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In death, Antony is unimpressive. Even dressed in armor and crowned with golden laurel, cheeks rouged and paraded through the forum as one would a hero, he is still a corpse. And she still loves him.
She hates herself for it, of course. She has both her pride and her dignity to consider. She is the first lady of Rome, sharp-faced trollop of a daughter-in-law or no. She always thought that Octavian took after his father, and yet here he sits, first citizen, having killed his sister's husband, her lover, her Antony. Under different circumstances, she would be proud. Jubilant, even. But, instead, she is watching as Antony's decaying flesh is rolled through the forum like some barbarian chieftain with his Egyptian slut, resolutely keeping her face impassive when all she wants to do is scream.
No, in death he looks rather pitiful, she decides. Nothing at all like the boorish, stupidly handsome and charming man she met all those years ago. She had been practically a girl then, recently widowed with two small children. But then he was no older, full of a soldier's bravado and made merry with wine. And when they had fallen into bed together she remembers laughing as he panted into her neck, caught up in the joy of such an enthusiastic partner, and how it made him thrust all the harder until her laughs became screams.
And then she met the man behind the smiles and the pretty words. She never understood how a man so vulgar and low could be so successful in the military; under her esteemed uncle, no less. She spent nearly every day railing against him to anyone who would listen, and yet nearly every evening he would show up at her door unannounced, flashing his smile and saying, "Something smells delicious. Though not half as delicious as you look." Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. But every morning that she woke up to him in her bed she would swear that it was the last. And as she swore he would stretch leisurely, dress, smile, and leave whistling. It was infuriating, the cheek of it, but eventually she would always stand aside and allow him to enter the villa, her bed, her life.
As the years passed and he kept showing up at her door she became less indulgent and more flattered. Of all the women in Rome that he could have—did have, she reminds herself, she was never under the illusion that he was faithful, just as she continued to take lovers—it was her doorstep that he chose to return to. It didn't hurt, of course, that he was a man both strong and powerful. She was—is, and that stings all the more—a woman alone in a harsh world with a family to take care of. With the right hand of Caesar warming her bed she could sleep a bit easier knowing that, if needed, she could manipulate into standing behind her.
Falling in love was an unfortunate, though most likely inevitable, consequence.
It only took her eight years of his absence and several months of getting reacquainted for her to come to terms with this. The gods, she's come to realize, are not without a sense of irony. For she soon realized that Antony did not harbor the same feelings for her. Or, rather, that he loved her uncle more than she. In many ways that was worse. For it would have been easy to pretend that he simply wasn't capable of love, what with the number of whores that he cavorted with on a regular basis. And yet he cleaved to Caesar like a tortoise to its shell, loyal to the last and beyond even that.
And so she began to hate Antony as much as she loved him. The two can be so similar. She should know, for she learned to see love in the hate her children so poorly concealed in their eyes. A hate that she knows she directs at Octavian now, that she is coming to understand more with each day that he triumphs by exploiting the people closest to him. But she continued to allow Antony in her bed, taking what happiness she could in such uncertain times. He still spoke and smiled so prettily that she could pretend that there wasn't a coldness in his eyes when he looked at her. She knew he wouldn't have married her. But the illusion, and the thought of what their combined influences could have wrought, was far too tempting.
She sighs. She endured much as a result of her love for Antony. She endured watching her son abandon her because she sided with Antony instead of his foolhardiness. She endured being used as a pawn in Octavian's endless political games. She endured watching Antony, the one man she wanted—there were endless men she could marry, but wanting was a luxury she was fortunate to possess—, marry her daughter instead. And, at the last, she endured betrayal and humiliation. Now she must help raise his children by another woman in a sick and twisted form of charity that only her son could conjure. She must watch them grow into his eyes and his nose and do her level best not to try to cut his features out of their faces.
The cart continues past the dais and Antony and Cleopatra's bodies trundle out of sight as the crowds cheer and throw flower petals, exalting Octavian and his victory over the barbarian queen and her Roman slave. She blinks and it's gone, turned a corner, and she takes the first deep breath of that day. The rest of the parade is merely a blur, speeches and music all blending together into a maddening cacophony.
Later that night, the party at Octavian's villa is beautiful but appropriate. The food is not too extravagant, the guests are not too merry. Livia looks smug, but only until she catches sight of her. Then her features darken into a mask the Furies would envy.
She is perfectly happy to sit and allow her son's sycophants to come and speak to her, acting the queen that she will never be. At least, until it is her son who approaches.
"I am so very glad you are here, Mother. Octavia said that you were unwell this morning." The way he lifts his chin and half smiles betrays every kind word dropping from his lips. It takes all of her hard-learned politesse not to sneer.
"Well, you know how these things are, coming and going unexpectedly," she says airily. "I'm just so very glad that I could be here to celebrate your great victory."
His eyes harden but his voice remains light. "It would have looked very ill had you not come out of," he pauses and blinks several times, looking for the appropriate word, "sentimentality."
She scoffs. "For Antony? Don't be silly, boy. He's dead and we shall leave it at that. I'm here to celebrate your successful killing of a great deal of Romans."
His eyebrows draw together, but out of confusion more than anger. "I'm glad. I was under the impression that you were in love with Antony. It pleases me that his death does not burden you with grief."
"No more than he did in life," she smiles, realizing, not for the first time, that she is the one who taught her son to lie.
"I will leave you then. I will summon some men to escort you when it is time for you to go home."
"Of course."
She is a prisoner of the two men that she loves most. Her son provides her with a gilded cage while Antony haunts her thoughts and dreams. She will likely not be free of either of them until her death. But she is Atia of the Julii. She will endure. And she will make them rue their treatment of her, in this life and the next.