Darkness and Light

Darkness and Light
By Misha

Disclaimer- Not mine.
Author’s Notes- This was just a short fic that basically wrote itself. It is set immediately after For Her and features Delphina. Plus this lets me expand on my HC for Portia’s daughter. Thanks to boneandfur for helping me work out a few things with this one.
Rating- PG
Summary- Delphina receives news of her daughter’s death but also a vision of the future of their family.

Delphina sat up in her bed, overwhelmed by the sudden sensation of deep, profound loss. Something terrible had just occurred, she was sure of it.

She looked over at Victus, still asleep, feeling soothed by his nearness after all the years apart and knowing at least he was safe, but that feeling was still there, still calling to her. Victus was safe, but… What of her children? Who had both chosen fates separate from her?

She crept out of bed and moved to the small shrine she had set up. Isis would have the answers. She put out a call to the Goddess, awaiting her blessing and answers and it wasn’t long before she was rewarded.

Isis stood before her, beautiful and benevolent as always. She tiled her head, inviting Delphina to speak.

“Great mother I see answers,” Delphina began, “I feel like I have suffered a terrible loss and cannot name it.”

A look of sorrow masked Isis’s face. “If you look in your heart, I think you know the answer you seek, the cause of the great sorrow.”

“Portia.” Delphina breathed, immediately summoning a mental image of her daughter. She remembered the day they had parted and the feeling that she’d had then that she would never see her daughter alive again.

Isis nodded. “Yes. Your daughter has crossed to the other side, but there is more.”  Isis took Delphina’s hand, showing her a vision of a dwelling in Rome, of Portia on a bed, her brow drenched in sweat, exhaustion, her arms full of a tiny bundle.

“A baby…” Delphina breathed, watching as the baby was removed from Portia’s arms, seeing the heartbreak on her daughter’s face and then the vision shifted, leaving them back where they began. “Portia has a child?”

“Yes,” Isis confirmed, “a daughter. Fathered by Marc Antony, but taken and hidden away for the child’s protection.”

“Will she be safe?” Delphina asked, choosing to focus on the child instead of her parentage. That was no surprise, after all, she had sensed the bond between Antony and her daughter, had conceded that it was too powerful to be broken and yet, had feared, apparently rightfully so, that it could only end in tragedy.

Isis’s expression lightened. “Your daughter’s daughter will live and thrive, and through her, so will your bloodline. There will be sons and daughters, great warlords and kings and queens.”

She reached out to Delphina once more, sharing another vision. First of a young girl and then a beautiful woman, with a child in her arms. Then the image changed to other women and some men. Of battlefields and crowns. Visions of black and silver that turned into black and red. The images coming too fast for Delphina to make out details, bringing with them feelings of strength and courage and fierceness. The vision ended with the image of a woman with blood red hair and fierce, flashing eyes.

“Take comfort in the future,” Isis advised pulling Delphina back into the here and now. “It will not bring your daughter back, but part of her lives on, her strength and her courage will be constant in the coming generations.”

Delphina nodded, feeling some of the sorrow lessening. It did not vanish, she knew she would carry it with her for as long as she lived, but there was at least some comfort in what Isis had shown her.

“Thank you,” she told her Great Mother, bowing her head. “I am as always grateful for your wisdom and for your kindness.”

Isis merely nodded, her face once more a benevolent mask and Delphina felt the vision fade…

PDelphina opened her eyes, feeling the sorrow in her heart once more. Portia was gone. She turned back to her alter, intent on praying for her daughter, to try and ensure that Portia’s path to the afterlife was smoother than her life had been.

Later, once the sun rose, she would have to share the news with Victus. She knew he would grieve deeply, but that there would also be anger and she prepared to sooth it, to remind him that her daughter’s fate had not been theirs to decide.

She would not tell him about the child, it might comfort him, but it also might inspire him to do something foolish and Delphina knew without Isis having to tell her, that the child’s fate was not interwoven with theirs. Their bloodline would live and thrive through Portia’s daughter, but their family would never be together.

The knowledge was both blessing and curse, but also her burden to bear alone.

• End