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The halls of the imperial palace were surprisingly quiet this evening, a little too quiet compared to the usual screams and wails that echoed through the lavish chambers.
After all, both laughter and fear went hand in hand in the sounds of the Empire nowadays, and when they were cut off, the same silence ensued.
But tonight, surprisingly, held no sounds at all- not even a shrill, except for the Emperor’s guards’ rhythmic march and the contrasting, soft pitter-patter of his daughter, Julia Drusilla Minor’s footsteps.
The darkened hallway stretched beyond their feet as Julia maintained the relentless pace. She could no longer help the sudden spike of uneasiness hitting her at the thought of seeing her father face-to-face again after all these months.
And it was interesting how, despite them living under the same roof together for over six years now, he had yet to notice her surveyed distance. It was almost as if, the moment she left his side, his memory of her absence completely vanished from thin air.
Well, she supposes that that is what happens when the Emperor of Rome’s biggest duties are no longer surviving foreign enemies or helping keep the treasury intact anymore, but instead, how big the next feast will be and how much more extravagant he could make his ships.
That was Julia’s father, alright.
Or…more so, who he was now for this particular phase.
“Does he know of my arrival?” She had finally asked the silent man to her side.
Gaius Julius Callistus was the only man who stood out among the armored men surrounding them, as he simply decided to wear a dark black tunic tonight, with slivers of gold swerving around the edges of the fabric to suggest some sort of false royalty.
The palace advisor seemed like he at first would refuse to answer, but the small twitch of his mouth gave way to his growing thoughts. He then turned his head to Julia, his usual dull brown irises staring down at her as a simple afterthought.
“We had told Caesar that you were coming to see him tonight, but I cannot promise you that he will remember.”
Julia scoffed at the answer, her dark eyebrows furrowing as she looked to the side of the lined-up pillars following their footsteps. “Of course he doesn’t…The ‘great Emperor’ doesn’t seem to remember anything besides his delusions nowadays.”
Callistus blinked twice at the hidden hostility, but as soon as it seemed like something out of the ordinary had crossed his mind, his expression returned to that same dead-cold stare.
“Your father has not been…feeling well these past couple of weeks.” The palace advisor had admitted hesitantly, a sudden tightness in his voice that originally wasn’t there before.
Julia gazed upon him, unimpressed by his answer.
“Father’s been unwell since I was nine.”
“Well, consider him even more unwell tonight. I suggest you tread carefully when you speak to him.”
Julia sneered because, of course, she was now being ‘warned’ by her father’s favorite Greek freedman about his ongoing instability. As if Callistus would do anything to stop her death if the Emperor had ordered it. In all honesty, she could never fully decide on Callistus’ true beliefs about the new imperial power of Rome; sometimes it seemed like all he cared about was serving the Emperor as a token of gratitude for his ‘freedom’, but at other times, Callistus would get rather close to full-on insulting him when he knew that he and his guards weren’t listening.
Then the uncomfortable thought of “He doesn’t trust me” came to her mind, but as soon as it arrived, she brushed it off with another shrug and continued.
“Ah, I see. Back to the same old ruckus, I’m guessing?” She smirked, putting up another barrier. Callistus’ tanned shoulders tensed ever so slightly at her question, and she could already tell that he knew exactly what game she was going to play.
“Repeated executions, another terrible banquet…demanding that people play into his delusions of grandeur, hm?”
“Lady Julia, I-”
“Declaring war on bodies of water, tiring mood swings, not being the greatest leader for Rome, I can say-”
Before Julia could finish her mocking session, Callistus stopped in his tracks in the middle of the hallway almost immediately, with the guards following suit.
Now the imperial palace was as quiet as a mouse, not even the sounds of a footstep interrupting its peace any longer. But Callistus still looked at Julia with the same vacant expression from before, even if he couldn’t help the familiar tightness to his stance that gave way to his nearby dread.
“Lady Julia.” He spoke again in his usual flat manner.
Julia stared back at him tiredly before giving him an innocent grin. “Yes, Callistus?...”
His eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t dream of criticizing the Emperor…even to the likes of you.”
And just like that, Callistus left the teenager to carry on deeper into the winding halls of the Palatine, not even waiting for Julia to catch up to him anymore.
She stared, slightly perplexed, for a moment at the backs of the leaving guards that left her as well, before finally shrugging and carrying on after them.
“Well, of course you don’t.” She muttered.
“No one does…”
_
After what seemed like forever, the young lady of Rome and the Greek-freedman-turned-palace-advisor finally reached the grand entrance to one of the Emperor’s many exquisite rooms, of course, hidden in the Imperial Palace.
The double doors beyond the room stretched far above their heads, carved with their own depictions of vines and gods, the barriers draped in gold and overdone with lavishness. What was supposed to look beautiful on the outside only turned out to be fake on the inside. It was ostentatious... just like the rest of this place.
And the irony couldn’t be lost on Julia when she could still remember a time when her father could not care less about the pronounced ‘Gods’, instead using them for his own mockery and casting them away as ‘forced myths for shock value.’
