Work Text:
In life, Caesar was not mortal. Not quite. Not by the end.
In death it is the same.
He finds himself in no miraculous realm – not Olympus, not the Elysian Fields, not Hades. It is the mortal world, but the living move about him like evening shadows, faint and wavering, cool and insubstantial as a breeze. He sees them, but he sees more also; time itself has become a matter of choice. Each life unravels in his sight, past and future as clear as the present moment.
In life, Caesar was the north star, the supporting pole around which the Roman world turned. He was the center and the stability and the empire itself. In death, he will be called a god. A temple will be raised to him. A comet will light his funeral games like a bleeding slash across the heavens. His name will echo down millennia as a title of power. He knows all of this now, though none of it has yet happened.
Now, his body lies on the Senate floor, cooling despite the humid Roman air. Now, his blood is still slick and red on Mark Antony’s hands as the young man makes a speech to the crowd. He hears Antony’s words; he knows Antony’s thoughts, the deception beneath the outward praise.
Of course Caesar was ambitious. What great man is not? Antony is ambitious; look how he turns what should have been a funeral oration into a stump speech. Cleopatra, their shared lover, is ambitious. She will use Antony as she used Caesar; she will love them both and climb above them both and die a god herself. Octavius is ambitious; pious and pursed-lip as he presents himself, he might be the most ambitious of them all. His rule will be the longest.
Perhaps only Brutus is not ambitious. He may not be honorable – in this Antony’s accusations ring true – but he is earnestly devoted to justice and fairness. He thinks, even now, that he has done right. Oh, Brutus, pure of heart, pure as gold. But gold is soft; the purer it is, the more it will dent under pressure. Brutus is too pure for the games played around him.
Now, at this moment of betrayal and death that is also every moment, Caesar loves Brutus, as he always has and always will. Caesar is bleeding from two dozen wounds and he knows which belong to Brutus and they are the deepest, the most courageous. Each hole in Caesar’s body is a mouth as well as a gash, spilling out his soul to eternity. He is dead and infinite and he sees the coming death of every mortal around him. So many will be self-inflicted; this band of assassins and would-be rulers will turn their swords against themselves, will take their own poisons, will bring their republic to civil war.
But now, whenever this moment is, Caesar cares only for Brutus. Brutus will see him, as Caesar sees all; Brutus will hear his future, because Caesar will tell him. They will meet again, after every death. And when Brutus asks him what he is, god or angel or devil, Caesar will not know the answer.