He felt cold.
Not the kind that the wind brings.
The kind that lives inside you.
It started in his fingertips and moved inward, curling like smoke into his chest, into his spine.
It's freezing.
His hands still held the goblets—no, one goblet was already on the ground.
It rolled.
Just one now. Golden. Still full. Sticky. Sweet.
Suddenly someone was there.
Kneeling in front of him. That familiar scent of mint.
Shielding his eyes from the gruesome sight. Even though he couldn't see the face of the dead.
Only that, it was now drowning on a black liquid. Not moving.
Drusus' voice was echoing in his ears.. 'What was it that he said?' he tried to remember.
'To twelve years of divine promise?'.
It was like the voice echoing in his head was being spoken under the water.
Incoherent. Like a gurgle. But loud.
Suddenly, he heard a voice before he saw the face.
Coherent. Pulling him back.
He recognized the smell, the voice. The one he was waiting for.
Lepidus.
"Breathe in," Lepidus said. "Come on. Like this—breathe in. Good. Now out."
Caligula's lips parted, but no sound came out.
His knees shook.
The ground blurred. The torches blurred.
The sunset—was it still sunset? Or had the bright white light turned to ash?
Had it passed?
He thought he had looked up at the sunset, right? Or not?
Caligula felt himself blink. It's the torches..
Someone was holding his wrist. Warm fingers. Firm grip.
"That's it. That's good." Lepidus again.
Closer now. Still kneeling. He can feel Lepidus' hot breath on his face.
Prying his hands open to take the golden goblet.
Caligula didn't know where he was.
Not really. Not anymore.
Not again.
The cold… it was the same cold he felt that time back in the Vetera Castrum..
It was the same cold from the ship that carried him back to Rome with his father.
He vaguely remembers that. He can only remember the cold.
And the same cold from that time in the Circus Maximus.
His throat felt raw, though he hadn't spoken. His stomach churned.
The sweet-smelling wine still clung to his skin.
"We're leaving." A firm voice. It sounded so strong. Like it won't bend.
His feet moved. He didn't remember standing. Didn't remember walking.
It's like he's in a cloud.
"But—" Caligula started to protest. His voice felt like it was not his.
Throaty. Scratchy.
"It's okay." Lepidus' voice was quiet but certain. "You're okay. Just walk with me."
He looked once more at the grotesque sight.
"Don't look please.." Lepidus pleaded Caligula in a small voice. Begging him.
But he had already looked.
Black and white. Blurry. Drusus.
That final glance, frozen in his mind like a coin pressed into wax.
The black pool around his lain head.
The way his body slumped like a puppet with strings cut.
Caligula thinks that Drusus had looked at him before dying.
Like there was a mixture of accusations there. In his eyes. Before he falls down.
But he wouldn't know. He didn't see.
As if it were his fault.
As if it always was.
"It's okay," Lepidus repeated, over and over, like a prayer. "I've got you."
"Lepidus…" he managed to say.
His head looked up to Lepidus who was already guiding him. His body felt warm.
He asked, voice barely a sound. "Am I cursed?"
"No," came the reply. Instant. No hesitation. "You're not." Lepidus' hold on him tightened.
Caligula wanted to believe him. Wanted to bury his head in his arms like a child, like a boy should be allowed to.
His mother did not even check up on him.
He looked down. His hands were shaking.
"Hold my hand," Lepidus said gently. Finally guiding him out of the hortus, to the hallways.
Caligula did.
It felt so warm.
Then a worried voice broke the moment.
He whipped his head weakly to where it came from.
"His grandmother's guards are everywhere. We should go. They might suspect us."
A boy appeared a few steps away, a boy Caligula didn't know.
He can feel his eyes darting back and forth. From Lepidus to Caligula.
'Must be his friend...' He thought.
He felt embarrassed but lacked the strength to stand on his own, as Lepidus' friend watched Lepidus guide him like a babe to his arms. Legs are shaking.
The boy stared for a bit. Waiting for an answer.
Lepidus nodded, barely looking. "No. Not yet. Keep watching. Tell me if anyone comes. Please."
Then the boy faded into the shadows like a ghost. His usual demeanor is gone.
Then Lepidus leaned in closer. "You're safe with me. Understand?"
Caligula nodded.
A lie. But a kind one.
He was still trembling.
The wind had changed. The sounds were sharper now—distant cries, sandals against stone, orders being given....
And somewhere behind it all, the sea-roar of memory.
