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From the dark waiting room, Julius can feel everything. The hot touch of the sun, the scream of the crowd, the small tremble of the ground, and the hardness of the sand, the smell of sweat and blood. In few minutes, he’ll be out there, in the chaos. So he sits down here, eyes closed, try to relax and convey as his energies towards himself.
Every battle is to death, and he has to give his best to every battle.
“It’s time,” a voice calls behind him.
He’s his lanista, his tone is rushed and dry, between them there’s just a business relationship. Or, like the lanista doesn’t miss to remark, he owns Julius. He bought him the day Julius came to him, begged him to make him a gladiator, and the lanista accepted with a smirk on his face, and with in his hands the few sesterzi that Julius’ life was worthy.
Julius waits two second more before opening his eyes.
“I’m here.”
With his sword in his hand, and the shield in the other, and the short, not very useful armor he’s wearing, he stands up, and follows the lanista outside the room. As they walk in the stone hallway behind the arena, the voices of the crowd become clearer, and the adrenaline of the battle increase.
“Who am I facing today?” he asks.
“It’s a very important day for Rome today,” the lanista begins, “so the magister asked us lanistae to bring out the best we have. You’re going to face the Champion.”
Julius’ eyes widen. “No…”
For everyone, the Champion is just the best living gladiator. He beat beasts and men alike, with very few wounds, and in basically no time. He’s gorgeous as a god, tall and broad, pure white hair, and everyone is rooting for him, even if he’s just a slave, a rebel from Spain that a unknown roman general brought back after defeating the rebellion. But there, in the arena, he’s the king, the Champion.
But for Julius, he is Stazious, the man that saved him when he’s just a little kid whose father died and left him basically nothing. He’s the man who taught him to fight, to survive, and to love. He’s the man that hold his hand at night, and kissed him on the morning. The man that Julius has searched to meet desperately after the war, at the point to give himself to a lanista.
It’s the man that Julius loves, but if he goes against him in the arena, he will have to kill him, or let him be killed by him.
“No, I’m not doing it.”
Without any warning, the lanista grabs him by the back of his neck and he presses against the nearest stone wall.
“You’re going there, and you’re going to put up a show, understand?” he says, with a dangerously voice. “You’re mine, which means you have no right to think. Now go.”
With a sigh, Julius nods slowly, and slowly walks towards the door that let him in the arena, with his naked food that feel the hot sand below them. For a second, the sun and the loudly crowd blind and deafen him, at the point he stands here, stupidly.
Then, after a couple of blinking to avoid the tears to flow, Julius adapts at the atmosphere and can finally see his opponent. Stazio hasn’t really chance from the last time he saw him: broader, sure, with more muscles and more scars, but the kind face and the grey eyes are the same. He’s hurt, blood drips towards a scar upon his nose, and he’s sweating and he’s dirty with the sand, sign that this isn’t his first fight of the day.
There is crudely in making a gladiator fight for more than one time at day, but that’s what happens when you’re the best and the crowd wants you.
Stazio recognizes him immediately, eyes wide from the surprise, but there isn’t time for tearing reunion, the referee is already there, pushing Julius towards his opponent. Stazio’s grip on his trident tightens, and in a second he’s against Julius, and only his fast reflex with the shield avoids a direct it.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was looking for you.”
Another hit, another shield. Stazio fights with the feral fear of a beast, Julius can recognize it in his eyes. And, Julius realizes, he has a broken arm, yet he moves like he doesn’t hurt at all.
“You must fight.”
“I’m not fighting you. I don’t want to kill you.”
“You must, if you want survive.” Stazio finally manages to destroy Julius’ shield, so Julius can defend himself with only his sword. “If I defeat you, you’ll die, but if you fight well, maybe you have a hope for them to have mercy.”
“They don’t have mercy,” Julius replies, “and I prefer you to kill me that fighting you.”
“You’re an idiot, and you’ll die today.”
But Julius know it isn’t true, that even if Stazio’s hits seems hard and dangerous, he’s still missing the vital point, and all his actions, all his harsh words, are only for pushing Julius to fight more, to kill him, to end his misery. In the end, adrenaline gets the better of Julius, and he starts to respond better to Stazio’s fight, until the tiredness gets the better of him. Julius cuts the trident in half and then sinks his foot in Stazio’s chest, keeping him down.