Now he declares himself as one.
Callistus gave out a long exhale he was apparently holding before he, with a hand, eventually signaled for the guards to open the grand doors. The armoured men around Julia hesitated for a moment before complying, giving a stomp of acknowledgement as they attempted to push open the heavy golden doors.
After a few seconds, the doors finally budged open with a groan of their own, revealing one of the Emperor’s many private quarters for Julia, Callistus, and the other men to step inside.
This new room was huge, but at the same time, quite empty and spacious. It had no long winding tables, no lavish decorations hanging on the walls (well, except for a few torchlights), and no red carpets draped on the delicate marble floor or the dancing mosaic patterns that Julia grew so used to seeing for the past six years. No, just a few cement pillars and common Roman architecture that eventually led to a rotting dark statue depicting Jupiter, the god of the sky and thunder. It stood at the end of the winding hallway, giving a vacant expression with one palm facing down while the other palm faced the moon above.
And there, of course, was the pronounced Emperor…with pale arms wrapped lazily around the cement statue as if it were his lifeline. His feet had been dragging lightly against the platform as his head continued to lean on Jupiter’s jagged torso uncomfortably.
The not-so-simple man’s back was facing towards them so that Julia couldn’t see his face, but it didn’t take a philosopher to see that something was terribly wrong. And just like the room, the Emperor seemed empty as well, devoid of any of the publicly outrageous attire he usually carried himself in. He wore no dyed purple togas, no bejeweled cloaks, not even a golden ring on his finger or a feminine sandal loosely tied to his feet.
No, instead, he was simply wearing a white tunic made of sharp linen with a rustic belt of gold compacted at his waist. His skin was as white as the snow in winter, the dim moonlight from the shutters doing little to hide it. Strands of medium-brown hair now framed his skull, darkened by an unusual sweat.
Julia already knew that Callistus could tell by the look on her face that she was already having second thoughts on this ‘meeting’ with her father, which unfortunately only pushed him further to make their entrance known.
“Great Caesar, we have-”
“WAIT!!!” The Emperor suddenly screeched. His head twisted with a sickening crack to Callistus, his voice a loud shrill that made the freedman stop dead in his tracks.
Callistus froze, his eyes wide at the deafening sound before he ultimately complied and took a few steps back until he was exactly where he had first started. Meanwhile, Julia behind him didn’t dare to move out of line, the hair on the back of her neck sticking up from the Emperor’s sudden shriek.
It wasn’t like this was particularly new behavior for her father, but it’d always happen in the strangest of circumstances. One minute, he’d be laughing with a stranger; the next minute, he would be screaming for that same person to be dead. But it still managed to catch Julia off guard when it happened.
She attempted to focus her gaze once again to get a better look at the face hidden in the shadows, but before she could attempt to do that, the shuddering man quickly reeled his head back up to Jupiter’s lifeless gaze, completely dismissing the other people stuck in the room. His eyes fixated only on the inanimate statue, for it was who he cared for most tonight.
“Jupiter…” He began in a wishful slur,
“Great god of the thunderbolt, do something for me…Strike Rome. Strike Rome and flatten it to the ground!...”
A long, painful silence occurred after the Emperor’s silent threats had made it through the hallway fully, the guards around Callistus and Julia tensing ever so slightly at his words. The teenager looked at the man beside her, completely perplexed, but Callistus never dared look back at her, as he was still listening for further directions. How typical.
But Jupiter, of course, did not answer the imperator of Rome’s prayers, but the man still cocked his head to the side as if he somehow said something.
“What?...” He whispered.
Silence fell yet again by the cement sculpture, but the now twenty-eight-year-old ‘Caesar’ still decided to take it upon himself to explain his reasoning.
“Well, I…I must be remembered.” Slurred the Emperor as he gripped Jupiter’s torso harder, his head reeling back even more to catch the God’s faraway stare.
“My reign must be remembered above all others! What does history remember best? A great disaster! A flood, a plague, an earthquake– I want more than that...I want something that has never happened before…”
He took another sharp intake of breath before continuing with more purpose,
“A rain of thunderbolts, all at one moment! A hundred THOUSAND deaths– you can do it!...”
The Emperor waited even more patiently than before for the answer he wanted. However, still, Jupiter neither moved nor spoke to him, his face frozen in that half-open expression of carelessness, as it had been since Julia had first come to the Palatine six years ago.
And thus, her father’s head started to move once more, rolling to the side to look at the monument’s indifference quite plainly. His arms that were locked around it then started to suddenly tense up and shake with bottled-up anger…
“...If you don’t, I shall cast you down to HELL!”
By Gods, it was even worse than she suspected. Not only did her father, the highest man of Rome, properly lose his mind a while back, but now he had taken it upon himself to ask nonliving sculptures for favors and make himself look like an utter fool.
Wait, no.
That’s wrong.
Not an utter fool, just an utter madman, and Julia had seen just about enough of this for one night.
