor's eyes that made her feel sorry for him. This was not her world; it belonged to the poor young girl who was now dead and gone. And yet - she had to survive. In this still unfamiliar world that was centuries behind the era of civilization she'd been born into, she still had to fight to live, to hang on by her fingertips.

"She never spoke of him much...but she mentioned a Thurinus."

A collective gasp echoed through the group that had clustered behind the emperor, and at the same time, she felt Agrippa's body tense like a coiled spring. Oh, no. God damn it all -

But the emperor's face opened up with something raw, painful, and...joyful? She thought she could see his eyes glisten for an instant, but it was gone before she could commit the sight to memory. Why in the world would the name Thurinus mean anything to the emperor? Young Julia had always assumed the name belonged to some wandering Roman citizen, a farmer or just some passing vagrant, nothing special. And her own Latin history wasn't so strong that she knew the reason for its significance either. Sure, she knew the important things, the general timeline, but -

"Thurinus," Augustus repeated. He sounded tired, but in a post-festive way, like exhaustion earned after endless nights of celebration. Aged joy. "I haven't heard that name in...many years."

Well, she hadn't heard it in ever. She redoubled her efforts in trying to remember every passage from every textbook she had ever read concerning Roman trivia -

"Thurinus is a cognomen," he continued when she delivered no response. His smile widened when she furrowed her brow.

A cognomen. That was a nickname, a personal name. It was something informal added to a Roman citizen's true one, attached at the end. Think. Think - what could nicknames have to do with anything?

"This man is also known by another name...Gaius Octavius."

A jolt of recognition passed through her like she'd been lanced with a hot steel poker. Gaius Octavius - now that name she knew, and she knew it well. And no, it wasn't from the young Julia's memories that she possessed this knowledge.

Gaius Octavius was the original birth name...of the great Emperor Augustus, before he'd been granted a new one by the Senate. Her stomach twisted as cold shock exploded along her veins and numbed her head, her thoughts, everything -

The man smiled at the look on her face before turning his head to look at Agrippa beside her. "She does look like her, doesn't she? Scribonia, I mean."

Her eyes darted between them as she remained silent. It wasn't that she had been struck speechless - she'd never found herself at the bottom of those depths in her life, at least - but she didn't know what to say. Didn't know what it was safe to say. She waited for Agrippa's response, heart pounding and pulse slamming in her throat.

"..She does." The general's voice was steady, calm. No, not calm - controlled. She let her gaze rest on his face and found the same buried shock in his dark eyes that she felt herself right now, perhaps even more so. No doubt he was still struggling to come to terms with the revelation that a slave in his house, his scribe, his right hand woman that he'd brought here on a whim - this same slave was...

Good God, it was true. It was all true. How could this be happening? She had only come here because she wanted to see the face of the emperor, the first emperor, the greatest one that Rome had ever had who had carved his name into the history of the world for all time. She'd just wanted to taste a little of the untouchable past, that was all. But now she was here and trying to digest the fact that she - no, the young Julia, she really had been -

"My daughter," Augustus murmured, and with the grace that only such a man could possess, he stepped forward and gathered her up in his arms.