So my school drama department just finished our run of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, except with a twist: the story is set in a dystopian future, and Caesar and the other Roman senators have super powers.
It was way fun to do the show this way (we didn't change any lines, just cut some), and I got to play Decius, one of the conspirators who stabs Caesar and to whom we gave the power of mind-reading (we also left the characters open to either gender, since there's literally two women in that play, so Caesar and Cassius were girls. So I guess we did change lines 'cause we changed pronouns). The fate of this character, along with another character named Casca (an awkward and outcast senator, also a girl in our version), is left ambiguous. It's assumed Decius and Casca get mobbed with the other conspirators after Antony's funeral speech, but I didn't like that, so I wrote this one-shot of the two of them making it out of Rome alive. It was really fun to write (and I'm going to be spamming my cast members with links to it), so I hope you enjoy it!
(I also tried my darndest to write Decius's lines in Shakespearean iambic pentameter, so hopefully that works out well.)
Context: Julius Caesar, the great Roman senator on her way to being a tyrant, has just been killed by a conspiracy of five Roman senators. During the fight, she broke Decius's wrist and deeply bruised Casca's jaw. Antony, one of Caesar's greatest allies, comes to the senators and asks if he could speak at Caesar's funeral. Much to conspiracy leader Cassius's annoyance, Brutus agrees. Decius, who knows of Antony's secret power to control the minds of the common people, flees at the soonest opportunity.
Decius Brutus clutched at her arm, her face contorted in pain, as she hurried down the street. She wove through the masses of people that surged around her towards the Capitol. She could see their thoughts, floating around their heads like hazy smoke, all containing words like Caesar, mutiny, and murder. The owners of the thoughts were following the winds of rumor, flocking to the place Decius so urgently was fleeing.
Caesar was dead. Their enterprise had been fulfilled. But Decius felt none of the pride or joy she imagined she would. She felt only pain, pain and. . . fear. It was hard to admit herself, but with her wrist throbbing and useless—most likely broken—and her knowledge of Antony and his powers, she was afraid. Afraid of these very people among whom she walked. They could at any moment recognize her as one of Caesar's killers and mob her. Her uninjured hand gripped the dagger at her side. She would be powerless to stop them.
Which was why she must flee. Flee the city, before Antony could set the plebeians on her like hunting dogs.
She tried to force herself to act natural, tried to calm her legs into her usual stately walk. But it was to no avail. She was as jumpy as Casca! And just as useless, too, she thought with a grimace at her broken wrist.
"Decius!"
Decius whirled around, her heart pounding in her ears. Speak of the devil. Casca was running towards her, skirting around the plebeians, who hardly seemed to notice her.
Decius did not want to wait for Casca. She did not want to see any of the conspirators ever again. And yet some instinct told her that they might be safer together, no matter how useless Casca seemed. She had been the first one to attack Caesar.
"Decius," Casca said again when she caught up, the word breathless in her throat. Her hair was disheveled, her face displaying naked fear. A shiny purple bruise was beginning to form over her crooked jaw, courtesy of Caesar during the last fight of her life. Crazed thoughts darted around her head, some faster than Decius could read, all tinged with the red of pain and fear.