And so, with a fake smile to Callistus, she immediately began preparing for the departure.
“Well!... By the looks of it, it seems like the Emperor is rather too busy with his…business for the evening, so I suppose I must be going now!” Julia chirped lightly, just as the servants had taught her when her father got into one of his ‘moods’, turning away and walking to those great, big, double doors again. She had never been the one to interrupt Emperor Caligula’s episodes before, and she certainly wasn’t gonna be the one to do that tonight.
“After all, I had just remembered that I had completely forgotten about all the scrolls I had yet to finish up in my quarters! Oh, I’ll go back to that right now–”
But before Julia could escape, Callistus’ grip locked onto her forearm like an ironclad, forcefully spinning her back to face her father on the other side of the room; away from the comforting shadows, and stuck, drenched in the fallen moonlight.
Meanwhile, the Emperor was slowly sliding off the monument now. His feet soon fully weighted on the platform, with his arms going limp to his sides in all hopelessness.
The teenage girl tried her best to pull her arm away from Callistus before her father could see, but his grip only tightened as she attempted to fight him.
“Callistus, let go.” She ordered, frustrated, but the man’s sharp gaze already told her he wasn’t going to answer to that. His mind was already made up.
And so, in all stupidity, the Greek freedman-turned-advisor called out to the awfully quiet ruler of Rome bravely.
“Caesar!”
For the first few moments, it seemed like Caligula had not yet heard him, but eventually his head moved upwards in thought, his face still hidden in the shadows of the room as he turned towards them slightly.
“What do you want now?...”
Callistus gulped at the rough edge of the Emperor’s voice, but did not yield to his fears as Julia did, who was still trying everything to escape his hard grasp.
But he wouldn’t let go. Not yet.
“Great Caesar, we’ve come because you agreed the other day for Julia Drusilla to speak to you tonight when you weren’t so…busy.” His voice faltered greatly at the end, the usual sharpened palace advisor looking rather dim-witted with his words in the face of his leader.
Caligula twitched ever so slightly at that, speaking now with a raspy voice that rose higher in his own confusion.
“My sister has been dead for years now. What are you talking about?...”
Julia couldn’t help the loud scoff that escaped her because of course this had to happen like always…
And at the same time as her cynicism, Callistus seemed at a loss for words by Caligula’s forwardness before eventually coming back, his voice much steadier this time.
“No, Imperator. You’ve mistaken me; I meant the other Julia Drusilla…your daughter.”
Another silence hit the palace as Caligula’s head turned fully upwards in acknowledgement, his body slowly turning to face the two as well. But even as the shadows hid any note of expression on his face, Julia could tell that his personality had shifted once more.
“Julia?...”
His voice was soft, echoing lightly against the brick-faced walls of the Palatine. It parroted something softer, a trap hidden in plain sight in the form of a relic of somebody who disappeared, truthfully, a very long time ago.
Yet Julia still responded to it. She had no other choice, as he was already aware of the fact that she was in the room with him.
And so she did.
“...Y-Yes, Father,” Julia’s voice stumbled, even as she tried her very best to seem unbothered by him.
“It is your daughter.”
Caligula stood still for a moment, a seeming realization occurring deep in his mind, before he then started to shake in sudden laughter. The guards around them clenched their swords tighter at the sounds, as if they thought the Emperor was gonna strike them any second now.
But it seemed that tonight, the Imperator of Rome was not in the mood to play the usual sadistic game. Instead, he decided to jump off the platform and back onto the marble ground, his arms stretched wide as he walked up to them in a quick manner that made Julia want to shrink into herself.
“Julia, oh my little Drusilla, how idiotic of me to have forgotten!”
Julia first tried to back away, but before she could move even one step, her father had already wrapped his slender arms around her, forcing her into a tight hug with him. She didn’t even notice that Callistus had stopped holding her arm a while ago, but it wasn’t like it mattered now. She was already caught.
Meanwhile, the inescapable embrace was tighter than usual, borderline painful if Julia wanted to be honest, as Caligula was already digging his long, sharpened nails painfully into her sides through the blue and purple silks of her stola without a care. His scent was strong, a mixture of flowers and nuts.
The aroma was smotherable, just like him.
“It’s…quite alright, Father!...” She winced, patting him lightly on the back in hopes it’d make him feel comforted enough to stop.
Eventually, Caligula did let go, resting his hands on her shoulders now at arm’s length, giving Julia just enough time to fully see what her father looked like now. And just as she had first suspected, his new appearance seemed extremely off-putting, and if he didn’t look unsettling the last time she saw him face-to-face, he most certainly looked alarming now.
The Emperor’s skin was a sickly pale color, differentiating from the warm ivory that his skin tone once used to be. His disheveled brownish hair, again, was darkened with his own sweat, and his hazel eyes now held an unsettling sort of gleam in them, sunken with dark rims from the loss of sleep. Yet, his mouth the whole time was still twisted into that terrible grin of his, inauthentic as ever.
