It’s done. Marky says he knows why you did it, and that bad things have to happen sometimes for the greater good. He’s very smart, has a real nice way of talking good. “Everyone will understand why,” he says, his reassuring hand resting on your shoulder. “Just let me make this one speech.”

###

You all met on the dark Senate floor after hours. The Big Man’s gone too far. He’s your friend, but he upset your other Senator friends, Cassie and Lukey, which is bad, right?

“He’s an ass-pie-ring tie-rant!” Cassie fumed, his face hidden by a silk hood. Cassie’s too smart to be understood, more so when he’s mad.

“He wants to take away our powers as Senators,” Lukey whispered to you from beneath his hood. “No more votes.” Lukey’s nice, he always helps you understand.

You like the votes, cheering, booing, raising hands. Just like on the sports fields. You don’t want them gone.

“The people of Rome won’t stand for it. We have letters pro-claiming their support,” Cassie continued. He passed them round. They looked like letters, all right. Words, all squiggly. They looked like how Cassie writes.

“A vote, then. All in favour, for Rome?” Lukey asked.

“Aye, for Rome!” you all shouted. You felt a hard knot in your chest, but you had to do it. For Rome.

###

When you got to the Senate, eyes scratchy from the sleepless night, you saw the Big Man, surrounded. You saw Cassie hold a paper while shouting, and the rest of the angry circle strike. Your knife hung heavy in your robes. Every time the Senators stabbed, the blades slid away. Joke knives. You didn’t know why.

“Not you as well, Brutus?” the Big Man sighed. “I shoulda listened to her. This is shaping up to be a really shit day.”

Your knife was real. It did the job.

###

You don’t leave him. Cassie says this is important, so you don’t look like de-link-wents, but you can’t anyway. It felt like you’d been stabbed, too. You wanted to cry, but tears wouldn’t come. You became aware of citizens stood around you.

“I loved him,” you said, kneeling at his side, more to yourself than anyone else. “But I love Rome more.”

###

So you’re here, the Big Man’s funeral, mourning your sad duty of ridding Rome of her tie-rant, Marky saying a few pretty words.

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears,” Marky starts. Nobody gives him their ear, but he carries on anyway. “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” He goes on to say a lot of nice things about the Big Man and about your honour, real prettily. A small tear squeezes out your eye. The crowd mumbles agreement. Marky says he won’t steal their hearts, maybe because he couldn’t even get a single ear out of them. He’s talking faster now, longer words, the crowd murmuring louder. Marky’s voice is getting more excited, more angry.

“Every wound of Caesar should move the stones of Rome to rise and mutiny!” he cries.

Angry cheers chorus around you.

Uh oh. This doesn’t look good.