The problem with fighting a ghost in your own head is that only one of you can hold the sword.
Marcia didn't waste time with comforting lies. She saw the fracture in him, and she immediately began to build a fortress around it. Her plan was simple, desperate, and the only thing he had. She would become his memory.
The next morning, she began. As she served him his morning bread and fruit, her questions were quiet but relentless.
"Tell me about your startup," she said, her tone even. "What was its name?"
"Aethelred Systems," he answered, the name feeling strange on his tongue.
"What was its purpose?"
"Predictive governance," he said. "We built algorithms to..." He trailed off. The specifics, the lines of code he had spent years writing, were becoming fuzzy, like a distant dream.
"Tell me about your home," she pressed, her dark eyes watching his face intently. "Your apartment."
"It was… minimalist," he said, grasping for details. "It had large windows. Steel and glass." He tried to picture it, but the image was hazy. He couldn't remember the color of the walls.
Instead, another image flashed through his mind, unbidden and crystal clear. The dusty, sun-drenched floor of a lanista's training school. The smell of sweat and oiled leather. The satisfying weight of a wooden practice sword in his hand.
He looked down at his own hands, turning them over and over. The scarred knuckles, the calloused palms. They felt more familiar to him in that moment than the memory of a keyboard. They were a stranger's hands, and they were his.
He had to get out. He had to do something. Anything to feel in control. He called a military council. A minor skirmish had been reported on the northern frontier, in Germania. A raiding party from a local tribe had sacked a Roman outpost. It was a minor issue, but it was a problem he could solve.
He sat at the head of the large table in the war room, his generals and commanders arranged before him. Crixus, in his new role as head of the Vigiles and a de facto security chief, stood behind him, a silent mountain of a man.
A cautious old general named Vitellius droned on, pointing at maps. "...a measured response is required, Caesar. We must reinforce our supply lines before committing a full legion. The terrain is treacherous."
The man's voice was a dull, buzzing insect. As he spoke, a wave of arrogant, furious impatience washed over Marcus. It rose from his gut like bile. Supply lines? Cowardice! He speaks of caution when he should be speaking of vengeance!
The general continued, "If we are prudent, we can contain the threat with minimal..."
"Cowards!"
The word exploded from Marcus's mouth, a guttural roar that silenced the room. He slammed his fist down on the heavy oak table. The force of the blow rattled a nearby wine pitcher.
Every general in the room flinched. Their faces, moments before bored and placid, were now masks of shock and fear.
Marcus rose to his feet, feeling a terrible, exhilarating power surge through him. The words that came out were not his, but they felt righteous. They felt true.
"You speak of prudence while Roman eagles lie trampled in the mud!" he snarled, his voice the voice of an emperor, a god of war. "We will not 'contain' them. We will meet them in the field and we will crush them! I will lead the First Legion myself and bathe in their blood!"
Dead silence.
The room was frozen. The generals stared at him, their eyes wide. But behind the shock, he saw something else flicker to life. A spark of the old fear. And a glimmer of something that looked disturbingly like respect. This was the Emperor they understood. The son of the god of war, not the bookkeeper.
Then, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Crixus. The gladiator's grip was like iron, a silent, urgent warning.
The red haze receded. Marcus looked at the stunned faces of his commanders and felt a cold wave of horror. What had he just done? He had just committed the Empire to a reckless, ego-driven war based on a flash of inherited rage. He hadn't been in control. He had been a passenger.
The news of the Emperor's "return to form" ripped through the palace like wildfire. The generals, bored with a decade of peace, were suddenly invigorated. The Senate, which had begun to see him as a manageable eccentric, was terrified.
And Lucilla was triumphant.
She found him in the palace gardens that afternoon. She was radiant, her smile, for the first time since his "change," completely genuine. She looked at him with something that almost resembled sisterly pride.
"I heard you found your fire again, brother," she said, her voice dripping with satisfaction as she fell into step beside him. "The talk of the barracks is that the lion has finally awoken."
She touched his arm, a gesture of conspiratorial affection. "I knew he was still in there," she purred. "The true son of Marcus Aurelius. A warrior, not a clerk obsessed with grain ledgers."
She thought she had won. Her strategy of prodding and provoking him had, in her mind, worked perfectly. She had reawakened the monster she knew, the predictable, violent brother she understood how to manipulate.
She had no idea she was speaking to a man who was losing his mind. She mistook his sickness for a return to health. And in her fatal miscalculation, he saw a tiny, dangerous sliver of an advantage. She thought she knew what was happening. She had no clue.
He returned to his chambers, shaken to his core. Marcia and Crixus were waiting for him. The moment the doors were closed, the imperial mask fell.
"I didn't mean to say it," he said, his voice ragged. He sank into a chair. "I was listening to Vitellius, and then... it just came out. He was in control."
Crixus stood by the door, his face grim. "The generals are already drawing up battle plans. They believe in you again."
"They believe in him," Marcus corrected, his voice bitter.
He could no longer trust himself. Not in public. Not when the fate of thousands rested on a single, impulsive word.
"We need a new protocol," he said, looking at the two of them. His last tethers to reality.
Marcia stepped forward. "From now on, Crixus will not just be your guard. He will be your shadow. He will stand behind you in every council, every public appearance."
Crixus nodded, understanding. His job was no longer just to stop assassins from reaching the Emperor. It was to stop the Emperor from destroying himself.
"And I will have a signal," Marcia continued. "A code. If I am present and I see you... slipping... I will ask you a question." Her eyes were steady, her voice firm. "I will ask: 'My lord, have you reviewed the latest report on the Egyptian grain shipments?'"
The grain shipments. The most boring, un-Commodus-like subject imaginable. It was a trigger. A mental reset button designed to pull him back to Marcus the bookkeeper, and away from Commodus the warrior.
Crixus moved to his post by the door. His hand rested near the hilt of his sword. But Marcus noticed his gaze linger on a heavy leather strap hanging from his belt, the kind used to restrain prisoners. The protector had become the jailer.
That night, Marcus jolted awake from a nightmare of blood and sand, the phantom roar of a crowd still echoing in his ears. He was drenched in sweat, his heart pounding against his ribs.
He sat up, trying to shake the dregs of the dream. He looked at his hands in the pale moonlight filtering through the window.
And then he saw it.
Written on his own palm, in dark ink, in a flowing, arrogant script that was not his own, was a single word.
Mine.