Silence

by Swiss
Author's notes: Strong Imagery.

Title: Silence Author: Swiss (dragonswissarmyknife@hotmail.com) Characters: Iolaus, Romans Challenge: #21 - Silence Summary: Iolaus is taken to Rome and sold at the Venalicium, and loses something even more precious than his own body.

"Dreams only die when I'm dreaming, Heart only breaks when its beating. It only hurts when I'm breathing, So I'll hold my breath, cause it only hurts when I breathe."

~

He's not sure when he first realized how closely language was tied to identity.

He thought, maybe, it was when he'd had it forced out of him through his teeth, locked away somewhere discreet, with the rest of his pride. Maybe they'd destroyed it with the rest of his belongings, he didn't know. But no matter the loss, no matter that he had to listen to their flailing tongue, their wretched language stinging and shouting and scouring him, he refused to let it pass his own lips.

Hercules hadn't been with him when he'd been taken. He'd been making his way to meet him on a tinkering little ship just out of Pylos when the pirates had slipped in around them on a storm laden wind. He fought them - a maelstrom of movement, fists and feet desperately lashing. caught, finally, in a net like an animal, curling, hissing against the hemp. a cruel hook he'd taken wrenched out of him, warm leaking from beneath his ribs - but in the end he'd found his back pressed against the sand-smooth planks. He remembered seeing the world last through a labyrinth of square patchwork fibers, fading into in a swirling red haze of cloud and a dying sun.

Fever made the in-between times on the ship vague. He thought, maybe once, a companion smoothed his curls kindly, but in the end it was too fuzzy a memory to even speculate. But he thought he remembered words whispered to him - dear gods be with you> - gentle and sad.

They were the last words he heard in Greek.

If he lived until the stones of Rome crumbled to dust, he would never forget the Venalicium. He'd seen innumerable slave markets, had even endured being sold. But the mighty Roman Slave Market at Delos had demolished the memory of them all, made even the lingering recollection seem like a dim holiday.

He remembered the forum, and the white slipper of chalk he'd worn - `new meat, new meat!' - attracting the ones who wanted to break him. The men who despised their docile countrymen in favor of tougher stock - imported exotics, prisoners of war and stolen children. The men who came to buy at Delos were the worst kind of masters.

The placard tied around his neck had nauseated him, - hands snatching the thin marker, curling it possessively in the arch of their palm. his neck went with it, heat, rough hair and skin against the hollow of his throat, caught against the back of the hand so calmly curled around the parchment - because it was his identity here. Leering teeth, words he didn't understand then - (pretty one, shall I have you?) - stripped repeated before reels and reels of eyes and hands. Pinching, pawing, cupping, soothing, sweaty, searching, businesslike hands. Fingers holding his head, behind his ears, tight on his chin, in his hair.

Short hair. Roman hair, except even cut to a cap they couldn't completely sheer away the defiant curls, his Grecian birthright. He'd felt like a lamb when they cut it, like a helpless beast. Unconsciously, he'd moaned to see it fall away, sunny ringlets scattered against the ground. Like bright dinars in the dirt, to be ground under a roman heel.

His fight with the Cilician Pirates had tagged him `querulous.' His supposed that somehow translated to "fighter" on the market, because amidst the fat, swollen palms and jeweled fingers, there were also military men. Their sharp knuckles bore painfully into his cheeks and their hard gazes were always cold.

"Strong, pretty barbarian," one purred, breathing in his face. The man was like a mountain, bearded, dark colored and handsome. Fearful. His deleterious smile had taken Iolaus' heart. He'd cupped his cheek with a hand the color of brown, well-worn leather, deeply callused. Wide enough to cover half his face, to trace the pale, smooth scar on his brow. He'd trembled involuntarily at the warrior smell, at the familiar press of that hand.

Pleased, the Roman had growled soft laughter that made him afraid.