He was a mess.
“Oh, Callistus?” Caligula suddenly called out, forcing Julia out of her thoughts.
Callistus was still in the room, hiding carefully in the shadows before he eventually stepped out of them again.
“...Yes, Caesar?”
“I need you and the guards to leave the premises immediately for our private conversation. There is no danger here.”
The Greek freedman nodded solemnly at his words, “Yes, Imperator. We will be waiting outside for you if you need anything.”
Julia watched as Callistus and the other guards marched out of the private quarters, the double doors winding shut as the last one left the premises, leaving only her and her father together in the room.
…Perhaps she should have asked Callistus to stay put just in case anything bad happened, and perhaps she wasn’t as brave as she thought she was to be left in a room with her unhinged father alone with no way out.
Nonetheless, she did not start screaming or try to follow where the guards had disappeared off to. Instead, the Emperor’s daughter stood her ground, hands clasped tightly together, with an unreadable look she had tried so hard to perfect beforehand.
“So!” Caligula suddenly piped up, making Julia flinch once again before forcing herself to relax.
“Where have you been all this time? Trying to escape your duties now, are we?”
The words were supposed to come off as just playful teasing, but it only gave in to Julia’s already growing uncomfortability, especially when he was circling the hallway like a vulture with a rotting carcass. But she answered honestly as always.
“...No, Father, I’ve actually been quite busy with my studies these days.” Julia sighed, leaving her gaze blank as she fake-observed the cement pillars and hanging silks. Anything to not look directly at him.
“And I haven’t been anywhere else except the palace and your other villas.”
Caligula blinked twice at that, his thin eyebrows furrowing in skepticism.
“Nowhere except the palace and the villas…” The Emperor murmured, clicking his tongue before gazing upon his daughter again with a fake smile, his hands disappearing behind his back.
“But yet you have not shown up for dinner, nor have you shown up for any of the ‘festivities’ these past couple of months– Tell me, Julia!…” Caligula stopped in his tracks again, raising a hand as if he was paused in thought, as he usually does when he wants to be ‘theatrical’ with his words.
“...How long has it been since we last spoke?” He finished with yet another question.
Julia shrugged, “It’s been six months, Father.”
Caligula’s eyes widened at the time, not even realizing she had swiftly moved behind him in the middle of his realization. “Six months? Gods, has it really been that long?...”
Julia didn’t answer; the months spoke for themselves.
The time didn’t bother her as much as she thought it would, as the teenager had been avoiding him on purpose for this exact reason.
“It is a normal amount of space, I would say.” Julia noted, “As you’ve been busy with your…banquets–” she rested her back on one of the pillars lazily while talking, crossing her arms with a smirk.
“I’ve been busy with my duties of doing absolutely nothing, which is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about…”
Another breath.
“Father…I would like to leave this place.”
Caligula didn’t dignify that with a response at first, but the smile he had worn had quickly faded at her words, leaving behind a vacant gaze.
“Leave? Are you requesting that I let you leave the empire?”
“No, I am humbly requesting that you let me leave the Palatine.” Julia corrected with a nod, and by the look on the Emperor’s face, it did not seem that he liked her answer at all.
“Leave the Palatine?!” Caligula let out a mocking laugh of disbelief. He immediately looked to where the guards had been to help him out, but there was, of course (thanks to his previous order), nobody there.
“My dear Drusilla, have you any idea of what you are saying right now? Why, you’re commanding a god to let his…daughter roam around with PEASANTS!”
“Is that what you call them now?” Julia asked, though she already knew the answer, “The people of Rome who you’re meant to be serving? ‘Peasants’?”
Caligula looked back at her, his sunken eyes wide. He refused to answer the question. “E-Even if I did toy with the idea of this…where would you even go?”
Julia sighed, pulling herself up from the pillar and walking up to him.
“I do not yet know. Perhaps a village out in Baetica, where I can focus more on my studies and not be bothered by…exterior forces. I’ve read that it is very quiet out there, away from the military borders and loud festivities of Rome.” She stopped short, a look of exhaustion in her eyes. “..But please do not consider this an attack on your rule, Father; I would just prefer to be separate from it rather than in it.”
Caligula didn’t look so pleased. “You are being ridiculous…” He muttered before walking away as he usually does. Julia didn’t follow; she stayed where she was.
“Who in ROME would be given the privileges of the empire, and squash it so that they could go to some…nowhere village in the middle of Baetica?!”
“I’d answer truthfully, Father, but I don’t believe you would like what I have to say,” Julia warned quietly. The jitters in her hands only seemed to grow more at her uneasiness.
“Julia, there’s nothing there except oil and fish sauce!” Caligula blurted out before turning back towards Julia, his hands raised high above his head. “I-It is nothing like here! Just agriculture and market shops, no place where a member of the imperial dynasty should be!”
And there he went, avoiding the reason.
Julia already knew that her father wasn’t going to take this well. And by the look of early-on restlessness in his eyes, she wasn’t going to be given a real chance to explain herself.