"Do you want to sit?" Lepidus asked.
"No."
He didn't want to stop walking.
Because if he stopped, the cold would catch him again.
And next time, it might not let go.
********************************
The palatium was quiet.
Too quiet.
Tiberius hated the silence.
It left room for thoughts to creep in—voices and thoughts he had spent a lifetime trying to drown beneath orders, wine, sex, strategy, war.
Still, they always returned.
He stood by the open window, robes loose, the flickering lucerna behind him casting long shadows over the walls of the imperial chamber.
Below, Rome murmured faintly in the dark, though the summer heat of the sun that had just departed for half an hour still warmed his skin.
Somewhere, a dog barked.
A wine cart rattled down the cobbles. Nothing unusual.
Not yet.
He had been thinking—not of gods, or senate decrees, or border disputes—but of Drusus.
His son.
His only son from his true marriage—before Augustus broke it. Trampled it.
And made him marry his daughter. Properly adopting him to the Imperial family.
He'd tried to dream of Drusus earlier, but even his dreams now came warped.
Drusus' face never fully formed—it blurred, then burned away.
Headstrong. Arrogant. Obnoxious.
Still, he was his blood. He was the future.
He had fought hard to name him heir. His heir.
Fought the Senate, fought Livia's cold manipulations, even fought reason—because Drusus made him feel like a man again.
'He is what I was before I broke.'
Tiberius rubbed his temples.
The conversation with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus—one of his consuls—still lingered like a sour taste in his mouth.
"It's too soon," the consul had said. "You place too much faith in a boy raised by wolves."
But Tiberius hadn't flinched.
"Rome might engage again in chaos. Agrippina will use this to her advantage!"
Aemilius had looked at him then—defiance in his eyes.
But he wanted to rest now. Should he just agree? Anything to be rid of this persistent headache that was Aemilius?
'I'll just say yes and give him what he wants for now.'
Drusus will still sit at the throne. Soon. It can't be changed. No matter what. Had to be.
Then—
A knock.
Late. Too late.
His heart twitched.
A slave entered, breathless, pale, bowing so low he nearly kissed the floor.
Behind him stood a messenger with a wax tablet. Already bowing.
Hands shook as he offered the tablet.
His tunic was soaked in sweat. His eyes refused to meet the emperor's.
Tiberius slowly took the tablet—a common writing medium.
Broke the seal. Read.
Then read it again.
Then again.
Drusus.
The word blurred.
Collapsed in Antonia's villa… poisoned… pronounced dead.
The candle beside him cracked, spitting wax.
Tiberius didn't move.
Not at first.
His hand remained clenched around the wax tablet. The edges dug into his skin, drawing blood.
Still he didn't move.
His face was stone. But his mind…
Not sickness, it said. Not a chance.
Intended.
His breath slowed. Eyes narrowed.
"Poisoned."
His voice was flat, dead.
The slave shivered.
He turned away from the window.
His shadow on the wall now looked like something else entirely. Hunched. Heavy.
Ancient.
Sejanus. He would summon Sejanus.
But not yet.
He stared at the tablet again. Not sadness—no tears came. Just a boiling, bitter ache.
"Who gains?" he said aloud. Not caring whether anyone heard.
His voice echoed back at him.
Agrippina? Perhaps. That mad vixen mother.
Antonia? The old coot, still playing power.
Or Livia, still weaving her quiet web?
Or—
Sejanus.
He exhaled sharply through his nose. That snake had long since learned to play both sides of a coin.
Tiberius dropped the tablet on the floor. Let it lie there like a corpse.
Then he called for his guards. His chamberlain. His wine.
He would not sleep tonight.
He had an empire to suspect.
********************************
Sejanus lit the candle himself.
The other guards had gone.
Dismissed with a flick of the hand and a glance that said 'I will not repeat myself.'
He sat alone in his office atop the Castra Praetoria—the barracks of the praetorian guards—located at the northeast of the Viminal Hill—away from the Palatine Hill where the palatium was situated.
Rome's storm cloud of armored silence.
The walls around him were quiet stone, but Sejanus felt them humming with anticipation.
He poured his wine.
It tasted sweeter than ever.
"Drusus the Younger was dead."
He whispered it aloud to himself—just once—then smiled.
The whore had done her job well.
Quiet hands. Lovely smile. Plump breasts. Obedient to the end.
She had dripped the poison into the wine when no one was looking, and like the dog he was, Drusus lapped it up, laughing like a god, drunk on himself.