The night had been spent chained, cold against a column. Bloody, marked by men, weeping wounds that festered inside. He'd shivered against the stone, from aftershock as much as temperature. In the bitter night, incorporeal voices mewed, weeping quiet all around him in the languages of the world. For one more night, the Roman guards ignored their prayers, bore their oaths. Perhaps they knew, as Iolaus did, that after tomorrow they would never have the chance again.

Iolaus said his own prayer, to a man instead of a god.

His first master claimed him in the morning. The frightening, aphotic warrior who had stirred him with his casual intimacy, who'd left him feeling so empty from just one touch. His torrid eyes had been even more awful with the knowledge that this man owned him.

The brand had hurt - merciless hands, pitiless pressure around his forearms, pressing into the low arch of his back, forced down, face down, face ground into cold stone so that he tasted the grit and the smelled the blood of those before. dull, relentless burning, screams, babbling, pounding in his ears while someone almost scalped him against the convulsions - but not so much as having those symbols pressed, permanently, into his skin. Their position at the base of his neck meant that he couldn't see them, but it was a cruel kind of comfort. Because everyone else could.

It was only the first violation.

Defiance. He'd had it at first, used his Greek, sneering back at them. He thought they liked it when he cursed them. He knew his master did, because the man liked to pretend that he only hurt him when he deserved it. Both of them knew better. But his words, his language, was an offence he knew of. And he thought it made it sweater for the one who possessed him, to have a reason.

It hurt. Gods, it hurt. The bleeding inside seeped continuously. And, sometimes it streamed.

He thought, if he lived, he would never talk about what happened there.

He didn't think in Latin - servi aut nascuntur, aut fiunt - though he has no choice but to listen to it. Commanding or shouted or gently murmured. He wouldn't think in those words. He swore, whatever they might do to his body, they couldn't have his mind.

He'd woken up crying the first time he heard it in his dreams.

Sometimes he's not sure he survived the Venalicium. Those were the nights when he woke up in an unfamiliar place, feeling along his scalp through butchered curls, unable to remember his own name. He'd pull his knees up and sink against them and the pull of manacles on the curve of his wrists. If there was the dimmest exterior light, he would look outside and wonder if it was the real sky, or if he was in some Roman version of Tartarus, without knowing when along the way he had died.

Eventually, they'd won his silence. What had once been intimately familiar words where lost in the fog of ruin and opacity. It had come closer than anything else to breaking him, when he realized he couldn't name himself or anything in either language. It had left him wandering lost.

Greece, - rocky hills and ancient high pasture land. little fishing craft and the smell of ripening grain at harvest. Sweet grapes, stout heart, all its grand history - it faded with his words, a specter or a fantasy rather than a real place. The sounds numbed. And he found he couldn't even name oft-frequented places, or precious things. He couldn't even name what he lost.

He'd never expected to be found again

For weeks, he'd been debatably lucid. His body and mind where diminished. He'd been sick. He'd been hurt. So, when salvation finally came, he thought he was delirious. The rescuer had seemed like a shadow out of his most threadbare dreams.

His friend had come to him. Soothing noises, made to what must have looked like such a blank, stricken face. There was a hesitation of trembling hands over a body made unfamiliar with new tracks of suffering. And then the strong arms were enveloping him, bringing him close into the space against his heart. His senses were infused with leather, and sandalwood, good grass, and salt seas. The arms held him, the man moaned, and his grip constricted to something just less than pain.

Iolaus jolted at the words, words he knew. They were like lightening striking his nerves. Wetness easily penetrated his close cropped hair, warm against the crown of his head, his temple. There was a cry,

Language is identity.

A hollow wail caught against his teeth, and suddenly he couldn't hold onto the other man tightly enough. Familiar arms rocked him, soothed his hot skin and burning mind with touches of different kinds. Iolaus spilled over, crying. With the warm presence, right there, and gentle words, His name. Sweet voice.

he gasped.

The silence broken.

Please post a comment on this story.
Read posted comments.