But the truth was that leaving for Baetica did, in fact, have something to do with him. But she was already so terrified of confirming his hidden fears that the chance to frame this move as something other than what it really was was already out of her grasp, and the truth was unavoidable. She had to tell him.
“Exactly! It is a rich and highly rated province in the empire! I-It’s not like I will be sleeping in the dirt!” The stubborn teenager argued, scoffing at the ‘great ruler of Rome’ who was now pacing around her, his mind most likely reeling with even more insane ideas on how to rival this problem.
“IT IS NOT SAFE!” Caligula lashed out finally with a swipe of his hand and the bare of his crooked teeth. The side of his hand had almost struck Julia if she hadn’t backed away in time, but the threat of violence from her father did not scare her. Not anymore.
“O-Oh, but this…BROTHEL is?!” The teenager spat, “You have the nerve to speak of safety as if you have not enslaved the people of Rome under fear of YOUR rule!”
The Emperor snarled at her proposition, quickly lowering his tone to another scatter of curses as if anybody could overhear him in this long, winding palace.
“IT IS BETTER that they fear me, as long as they keep serving their God. Half of the things you say to me now would have sent you to hell if you were not my daughter…”
Julia quickly backed away from her father before he could come any closer, shaking her head in disbelief.
While not paying attention, her back had crashed into a statue of her great-great-grandfather, Augustus, who was lurking in the shadows as always. His marble armor and stone-cold expression, though, were left unmarked by the intrusion of space, unlike the girl, who fell to her knees hard on the mosaic ground beneath her from the trip. Caligula, however, didn’t move an inch.
“Y-You have lost your senses, Father, if you are now trying to convince me that you have any powers beyond humanity’s control…” She shivered in dismay. “That is why you refuse to see reason…That is why you cannot fathom me wanting nothing to do with you anymore!”
At first glance, Julia had thought she had yet again mistaken the Emperor for not hearing or reconciling with what she had said, but the dangerous silence floating in the air was instead showing that another emotion inside of him had finally snapped open. And like a machine, he was already shedding the past mask for a new one.
“...You as well?”
The words were quiet this time. It wasn’t loud, didn’t even have a single curse of fake-wisdom, just a calm ‘you as well?’ that sounded almost bored if she didn’t think twice about it.
Julia turned her head to face her father from across the room, fretfully. Tears were already visibly streaking her face, smudging the makeup that the ornatrices had worked so hard to make possible. “W…What?”
Caligula’s expression remained blank, his eyes empty with not a hint of human warmth in their sunken sockets.
“You as well?” He repeated, “You are leaving in fear of me too?”
Julia didn’t respond; she didn’t know how to. But she didn’t choose to get up from where she was to show that she had understood, and that fact only seemed to bring out more of the Imperator’s growing annoyance. He scoffed and turned away again, heading to another set of light wooden doors hidden away on the left that led to the pronounced balcony where the ancient goddess of the moon, Luna, was ‘kept’. Caligula kicked them open with a loud crack and headed outside in a frustrated hurry, leaving his daughter alone in the room, completely lost and terrified about what might happen next.
But eventually, despite her own reluctance, with shaky legs, stood up and followed her father outside the hallway quietly.
_
Julia found the ruler of Rome exactly where she had expected: on the balcony with his back facing toward her, staring heavily at the moon above, hidden beneath the clouds. His pale hands gripped the marble handrail as if it were the only thing still keeping him on foot; the soft sounds of the trees swaying and the half-empty streets of Rome below filling the empty gaps of the atmosphere.
He still didn’t turn to look at her.
Julia shook her head at it. Still shaking from the emotional whiplash she had just experienced, she decided to turn back to the entrance, planning to leave while she still had the chance.
And yet, the Emperor spoke again, stopping her before she could take a single step away from him.
“You would not be the first to dignify me as a monster, Julia.” He began hesitantly, pitching higher than his usual voice before he swallowed it back down nervously. “And most certainly not the last…”
Caligula sniffled at his own words, his head bowing down as his hands shook the marble again. “I am not stupid like Uncle Claudius, daughter, I know what they think of me!...
Julia stood frozen at the entrance of the balcony, as always, not daring to take a step toward the upset Emperor in fear of his own retaliation. But she purposefully did not turn to leave again.
“Who are you referring to when you say ‘they’?” She questioned while narrowing her dark brown eyes, though she already knew the answer.
Caligula scoffed as if offended by the pitiful question, waving a hand figuratively as if to explain words that he didn’t particularly know himself.
“Rome…” The Emperor stated, his voice rough at his own actions.
“My empire, my servants, my people. And now…”
Caligula turned around finally to reveal his face, away from the shadows of the night, his eyes bloodshot red and his hair even more disheveled than when she first arrived.
“My own child.”
Julia stayed silent once more, listening to the Emperor’s soft sobs and his new self-loathing ritual as he turned back around to face the moon.
“And why is that?” She asked simply.
