He laughed and allowed her to steady him as he stood. His leather armor seemed to weigh as much as Rumpelstiltskin, the Friesian the horse master was now leading away. “If it’s any consolation, you have a healthy, just-been-stabbed glow.”
“A goddamn shame they did all the close-ups in earlier takes, then.” After sniffing her armpit, she wrinkled her nose and gave a resigned shrug. “Shit, I need a shower pronto. At least we’re done for the day.”
Carah generally didn’t require much response. He simply nodded.
“Just one more scene for me,” she continued. “Back at the studio, later this week. My sword-training montage. How about you?”
He sounded out the words in his head, checking for falsity.
Somehow, they were true. “No. This is it. They filmed my immortality scene before the Battle for the Living.”
This scene would be his own last memory of filming Gods of the Gates, but for the television audience, Aeneas’s ascension to full-god status would be their final glimpse of the character. Ambrosia and nectar and a healthy swallow from the river Lethe, rather than blood and filth and despair.
After said swallow, Aeneas would forget Dido and Lavinia both. Poor Anna too.
And after the final season aired, fans were going to slaughter R.J. and Ron—the series’s head writers, executive producers, and showrunners—online and at cons. For a multitude of reasons, since the abrupt reversal of Aeneas’s character arc was only one of many storytelling failures in the last episodes. Marcus couldn’t even estimate the number of pointed, aggrieved fix-it fics that would appear after the finale.
Hundreds, definitely. Maybe thousands.
He’d be writing at least one or two of them as Book! AeneasWouldNever, with Unapologetic Lavinia Stan’s help.
Squinting through the residual smoke, he eyed the swords on the ground. Bits of torn costume. A plastic water bottle hopefully hidden from the camera’s view, behind a dummy dressed as a dead member of Aeneas’s fleet.
Should he take something from the set as a memento? Did he even want to? And what on this filthy field could both encompass more than seven years working on the show and smell acceptable enough for display in his home?
Nothing. Nothing.
So after a final, heartfelt hug for Carah, he headed empty-handed toward his trailer. Only to be stopped by a palm clapped on his shoulder before he’d gone a dozen steps.
“Hold on, Marcus,” an all-too-familiar voice ordered.
When Marcus turned around, Ron beckoned several cameras closer—they were rolling again, somehow—and called back Carah and all the nearby crew.
Shit. In his exhaustion, Marcus had forgotten this little ceremony. In theory, a tribute to each main series actor at the end of their last day on set. In reality, a behind-the-scenes extra to tempt their audience to buy physical copies of the show or at least pay more to stream the special content.
Ron’s hand was still on his shoulder. Marcus didn’t shrug it off, but he tipped his face toward the ground for a moment. Gathered his thoughts and braced himself.
Before he could finally leave, he had yet another role to play. One he’d been perfecting for most of a decade, and one he’d wanted to leave behind with greater fervency as each of those years ticked past.
Marcus Caster-Rupp.
Friendly. Vain. Dim as that smoky battlefield surrounding them.
He was a well-groomed golden retriever, proud of the few tricks he’d miraculously learned.
“When we began looking for our Aeneas, we knew we had to find an athletic actor. Someone who could portray a leader of men and a lover of women. And above all else . . .” Ron lifted a hand and pinched Marcus’s cheek, lingeringly enough that he might have felt the flush of sudden rage. “A pretty face. We couldn’t have found prettier, not if we’d searched for another decade.”
The crew laughed.
Marcus’s stomach churned.
Another pinch, and he forced himself to grin smugly. To toss his hair and shed his armor so he could show the unseen audience the flex of his biceps, even as he moved out of Ron’s reach. Then the showrunner and the crew were urging Marcus to say something, to make a speech in honor of all his years on the series.
Impromptu speaking. Would this fucking day never fucking end?
The role, though, surrounded him like an embrace. Familiar. Comforting, if increasingly claustrophobic. In its confines, he knew what to do. What to say. Who to be.
“Five years ago . . .” He turned to Ron. “Wait. How many years have we been filming now?”
Their boss chuckled indulgently. “Seven.”
“Seven years ago, then.” Marcus gave an unembarrassed shrug, beaming toward the camera. “Seven years ago, we started filming, and I had no idea what was in store for all of us. I’m very grateful for this role, and for our audience. Since you needed”—he made himself say it—“a pretty face, I’m glad mine was the prettiest you saw. Not surprised, but glad.”
He arched an eyebrow, settling his fists on his hips in a heroic pose, and waited for more laughter. This time, directed and deliberately elicited by him.
That bit of control settled his stomach, if only a little.
“I’m also glad you found so many other pretty faces to act alongside.” He winked at Carah. “Not as pretty as mine, of course, but pretty enough.”
More smiles from the crew and an eye roll from Carah.
He could leave now. He knew it. This was all anyone outside his closest colleagues and crew members expected of him.
Still, he had to say one last thing, because this was his last day. This was the end of seven damn years of his life, years of endless hard work and challenges and accomplishments and the joy that came from doing that work, meeting those challenges, and finally, finally allowing himself to count those accomplishments as worthwhile and his.
He could now ride a horse like he’d been doing it his whole life.
The sword master said he was the best in the cast with a weapon in hand and had the fastest feet of any actor she’d ever met.
At long last, he’d learned to pronounce Latin with an ease his parents had both acknowledged and deemed a bitter irony.
Over his time on Gods of the Gates, he’d been nominated for five major acting awards. He’d never won, of course, but he had to believe—he did believe—that the nominations didn’t simply reward a pretty face, but also acknowledged skill. Emotional depth. The public might believe him an acting savant, able to ape intelligence despite having none of his own, but he knew the work he’d put into his craft and his career.
None of that would have been possible without the crew.
He angled away from the cameras to look at some of those people, and to obscure the change in his expression. “Finally, I want to thank everyone behind the scenes of our show. There are nearly a thousand of you, and I—I can’t—” The sincere words tangled his tongue, and he paused for a moment. “I can’t imagine how any series could have found a more dedicated, knowledgeable group. So to all the producers, stunt performers, location managers, dialect coaches, production designers, costume designers, hair and makeup artists, VFX and SFX people, and so many others: Thank you. I, um, owe you more than I can express.”
There. It was done. He’d managed to say it without stumbling too much.