31 Plays in 31 Days, #27 - "Make History"

[breakinglight11]

I'm clearly hitting my limited for this 31P31D thing. I was gangbusters for most of the month, but now I'm running out of complete scenes I feel prepared to write. This one's pretty awful. It's a theoretical future scene between Diana from Adonis and her second-in-command Callisto, once Callisto finds out that Diana back the rebellion.

Callisto became a larger character as the drafting of Adonis went on, a fierce young soldier about ten years younger than Diana who idolized her and never quite understood the extent of Diana's dissatisfaction with her current service. When Adonis ends, Callisto is off with the legions left beyond the Rubicon, unaware of what's going on back in Rome. When she finds out, she'll have to decide if she wants to follow her mistress against the empire she's served all her life, or turn against the general who's been her mentor as long as she can remember. But first they'll have to have a huge fight.

Make History
by Phoebe Roberts

DIANA, once a general of Rome, now a rebel leader
CALLISTO, once her second-in-command
~~~

CALLISTO: What have you done, Diana?

DIANA: Callisto--

CALLISTO: What have you done?

DIANA: Give me a chance to explain.

CALLISTO: Explain what? Your treachery?

DIANA: It isn't like that, Callisto.

CALLISTO: You killed the empress of Rome!

DIANA: I had no other choice.

CALLISTO: Why? Because-- because of that slave?

DIANA: She was going to destroy him. I could not let that happen.

CALLISTO: He was supposed to be a bedwarmer! A gladiator to die in the arena!

DIANA: No, he's-- Callisto, he's changed everything.

CALLISTO: What's happened to you, Diana? What has become of my sister in war?

DIANA: I am tired of being slave to this.

CALLISTO: How can you say that? We were-- we were working for the glory of Rome! We were building something!

DIANA: We were shoring up a crumbling edifice that was crushing us!

CALLISTO: We are soldiers! It was our duty!

DIANA: It was not our duty to bring glory on that madwoman. And yet that's all we did.

CALLISTO: No. We were what we were supposed to be!

DIANA: That is not the destiny I was meant for.

CALLISTO: What am I supposed to do? What do you want me to do?

DIANA: What you think is right.

CALLISTO: Everything I ever did was to serve Rome, and you. I was to be just like you. I don't know what it is you've become now!

DIANA: Something more than a slavering guard dog.

CALLISTO: Everything we ever did together-- does it mean nothing?

DIANA: Callisto, I want you beside me, still my strong right arm. There will always be a place for you there.

CALLISTO: How can I throw aside everything I've ever worked for?

DIANA: You can trade it for something more.

CALLISTO: Something more? You were going to make history.

DIANA: Don't you see, Callisto? We are facing down the greatest empire on the earth. If we can overcome a force that great... that's precisely what I'm going to do.