“Because they DON’T understand!...” Caligula choked out. A sudden fist slammed onto the delicate handrail, causing another loud ‘creaking’ sound to occur that was sure to give him a few sparks of pain, but the Emperor did not whisk his hand away in fear. “The ‘Pax Romana’ given to me is but a system built on lies and suffering! The Romanic dream that only worked for one man, and one man only!”
Another sniffle, before it settled back into a broken sob. “My fellow Gods know, I’ve suffered long enough before the old man gave it away to me! My party is all conspirators, Julia! I know it is! Yes, they’ll worship me when I say to do so, but they do not love me…”
“They love you enough to stay–”
“ONLY UNTIL THEY GET THE CHANCE TO STAB ME LIKE THE TRUE CAESAR!!!” Caligula suddenly shrieked, whipping his head back around to face the girl hiding behind the doors. Julia jumped back, startled, her hands gripping the white wood harder as if it could somehow protect her from her father’s truth.
She never truly knew how to respond when he spoke like this; usually, he just got angry and ordered the guards to take her back to her room.
This time it was different; he wanted her to stay.
“I am cruel to them because they DESERVE it, Drusilla…They are the reason why my family is dead, and why the living part of it has grown to hate me so.” His shoulders physically tightened once more in growing frustration,
“I keep telling them that we are the blood of Germanicus, and they don’t give a damn! They’re fake. Two-faced creatures that will speak to you of love and forgiveness, then whisper treachery behind your back. That is why they must pay…”
Julia’s hands twitched, secretly daring herself to get away from the doors and enter Caligula’s bubble of secret self-loathing, but she decided to stay where she was. For now.
“Are you…feeling regret for taking the throne, Father?” She asked hesitantly, already fearing his potential response.
The Emperor had yet to respond, but the slump of his pale shoulders seemed to tell enough.
“I…I believe that I may have overestimated my original patience with the empire.”
A long silence fell over the balcony at that, covered by the soft blowing winds and the sway of nearby trees. Julia had made him crack, and she couldn’t help the whistle of hope that would make the wheels in her mind start to turn yet again.
The Emperor had no idea how long she was waiting for him to finally admit that.
And so, with a tedious amount of mental strength, her foot finally met the balcony, then the other…then the other after that until she was right behind her father, jeweled hands shaking at her sides.
For the past six years of her life, the Emperor has shown nothing but deep paranoia and psychotic frenzies about ruling the Roman Empire. Now he admits the very same thing Julia had realized some time ago in the form of a slobbering speech on one of the Palatine’s many balconies.
It wasn’t the greatest explanation, but it sure was a start for her. Such a start that the teenage daughter couldn’t help the words that tumbled out of her mouth next…
“...Then come with me to Baetica!”
Caligula’s head whipped around to face her at that, his face twisting into utter repulsed confusion despite his earlier sadness.
“What?...”
“Come with me to Baetica!” Julia repeated, now with even more confidence than before, despite her earlier fears. Her hands went to one of Caligula’s pale arms and pulled, making him almost stumble before he caught himself in the middle of the floating deck. Meanwhile, her dark brown eyes were practically bulging out of her skull to tell him.
“We’ll depart from this miserable city together! If you are fearful now that the Empire has changed you for the worse, Father, then let us leave this place…”
Caligula stared at his daughter, unresponsive for a few moments before his eyes began to narrow and his upper lip began to curl upwards in disgust. He then quickly reeled his arm away from her soft hands as if struck. “I have no idea what you are trying to suggest to me right now…” He muttered audibly.
Julia’s eyes flashed with hurt at the movement, but her stance only hardened as her confidence in the ability to change her father’s mind grew. “Then let me make it clear to you now: leave the Empire!”
The twenty-eight-year-old ruler of Rome practically doubled over at that, his eyes going as wide as saucers at the proposition. A hand of his went to where his ‘cold heart’ was, gripping the expensive fabric of his tunic as if he would be able to take back the words that were just uttered by his own offspring.
“L-LEAVE THE EMPIRE?!” He repeated in panic.
“YES! We’ll leave behind all of it! The senators, the guards, the servants, the plebeians…We’ll pack our bags and never look back– it’ll just be us, Father, like how it used to be before Tiberius’ death!”
Her hand shot out again to take her father’s, but he quickly wheeled it away once more, backing himself up into his own corner. Julia stiffened, but continued anyway. “Wake up and realize the truth, Father. You can’t stay here! You’ve admitted it now; your party hates what you have done to them. Give up your power and let go of your hate!”
But Caligula wasn’t listening, as his attention now was to the night sky above, shaking his head in abhorrence. “Gracious Luna, do you hear the nonsense that my virago of a daughter speaks of this evening?” He whispered in agony. Of course, nobody responded, not a single voice, so the Emperor just looked back down at Julia as if his mind was already made up. “I am a God, Drusilla!...I-I can’t even fathom the idea of abandoning the life I was meant to have!”
Julia’s posture tightened, and her expression went blank at his words. She had finally had enough of this nonsense.
