“What will he be like now?” whispers her brother maliciously. “Will he remember you?” Commodus’s pale eyes bore into her and his voice is like a snake’s. But she can shake off the immediate terror, for there, they come: Aurelius and his Praetorian Guard, the soldiers that protect his body in battle. The Emperor’s banner ripples over their heads, and she keeps herself straight as a spear and replies to her brother: “If not, I shall remind him.”

Commodus laughs, and she hears the jealousy in it. “Who could forget you, dear sister?”

I try to limit myself to rec’ing only the best story from one author in a fandom, but I can’t believe I haven’t rec’d this before. It’s true that I love Shalott’s One of a Thousand Roads and Waking from a Dream more than this story, but that’s no reason not to rec it.

Anyway, Campaign is great because no one writes Maximus/Commodus like Shalott.

On Saturnalia, Commodus and Lucilla play an old game.

(Galatea was a statue carved by Pygmalion. He fell in love with his work and implored Aphrodite to turn her into a flesh-and-blood woman. The goddess obliged, amd Galatea and Pygmalion were married.)

And its sequel, Waking From A Dream

I reread these this morning, and they’re just as good as I remembered. Maximus and Commodus meet for the first time.