To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II) (44 page)

Anything.

Well…
adios amigos
.

“Do you think you’ll stay in the military when we get home?”  Helena asked.

“Hmm?”  I replied, blindly trying to place my journal back in my bag.

“The military.  Will you stay in if we get home?”

“Hmm.”  I said, pulling out my binoculars and laying them against my bag, scanning the horizon.  “I haven’t thought about it to be honest…” I paused.  “Check, check, two tangos, twelve o’cl
ock, six hundred yards out.  At least, I try not to.  Why do you ask?”

“Because I have been thinking about it,” she answered, squinting through her scope.  “I’ve been thinking about a lot of things, actually.  For a few weeks now.”

“Such as…” I prompted distractedly.

“What my life will be like
for one.  What I’ll do with it, another,” she paused. “Like what kind of boyfriend you’ll be when life is more...” she fired off two rounds, “… normal.  Tangos eliminated.”

I confirmed her kills
and marked them on a kill sheet I’d been keeping since the siege began, tracking numbers and troop movement.  I placed the binoculars in front of my eyes again, but thought better of it and turned to look at Helena instead.  She was seated a few feet to my left and sat Indian style on a rock that placed her about a foot or so above my position.  She had her arms crossed in front of her chest, holding her rifle in a way that balanced it across her body and in the crook of her elbow, the stalk against her shoulder like always.  Using her knees as support, the position was extremely comfortable and very efficient for sniper work.

“You mean in a place where romantic Friday night outings, like tonight, won’t be filled with killing Romans?  Sounds dreadful.”

She didn’t respond, a frown forming on her lips.

“Come on,” I joked
, looking back through my binoculars.  “That was kinda funny.”

Her lips twitched.  “Maybe a little,” she relented before sighing.  “I guess I’ve just been fantasizing too much.  Giving myself false hope as to how our lives could be if we weren’t here.  I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.”

“Can’t be any more than usual,” I said, still scanning the horizon.

She didn’t answer, and when I glanced back at her again, I saw that she was frowning.

I had to admit, she had been acting strange lately, even more so than a few months ago.  Her level of patience with Santino and I seemed to be at an all-time low.  We weren’t that much worse than normal, but she was displaying less patience with us than ever.  And then there was the physical part.  Always waking up early and wandering off on her own during the day, and her pain attacks seemed to occur more frequently these days.  Something was bothering her, and her silence on the matter had made me thinking she was turning into me.

Except I knew better than to tell her that
.

“Hey, with the two of us,” I
said, hoping to cheer her up, “it’s got to be pretty fantastic.”

“
I have my doubts to be honest,” she said, her voice filled with an odd mix of honesty and playfulness.  “Don’t get me wrong.  You’re cute, occasionally humorous and a nice guy when you want to be, but something tells me you’re going to be no better than most lazy American men.  The ones who want little more from their women except sex and having someone to bring them food.”

I winced, trying to hide the expression by turning back to my scope.  She wasn’t completely wrong.  I hated dating.  I liked my “me time” and would generally prefer just staying home or hanging out with friends, like back in college when all we’d do is play Beer Pong all night.  Of course, I preferred having a woman do those things with me, and after all this time, I knew that any part of my normal life would only be that much mo
re complete with Helena in it.

That said, the old beat up couch I had back home was one of the things I missed the most these days.

“Are you kidding?”  I asked excitedly.  “We’ll do lots of stuff.  It’ll be great.  Like this, just without the Romans, and the killing, and the running, and the…”  I trailed off, Helena’s point finally hitting home. 

What we had together here in Rome was really little more than a happy product of convenience and necessity than an honest relationship.  We loved each other, sure, but if we were ever faced with
the atmosphere to build a true relationship, like any twenty first century couple, would we cut it?

“Okay,” I sighed.  “Give me the bad news.”

Her tone immediately perked up and lightened.

“Don’t worry.  It’s not that bad.  First, you take me dancing three times a month, out to eat every Thursday night, with something fancy at least once month.  We’ll also need an activity like hiking or rock climbing, something to get your lazy ass off the couch and keep you in shape.  Finally, you must agree to go to a play
, ballet, opera, or musical.  Four times a year.”

I was speechless.  ‘Not that bad?’  It was everything but.  That was an extremely belligerent set of demands for someone who preferred their couch and Chinese takeout over just about anything.  I had to put an end to this before she got too carried away.

I looked back at her.  “It’s obvious you’ve added my personality as a variable into your equation to ensure an objective decision.”

Sh
e pulled her eye from her scope and offered me a mischievous smile.  “I try.”

“Funny.  Well, here’s the
compromise.  I’ll give you dancing once a month, dinner every week is fine, but the fancy stuff needs to be reserved for special occasions only, and I’d rather hike since rock climbing seems too strenuous, but only as long as we get to camp as well.”

“Haven’t we camped enough over the years?”

“Yah, but this time with no Santino.”

She
returned her eye to her scope and grinned.  “Deal.  But dancing twice a month.”

I gritted my teeth and groaned.  “What is it with you women and dan
cing?  Is that all you ever did?”

“Of course,” she replied.  “
Especially when I was in America.  I was there with three of my Oxford girlfriends after all, and honestly, there’s not much else to do in your country for a group of pretty European college girls.  Papa arranged for our attendance at many trendy hot spots in New York, L.A., Miami…  We were quite popular, actually.  Many men…”

“Great, I get the picture,” I said hastily.  “Spare me the details.”