“You’re not a God, Father.” She spoke quietly with a shake of her head. “You never were.”
Caligula’s already bloodshot eyes widened in horror at his daughter’s words. His hand tightened in his own cloth and his feet slid to the back of the handrail as if scorched by the heat of the truth. Another silence draped over the area solemnly.
Julia’s jaw tightened; for the first time in years, the Emperor had been silenced by something that wasn’t just agreements to his delusions, but confrontations of reality.
“N-No, I…I’m Jupiter, I’m-”
Words tumbled out of his mouth repeatedly, insensible and dull. She shook her head at all of it, walking towards him as the nervous man continuously backed himself into a corner.
“No…” She spoke again, her voice barely above a whisper. “You’re Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus… ‘Caligula’ at best, but I would never call you that.”
Caligula kept shaking his head, either out of fear of her honesty, or fear of his own insecurity. His pale hands shook near his sides, immediately going back to grip the marble handrail behind himself to gain some sense of control. For a long moment, it seemed like the Emperor of Rome genuinely felt that he was fearing for his life. Then his voice came back in that shivery tone of his, stumbling over his own words once again. “N-No, you don’t understand!... I can’t go back to that!... I WON’T go back!”
She knew she was pushing the limit to what Caligula could take before losing his patience completely tonight, but her ambition to reel her father back into her world proved to be greater than her fears. And so, with another step in his direction, she persisted.
“To what, Gaius? Your true self? The man who raised me on that rotting island? It was you, Father!”
“NO!” Caligula lashed out abruptly before going back to that fearful tremor that was worse than the man he would repeatedly make fun of. “It wasn’t me!...” He persisted, “You’re living a lie, h-he’s gone!”
Julia stared at his retreat with a pitiful look. “I don’t believe that for one second,” she said before taking yet another step in his direction. “Even you yourself don’t believe in the things you say; the only person who’s persistent on living a lie is you-”
“You’re wrong! My revelation-”
“-Was a fever dream that sparked your delusions one night! I…” Julia let out a long sigh, her blue fabric-wrapped shoulders going down in fleeting hope.
“Can’t you see that I never needed a ‘god’?! I needed my father.”
Her dark eyes looked to Caligula for some form of mental change, but he still kept his distance away from her as if she were a caged animal. Sweat was dripping down his temple as one of his hazel eyes twitched ever so instantly.
When was the last time somebody referred to his deathly fever that one ‘off night’ as anything other than his pronounced ‘revelation that he was a God’? Julia couldn’t even remember, but by the look on Caligula’s face, the statement seemed to hit him hard.
But as soon as it seemed like he was listening, the Emperor’s expression suddenly turned cold and so did his mask.
“I don’t know what you want from me, Julia.” He spoke up finally, his voice completely monotone compared to the shivering man he just was a few minutes ago. “I don’t possess the power to leave Rome for some pathetic dream of yours…”
As his daughter stood there, confused and thrown off by his words, he took the time to brush past her, out of the night air and back into the suffocating hallway behind her. Julia quickly followed on foot once she realized that he was attempting to leave again.
“It’s not a pathetic dream!” She persisted, “The Senate despises you; they would be more than happy to see your resignation-”
“And then what comes next?” Caligula interrupted yet again, his back now facing her. “Do you suppose we just live like laborers and give up our imperialistic privileges for comfort?”
Julia flinched as if struck. “N-No, I…I suppose we’d live like simple plebeians–”
“Plebeians to be forgotten by history? Now, Julia, I did not survive my own family just to have what I earned be thrown away for a simple pity party of yours…”
Awkward silence fell over them yet again at his deafening words of ‘wisdom’. There stood a divide between father and daughter, the middle ground being the still lifeless statue of Jupiter, left forgotten. Meanwhile, Julia’s jaw lay slightly ajar before she closed it back up with an exhausted groan.
“You don’t even believe in half of what you’re saying right now!” She attempted to convince him yet again, but it fell on deaf ears.
“That your idea is quite pitiful? Oh, no, daughter, I believe it.” Caligula responded with a simple shrug, finally turning to face her in the shadows. His eyes shared no manic gleam in them as they had once done before; now he held his face in a tired smile, mocking at best, and continued his speech with another shrug. “The implication is, of course, that you are much too young and selfish to think about any duties beyond your very own…”
The teenage girl simply stared at her father in disbelief. Here he was doing it again…the moment she flies too close to the sun, he burns her down and changes viewpoints, today being him doing an awful impression of the Emperor before him.
And for the first time since tonight, Julia was left with nothing to say. So, Caligula, in thinking he ‘won’ the conversation, started to fix his tunic as if to leave.
“Well, now that we got that out of the way, I will be going to bed now; our discussion is dismissed and so are you-”
“You talk of great power and peasants, as if I am not the daughter of a peasant girl myself!”
The Emperor immediately stopped in his tracks, the silence louder than any storm could be. Julia didn’t dare run away this time, her feet planted heavily on the floor as she kept her head up to see her father’s gaze, but he didn’t look back.
