Love Through The Ages

One

"Oh, how wrong we were to think immortality meant never dying" ―Gerard Way

Immortality is but of two things, in my opinion. Cruel and beautiful. It is cruel as well as beautiful because over the past millennium I have lived countless lives in countless places with countless people.

I was born in the early years of the 1630's to a mother who died in childbirth and a father who was the lord of one of the many clans who took it upon themselves to defend the land. The Wars of Three Kingdoms had begun when I was just six years old but little did any of the English, Scottish or Irish people know that Britain had hired soldiers of their own to defend the crown. In reality these soldiers—the Legion, they called themselves—were a good idea but that was before the crown realized that they weren't defending the country but more or less stealing from it. The Legion was a deep-rooted legend, of sorts, of men who never lost a battle because they were believed to be immoral and had merely retreated back to their home lands when the English had scared them off centuries before. The king, Charles I advised to hire men that were supposed to be great mercenaries that would only greatly advance their efforts in the war but the poor king did not dare to know that the Legion were the ones lying in wait to attack again when the English crown couldn't stop them.

When my father died upon the battlefield just after my eighth birthday, I was left an orphan with no one but myself to rely on for food, water, shelter and many other things because even though I was high in the rank of society I still had no money of my own. It took me almost two years of learning from the elders in my small community how to cook, clean, use the resources of the land to live along with how to run the household that I inherited overnight. By the time I was twelve I finally understood handling the everyday chores and life there in the community, dwindled down to mostly elderly too old for the soldiers to care about, single or widowed mothers and orphaned children.

I decided quite quickly that in such a big home, I had the room to take in the children who needed someone, anyone to look after and care for them. I was, at the time the oldest one of various children left alone in our small village, leaving me to feel as if I should watch over the younger ones who either lost fathers in the same way I did or mothers who were killed because they refused to be the Legion or even the British soldier's whores. I took in as many that would come to the family I never truly believed was meant to be so empty and cared for not only children but those who hated the Legion as much as I did. For the time being I was the mother, sister and caretaker to a little over a dozen other children until our village was finally overtaken by the Legion men in league with the British soldiers around that liked the cruelty they brought.

Being the oldest at just sixteen years of age by then, the centurion in charge of the attack on my home I used as an orphanage of sorts took pity on me when I did my best to defend the youngest boy in my little motley crew of orphans. I had quickly yelled at the older ones to run down into the cellars below the kitchen just as I heard the stamping charge of horses outside the manor waking us all in the night as they started banging on the doors. I hurried the children down the stairs to the main level of the house ignoring the flames of torches outside the windows stopping when I felt a hand latch on to my leg. I turned to see one of our youngest in my care and yelled at the others to go ahead the calm inside me turning to panic when the soldiers finally managed to charge inside. I gathered young Killian in my arms and tried to run in the direction of the kitchens but a strong grasp grabbed me causing me to almost drop the young boy only to catch him by the hand. I jerked free of the man's strong grasp hearing the soldiers laugh around us pushing Killian behind me against a wall to shield him with my body.

"You know, I had heard some very intriguing rumors about an orphaned girl taking in those in need of a home..." A deep voice said and my eyes followed it to a very tall man dressed in a Roman soldier's attire decorated with the medals of an Imperial Legate or what we call a general on his cloak's shoulder. "Are you that girl?"