She laughed at me.  “What about the theatre, Lieutenant?  Don’t tell me, the momma’s boy that you are, that you didn’t attend plays all the time and actually found yourself liking them?”

She was right again, of course, at least about part of it.  I couldn’t count how many times my father and I had been tricked, under false pretenses of dinner at a fancy restaurant, into going to God knows how many plays and musicals
as well.

It was the only time he and I ever bonded
over any aspect of our lives.

Although,
I had to admit that after the fifth or sixth time, I actually found myself enjoying The Nutcracker, and I did have a soft spot for The Fiddler on the Roof.  I’d never actually tell anyone that, of course, but that still didn’t make me a fan.

“I’ll give you twice a year, but never during football season, especiall
y the playoffs.  Check, check.  Two tangos, two o’clock, sector 4H.”

“What is it with you American men and your
American football?”  She asked, throwing my question back at me, panning her rife to her right.  “Bunch of men hitting each other.  It’s barbaric… tangos eliminated.”

“It’s an institution!”  I
nearly yelled, looking for additional targets.  “It’s what every
American
man lives for.  And since we’re on the subject, I have but one stipulation for you then as well.”

“This should be good,” she joked.

“Oh, it is.  In regards to football, first of all, you will attend ever tailgating party I do.  There, you will wear a beer can helmet, colored face paint, and a jersey of my choosing.  Additionally, you will wear booty shorts and tie off your jersey in a way that exposes your stomach.  Once properly attired, you will consume excessive amounts of alcohol, hamburgers, hotdogs, chicken, and steak at said tailgating parties, but still maintain a sexy waistline and firm ass.  In addition, you will flirt and cavort with each and every one of my friends, making them excessively jealous of your all-encompassing hotness, allowing me to throw it in their faces at a later date.  Finally, you will love every minute of it, from the shirts vs. skins flag football games where you will, of course, be a skin, to the end of the night where we’ll have to carry Santino home because he’s too drunk to do it himself.”

I let out a long breath and cracked my neck at the exertion.

“You’re not implying that Santino’s going to be living in our basement… are you?”  Helena asked.

“Maybe,” I said quietly.

Helena looked at me and sighed.  “You’ve been planning this for a while.”

“Since the moment I met you,” I replied.

“Really?  Even after I almost knocked you out and made it seem like I wanted nothing to do with you?”

“It was love at first sight,” I partially joked.

She replaced her eye into her scope, a half smile creeping onto her face.  “I’ll think about the shorts.”

“Hey, the only wardrobe appeal you’re going to get is if you add thigh high football socks.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, laughing.

I smiled too. 
We were going to be fine.  No matter what challenge we faced, we’d push through it.  We’d gone through enough over the years, and even more over the past one.  There was no way some petty dispute like my drinking directly from the milk carton was going to break us up.

Although, she
’d really better prepare herself for that one.

Of course, neither one of us discussed what life might be like should society be different from how we remembered.  I think I could survive an alteration to the timeline like the Yankees being the worst team in Ba
seball history, but if life as we knew it ends up beyond recognition, it might just be worth staying in Rome.  It’s why we had to stop Agrippina in Germany, and get her to back down.  Placing a good emperor like Vespasian on the throne now would probably do little to make history better for Rome, but it would allow him to fix all the shit Agrippina has broken, and ensure Nero doesn’t do anything worse.  If I had to guess, if we succeeded, even after all the deaths, history wouldn’t change too much.  There would be differences, I was sure, but the vast majority of the social, political and military decisions would remain unchanged.

At least
, thoughts like that helped reassure me that I wasn’t somehow responsible for the possible extermination of mankind because of something we changed.

Then again, the world hadn’t been all that great when we had left it either.  Helena and I could joke about the ballet and football, and a life filled with little more than relaxation, love, beer
, and plenty of sex, but I wasn’t so sure such a thing was even possible.  At least, not in the long term.  I’d almost forgotten what the world had been like before we had left it five years ago, but thinking about it now reminded me just how little there really was there for me.  For us.  For any of us.  Nothing but war and the potential for mutually assured annihilation.  Perhaps it was best to just stay, but even if I later decided that was the best course of action for us, I wasn’t about to let the timeline continue in a state of change.

Just drop it.

As long as I had Helena, I could make my life happy.

Clearing my mind, I returned my attention to the
battlefield and the sneaking Roman horde, when an unexpected voice from behind me nearly scared me right off the roof.

“What’s happening kids?”

I turned with my heart racing to see Santino crouching just outside our peripheral vision, wearing full combat gear, his rifle griped between his legs.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked.

My sister and I had spent our entire childhoods’ popping around corners, scaring the shit out of each other.  Unfortunately, instead of hardening my resolve when it came to sudden appearances, it only made me jumpier.

“Besides proving the point that we need some kind of
super-secret-identification-spy-system-code to let people know when we’re coming?”

Helena and I glared at him.

“That’s what the damn radios are for!” Helena hissed at him.

He looked between us
, oblivious.  “Well, I can tell when I’m not wanted,” he said, remaining where he crouched.  Normally, when people said something like that, they left.  “So what’s happening over here?  The rest of the city is pretty quiet.”

“About the same,” I replied wearily, retuning my attention once again to the Roman siege entrenchment system
.  “Only a few targets so far.”

“How long have you been there?”  Helena asked.

“Long enough to know I like the way Hunter thinks,” he replied, flicking his eyebrows at her.  “I call shirts.”