Instead, he spoke up in a slow rasp, unmemorable from his usual tantrums.
“...Don’t talk to me about your mother.”
But Julia didn’t listen, continuing anyway with the goal of finally hitting something. She never dared talk about her absent mother, as the memory had upset Caligula so over the years, but in the heat of the moment, she no longer cared about the ghost of the woman. If it hurt him tonight as much as he hurt her over the years, then so be it.
“Why? A-Afraid that you’ll realize that everything you accuse me of being is in actuality once you?” She challenged, trying hard not to stumble on her words even as her hands shook in her own fear. “You used to roll around in dirt, and now you are too scared to even touch it…”
Caligula attempted to make another move to the door, his tone inching a tiny bit higher. “She is not your memory to bring up; this conversation is over–”
“NO, I don’t think it is!” Julia quickly blurted out with a crazed look on her face. “B-Because if I don’t tell you this now, I don’t think I ever will!…”
“You dare speak to me about selfishness as if you haven’t been so self-centered for the past fifteen years of my life! I’ve seen you bring people in only to throw them away at their lowest…I’ve seen you put aside what Rome really needs so that you can have your ‘precious little ships of paradise’ while people are on the streets begging for their meals!... I’ve seen my elderly great-uncle BEG at your feet to erase the great debt you gave him, and you sat on that throne and LAUGHED!... But perhaps this all started before you ever became Imperator, as when I was just an infant, you even stole me away from my bleeding mother’s hands just to show my grandmother the ‘gift you created–’”
“Your birth was a mistake, Julia. If I hadn’t taken you away, her family would have left you on a hill to die on in fear of mine finding out. I did it for your safety–”
“No, you did it to have a possession! To stick it to your mother! You’ve never once seen me as anything other than just another accessory to you that you can throw away once you get bored enough!” Julia cried, not even trying to hide the tears streaking down her cheeks anymore.
But Caligula just shook her head in dismissal, his voice a low rasp. “You know nothing of sacrifice, Julia...”
He then lowered himself to sit at the edge of the statue’s platform, the shadows still hiding his back and head like a dark curtain. Julia didn’t hesitate to continue. “That is a lie, and you know it.” She spat, “I’ve sacrificed every potential future I had outside of this palace to stay beside my own father, and now he refuses to even look at me…”
Another long silence settled over the Emperor’s private quarters as Julia waited for a response she knew she was never gonna receive; the only sounds were the heavy beat of her own heartbeat and Caligula's loud breathing as he tried to control himself. It was obvious that he had long given up on entertaining this fight, making Julia take another step forward, her breath outstretched to pull another arrow filled with insults…
“You-”
“CALLISTUS!”
The loud hollar coming from the Emperor echoed through the palace walls, immediately stopping his daughter in her tracks. A few moments later, they both began to hear the double doors wind open before shutting loudly again as someone entered the hallway. Julia didn’t need to look behind her to know who it was.
“Yes, Caesar?” Callistus responded cluelessly as if he wasn’t listening in to the fight the whole time. Caligula never looked back at either of them once, but he still continued in a new, overly soft tone.
“I believe that my daughter has been getting a little too cranky for my liking tonight. If you could please escort Lady Julia safely back to her quarters, it would be greatly appreciated. Uh…Just make sure to lock the door behind her once she’s in…”
Callistus blinked twice at the unusual request, glancing over at the wind-up girl standing next to him, who was practically shaking in both anger and disappointment. Though still, as a server to the Emperor, he knew better than to question.
“Yes, Imperator, we’ll be sure to get her there safely…” He bowed stiffly before giving Julia another look of knowing pity and leaving to await her.
But Julia did not leave with him, not yet. Instead, she stood above her father, fingers curled into tight fists as tears still shed from her narrow eyes.
“A-Am I at least allowed to leave for Baetica by myself?!...” She choked out.
Caligula stayed silent yet again, breathing in and out heavily before responding with a shake of his head.
“No…” He rasped, “No, you may not.”
Julia didn’t dare fight back, not this time. Instead, she just nodded her head, lips curling into a cynical half-smirk as more tears welled up in her eyes.
“Then my father is truly dead.”
Before the Emperor could fully process her words, his daughter spun around on her heel and hurried to the exit, never looking back as the entrance doors slammed shut behind her. Now all he could hear were the unsoothing echoes of her soft sobs from behind him and his own guilt winding in the pit of his stomach.
Caligula sat there motionless, alone and empty on the steps next to his greatest creator. When his bloodshot eyes rolled to the side, he could still see the rotting statue of his great-grandfather hidden in the curtains, staring directly at him mockingly.
If the Emperor had the energy, he would have tackled that statue to the ground and demanded that the divine Augustus apologize to him, but instead he just sulked there, his head going down to hide in his own arms.
And for the first time in a long while, Gaius Germanicus was no longer in the mood to play pretend.
[CURTAIN CLOSE]
[The End…for Now.]