She’d brought with her another journal from the cache, a spot we had discovered after a delivery had found its way to us a few months after we’d fled Rome. It contained all the gear we’d brought with us from the future with a brief note. All it said was, “G amp; M, Amici”.
“G amp; M, Friends”.
It was from our Praetorian friends Gaius and Marcus. Of all the people we could trust in our new lives, they were amongst the foremost, and it must have been a pain in the ass for them to arrange for the delivery of our supplies. Those containers were damn heavy.
As for our supplies, we didn’t have much left. Spare ammunition, a few extra rifles, replacement parts, survival gear and clothing. We only had a few dozen MREs left, and had been force to relegate them to survival food a year ago. Besides our weapons, we were living pretty much like every other ancient person.
“What?” Helena repeated insistently as she stirred her dinner.
“Nothing,” I told her, a smile still on my face. “I just can’t get over how beautiful you look tonight.”
She kicked me in the shin beneath the table and I felt a spark of pain shoot up my leg. Despite her beauty, she had a fiery and violent temper. I’d lost count of how many times she’d punched, poked, kicked, or prodded me over the years. Her temper stemmed from a repressive father and an entire life before joining the Pope’s military trapped in a prearranged engagement. The relationship had been everything but loving or intimate, but before they could wed, her fiancé had died in a car accident, and she had been free of it just before I met her. We had quickly connected, sharing annoying fathers and sad love lives, and it hadn’t taken long before I’d learned just how volatile she was, and I loved her for it.
“Sorry,” I said, rubbing my shin. “It’s just that I want to take you home and have my way with you.”
She pointed her spoon at me accusingly, an annoyed expression on her face. “You haven’t said anything like that to me in months, so don’t think I’m going to be impressed now.”
I frowned. Relationships were hard, especially when forced to live the way we had. We weren’t the crazily intimate couple we had been after the first few years. The love and affection was still there, just buried beneath years of survival, pain, and a sense of loss at our predicament. We had nothing permanent to latch onto, nothing for us to call our own. All we had was each other, and over time, even that sentiment grew flimsy. Lately, things had grown worse, but I figured it was just a phase.
Probably.
I ignored her flippancy and tried to push away the annoyance I felt at it. “Since you seem to be done gluttonizing yourself, I think it’s time I asked whether you brought everything we need or not?”
She looked down at her bowl, perhaps noticing for the first time that she’d been scraping away at nothing but wood for the past twenty seconds. Wiping her mouth on a sleeve, she pushed it away. It was quickly swiped up by a passing barmaid who smiled at me. I gave her a wink along with a smile full of teeth, only to receive an ice cold stare from Helena in return.
“Yes,” she replied sourly, holding up one of the three large bags she’d brought with her. “Everything on the list is here, plus a few things I added at the last moment. Plenty of ammo for each of us, some C4, NVGs, a few MREs, don’t worry, no beef patties…”
“Thanks,” I interrupted. For some reason the beef patties had never sat well with me.
She ignored my interruption. “…Santino’s UAV, our ghilli suits, a grappling hook with rope, tranquilizer darts, your wetsuit and Santino’s, along with your breathing apparatuses, some soap and shampoo for me, three bedrolls, and… two tents.” She described the last item with a bit of disdain, which caused me to wince. Normally, we shared a tent with no problem, and have a good time of it, but lately the cramped space had gotten awkward.
I broke eye contact with her for a moment, distractedly flaking away some decaying meat that had fused itself with the table. “Did you get in contact with our sleeper?”
“Yes,” she said. “His answer was, ‘I’ll think about it.’”
I nodded. No surprise there.
All the vital details concluded, we found ourselves with little else to talk about. I spread my hands out along the edge of the table and gave her an awkward smile. Her expression was blank as she stared deadpanned in my direction, clearly not interested in further conversation. I put my hands in my lap and tried to think of something to say, but just before the silence grew unbearable, a third figure sat down at the table.
I glanced over to see Santino plop himself down between us, apparently finished womanizing his waitress. I looked at his scarred and roguish face, the result of a grenade accident during basic that left him with a series of scars along his left cheek and brow, scars that women always found dashing. He sported a short, but scruffy beard these days, a practice he’d picked up during his days in Delta, and had grown out his hair to just before his shoulders, just as I had — only his was curly, whereas mine was more wavy. His most enduring physical quality, however, was his shit eating grin that spread from ear to ear, and never seemed to leave his face. Even in the heat of battle, the man’s smile rarely faded.
He leaned his chair back and crossed his feet up on the table, interlocking his hands atop his stomach. He looked at me, then to Helena, back to me and then her again, before staring directly between us.
“Boy… you could cut the tension between you two with a spork.” He shifted his look towards each of us in turn again, hoping for a laugh, before settling between us with a sigh. “I miss sporks.”
Both Helena and I looked at him with mixed looks of pity and annoyance. I’d long ago determined Santino would always be Santino. Even if the world flipped over on its axis, he would never change. It was a personality quirk I had gotten a kick out of since I’d known him but one that had grown slowly on Helena.
I heard a commotion outside and looked over Helena’s shoulder at the door. I saw agitated men outside the windows tying up their horses.
“Looks like it’s time for you to go,” Santino informed Helena.
She looked back at us, her eyes lingering on mine just slightly before nodding and getting to her feet. She stood,but before she could straighten completely, she suddenly doubled over, one hand reaching for the table to steady herself, the other to her abdomen, her face cringing in pain.
“Are you all right?” Santino asked, rising to help.
She held out the arm she had used to steady herself before answering. “I’m fine.”
Grabbing one of our bags and pulling her long traveler cloak’s hood over her head, she quickly transformed from the beautiful but disheveled woman I’d known for years, to yet another random female denizen of the town. She turned quickly and left.
Ever since Helena had been at death’s door all those years ago, she’d been experiencing an odd, intermittent pain in her abdomen. It was probably nothing serious, just some side effect from the extensive procedure needed to save her life. Even so, I’ve seen her in some of our most tender moments cry out for no apparent reason, only to collapse in pain, her teeth grinding against themselves. It was because of moments like those that I felt her pain as well. I should have been there to protect her when it happened like I promised her I would, but I hadn’t, and in the end, she’d paid for it, and the only person I blamed was myself.
“What’s wrong with you two, anyway?” Santino asked as he sat back down, watching Helena open the door and leave.