(The Past)
The museum air was thick with the scent of polish and possibility.
Elena Lawson leaned over the exhibit, her dark ponytail brushing the laminated "DO NOT TOUCH" sign taped hastily to the glass. The bronze disk at the center of the case seemed to hum, a vibration only she could feel, running up her arm and curling into her ribs.
She shouldn't be here.
After-hours access was a perk few interns earned, but Elena had found the right blend of charm and pure, obsessive devotion to her research.
The object — catalogued as "Artifact #117" — was unremarkable at first glance. Circular. Etched with spirals and strange, looping inscriptions. Dug up in the ruins outside Rome only months ago.
A mystery.
An itch under her skin.
She wasn't thinking.
She wasn't breathing.
Her fingers slipped past the glass casing and brushed the cool metal.
The world tilted.
A crackling burst of energy knocked her backward into the pedestal, and with a sound like tearing paper, the museum disappeared.
---
Rome..
Heat.
Noise.
The stench of animals, sweat, and smoke filled her nostrils.
Elena stumbled to her knees, disoriented.
Around her rose towering stone columns, crumbling yet majestic, flanked by market stalls and bustling crowds in tunics and togas. Shouts in Latin echoed off the ancient walls, merchants waving ripe figs and bolts of rough cloth.
Her jeans, Converse sneakers, and fitted leather jacket marked her as something other — something wrong.
A few heads turned. A soldier narrowed his eyes.
Panic surged through her veins.
And then — him.
Marcus.
Standing at the edge of the forum, the setting sun slashing gold across his shoulders. His armor, dented and burnished, fit his powerful frame like a second skin. His face — rough-hewn, striking, marked by a deep scar trailing from brow to cheekbone — was locked in a hard scowl.
But his eyes.
His eyes softened when they found her.
He moved toward her with the fluid grace of a hunter.
"Stay down," he commanded, voice low and rough, in Latin that somehow lodged itself in her mind and translated into meaning.
The soldier shouting at her took a step closer.
Marcus was faster.
A blur of movement, a shove, and suddenly Elena was yanked into an alley choked with hanging laundry and dust.
"You are no citizen," Marcus said, appraising her strange garb with suspicion.
"You are no slave."
"You are no goddess."
He smirked at the last, something mischievous breaking through the suspicion.
Elena swallowed hard. "I'm... visiting."
"From where?"
She hesitated. "Far away."
He considered her. Then, with a tilt of his head and a shrug that rippled across his broad shoulders, he said, "You are under my protection."
As if it were that simple.
As if her life hadn't just cracked open and rewritten itself between one heartbeat and the next.
---
Days blurred into a dream.
Marcus hid her in a small, stone-walled dwelling near the arena — not luxurious, but safe. He taught her the rhythms of survival: how to barter without looking weak, how to walk with purpose, how to watch without being watched.
He laughed at her clumsy Latin, the way she crinkled her nose at the taste of spiced wine, the way she gasped every time he returned from the arena bloodied but grinning.
"You fear for me," he teased once, sprawled beside her on rough linens under the stars.
"I'm not used to... gladiators," she confessed.
He turned his head, profile carved against the moonlight. "I was not born a fighter."
"What were you?"
His voice grew soft. "A farmer's son. A brother. A dreamer."
She touched his calloused hand, feeling the tremble there, the buried boy who once dreamed of more than blood and sand.
"I see him," she whispered.
And she did.
Not just the warrior, but the man who carried kindness beneath his armor.
A man she could — no, was — falling in love with.
---
But time — relentless, merciless — pressed on.
The artifact resurfaced, rumors trickling through the market of a "cursed" disk found by the northern road.
Elena knew: it was her way home.
She told Marcus at sunset, the city a golden haze behind them.
"I can't stay," she whispered.
His jaw tightened. "Because of fear?"
"Because of time. I don't belong here, Marcus. I never did."
He stepped close, framing her face with his hands.
"You belong here. With me."
Her heart cracked at the certainty in his voice.
"I love you," she said, tears blurring his face into a smear of warmth.
"But I have to go."
He kissed her, fierce and desperate.
And when she activated the disk, the world tore itself apart again.
---
New York..
Cold, metallic air.
Blinding neon.
The overwhelming stench of exhaust and coffee and twenty million people rushing nowhere.
Elena stumbled back into her own time, the city swallowing her whole.
Days passed.
Weeks.
She buried herself in work, in lectures, in quiet moments staring out her window at the cityscape that now seemed foreign.
Until the night she heard shouting outside her apartment.
A man's voice — deep, rough, unmistakable.
Curious neighbors peeked out from their windows. Teenagers aimed their phones at the commotion.
And there he was.
Marcus.
Wearing battered armor, sword still sheathed at his hip, confusion and fury battling on his face.
She broke through the crowd with a cry. "Marcus!"
He turned, and relief broke across his face like sunrise.
---
Adjusting to modern life was... an adventure.
Marcus was a walking disaster in New York.
He punched a taxi cab that honked too loudly. ("It disrespected me.")
He tried to 'borrow' food from a supermarket because "the gods provide for those in need."
He nearly got arrested three times in the first week.
But he also marveled at elevators, calling them "magic cages," and sat in Times Square for an hour, jaw slack at the pulsing lights.
He learned how to use a microwave (eventually).
He developed an alarming addiction to hot dogs.
Elena laughed until her stomach hurt — and cried harder than she ever had when Marcus, overwhelmed by the noise and loneliness of the city, collapsed into her arms whispering, "Take me back. Take me home."
But there was no home to return to.
Only this.
Only them.
---
The real fracture came quietly.
In her tiny kitchen over burnt coffee, Marcus watched her fidget with her phone, half-listening to a podcast about deadlines and taxes and mundane things he couldn't fathom.
"You live by numbers and machines," he said finally, voice flat. "You have no time for living."
She looked up sharply.
"You don't understand," she said. "This is my life."
"And where am I in it?" he asked, pain flashing across his face.
The silence that followed was deafening.
He rose, muscles tense, and without another word, left the apartment.
---
Two days.
Two agonizing days.
Elena searched the city, haunted by the knowledge that Marcus was out there — lost, alone, a relic in a world that would chew him up and spit him out.
When she finally found him, he was in Central Park, crouched by a pond, watching the ducks paddle aimlessly.
He looked up as she approached.
"I thought..." he began, voice breaking. "I thought I had lost you."
She fell to her knees beside him. "You didn't."
Tears blurred her vision. She pressed her forehead to his.
"I was scared," she confessed. "Scared that love wasn't enough to bridge this chasm between us."
"And now?" His hands trembled as they framed her face again, just as they had in Rome.
"Now..." She smiled through the tears. "I know it's the only thing that can."
Marcus kissed her under the gray New York sky, the noise and chaos falling away until there was only them.
Only always.
Only love.
---
"Love isn't bound by eras or ruled by logic. It defies time, rewrites destiny, and dares the impossible — because when you fight In the name of love.. you never truly lose."