Then he dropped like a sack of filth, in front of Rome's finest. Perfect.
Sejanus lifted his cup, toasting the air.
"Salus.." he said softly. "May it follow you like a shadow, Tiberius."
But even in victory, he was unsatisfied.
Only Drusus?
Only one dead?
She could have poisoned more.
Agrippina—that silver-throated bitch.
Antonia, with her cold eyes and calculating stillness.
The children—all of them, vipers waiting to hatch.
She had lacked vision. Or nerves. Too soft.
Sejanus shook his head and sighed through his teeth.
"She was too sentimental," he muttered. "I should've cut her throat before sending her."
Still, he allowed himself a moment of indulgence.
Drusus had been an obstacle, after Germanicus.
Tiberius's spoiled firstborn, heir by blood, by pride, by politics.
And now? Ashes in his throat.
Now Tiberius would unravel, and in that unraveling, Sejanus would find his opening.
The old man clung to order—and Sejanus had just torn a piece of it away.
Now Tiberius would loosen his hold, his paranoia a fertile ground for Sejanus to sow his influence.
He leaned back in his chair. The lamplight flickered on his bronze-stubbled jaw.
A scar near his temple twitched.
"What now, princeps?" he murmured.
He could already imagine the palatium in chaos.
Livia fleeing Rome, saying she needs some air.
Antonia barking orders. Agrippina laughing like a madwoman.
And Tiberius… oh, Tiberius.
Paranoid. Reeling. Alone.
He would suspect everyone.
And in that vortex of suspicion, Sejanus would rise as the only man he could still trust.
He always did.
Then—when the rest turned on each other, when the Senate bickered like old women, when Agrippina stood on the edge with her mad sons—then, and only then, would Sejanus strike again.
The Republic would not return. The gods were not watching.
Only Sejanus was.
********************************
INDEX:
Viminal Hill- one of the seven hills of Rome
princeps- First Citizen/Emperor
FUN FACT!
The Real Death of Drusus the Younger
Drusus Julius Caesar, the biological son of Emperor Tiberius, was rumored to have been poisoned—by none other than his own wife, Livilla, at the alleged urging of Sejanus, Tiberius' powerful Praetorian guard.
Ancient sources like Tacitus, Cassius Dio, and Suetonius all hint at this conspiracy, though historians still debate how much is true and how much is scandalous gossip preserved by anti-Sejanus or pro-Senate authors.
Drusus died in 23 AD. Sejanus would fall from power eight years later—violently.
I'm so excited for Sejanus' fall!
AN//
**What Sejanus meant by the line: "The Republic would not return."
*First, what is a Republic? Specifically, the Roman Republic?
-The Roman Republic (509–27 BC) was the system of government that existed before the rise of the emperors—before the Roman Empire. In other words, before my timeline (which is during the Empire), there was:
1. Ancient Rome / The Roman Republic (BC) – a system where power was shared, especially between the Senate, consuls, magistrates, and assemblies. No single ruler held absolute authority.
2. The Roman Empire (AD) – the era of emperors. Though institutions like the Senate and consul still existed, real power was centralized in the hands of the emperor.
*So what happened to the Republic?
-By the time of Augustus (Octavian), around 27 BC, the Republic had already been weakened by:
1. Brutal civil wars (Marius vs. Sulla, Caesar vs. Pompey, Octavian vs. Antony)
2. Ambitious generals rising above the law
3. Political violence and populist unrest
*Augustus claimed to "restore the Republic" — but in truth, he created a monarchy in disguise. He became the first emperor, calling himself Princeps ("First Citizen"), while holding all the real power.
*From that point on, the Republic existed in name only. Rome became an empire, ruled by emperors with near-total control.
*By Sejanus' time under Emperor Tiberius, the Republic was a ghost — just a veneer used to justify authoritarian rule.
**So when Sejanus says, "The Republic would not return," he's not mourning it. He's declaring it dead here. Mocking it.
He was so sure of himself.
Sejanus doesn't believe in the ideals of the Republic. His loyalty isn't to a system, or to an emperor. And although Sejanus really wanted to sit on the throne, what he really wanted beyond the throne was the power itself.
His loyalty is to power—pure, raw, personal power.
He doesn't want to restore the Republic.
He wants to rule over what remains of it.
CREDITS:
(Historical events referenced here are based on classical sources (Tacitus, Suetonius, Dio) and general academic understanding of Rome's transition from Republic to Empire.)