He’s scared, but there’s hope in his heart. Stazio is the crowd’s champion, they love him. They must saved him. He moves away so Stazio can kneel down, asking for the mission, to be spared even if he lost, because he fought well.
But apparently, they hate that their champion lost, and they screams for revenge.
“Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.”
Stazio smiles softly. “Do it, Julius. Please… They’ll kill you too otherwise.”
“Then so it be,” Julius replies, and he throws his sword away for him.
***
Keith wakes up sweating. He pants hard, in his mind still the vision of the blood, the lances that perforate Shiro’s naked body as Keith screams for him to be spared, and the blood that sprinkles around, like it’s just water and not the life of a men… With a sighs, he stands up.
The first time he saw vision of his past life, he was in the Quantum Abyssum. They weren’t memory or dreams, just scenes that played in fronto of him and Krolia, with Krolia that explained him about the Galra legends about reincarnation, while Keith tried to remember what he studied at school about ancient Rome, something so distant from his life that he found strange he supposed to have lived another life there.
But then it hit so close to home – Shiro’s captivity, Keith’s loss of everything, the fights they faced – and when Keith was forced to fight Shiro again at the clone facility, well, the memories returns in full glory, and Keith has a little problem to elaborate them all, and they end up returning to torment his sleep.
There’s little he can do about it, just hoping they would fade away once, like normal memories do.
He already know it won’t happen, because they’re about Shiro, and Keith is sure he hasn’t forgot anything about him, ever. At least, for now they’re still both alive.
The room inside the Black Lion is dark and silent. Krolia sleeps in a corner, and the wolf his curled at his feet. Shiro’s bed is empty, and he is nowhere to be seen. Maybe he went to the bathroom, Keith thinks, and lays down again, waiting for the familiar steps.
When they don’t arrive, Keith gets off the bed, put on his red jacket that was saved from the castle’s destruction, his boots, and walks around, being careful to not waking up Krolia. He climbs up and reaches the cockpit. The lions are standing, but in the space, so they’re basically floating in space (Lance is suppose to be on guard, between all of them).
Shiro sits down in the pilot chair, his back leans peacefully on the backseat, and he looks peacefully out of the windows, at the blue and purple landscape outside, with the far starts that brightest clear as it’s day. He hears Keith’s arrival, and he turns his head a little.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” Keith gives him a little smile. “Can’t you sleep?”
He nods. “My right arm hurt.” And at Keith’s confused look, he adds, “it’s ghost pain. My body is convinced that I still have my arm, and perceive the fact I don’t really with pain. As in the moment it was cut off.”
Keith is the one that cut that arm off.
“I’m so sorry.”
“It was not your fault, that arm was a parasite.” He says that with resignation, almost like he isn’t talking about himself. “And at least, this time you did it. You didn’t throw stupidly your life away for me.”
There’s a moment where Keith doesn’t really understand what he’s referring so, sure, he’s always take risk to save Shiro, and maybe he’s talking about the time of Naxela, but Shiro shouldn’t now about it, Matt swore to keep the secret with him, and then there was the incident at Lotor’s coronation, but again, it’s more throwing the mission away than his own life… Until he understands.
“You remember?”
“About our previous life? Yeah.” Shiro’s smiles softly. “The time I spend in the Astral Plane gave me the vision of a lot of things… I forgot most of them now that I’m human again, but this… I really think I wouldn’t forget it even if I’d like to.”
“You remember everything?” Keith asks, suddenly scared by it.
In his mind, the blood is suddenly substitute by imagines of harsh sex, Shiro’s rude hands on his skin, they way he likes kissing Shiro’s neck as he fucks him, imagines of naked, sweaty body doing more than Keith has ever imagine, has ever wanted to imagine.
“Yes, everything,” Shiro releases an amused laugh, “including the sex, which is the reason you’re red like your jacket in his moment.”
This probably ends up making Keith even more embarrassed. “It doesn’t have to mean nothing, you know,” he says immediately. “It was another life, another two people. Very different times.”
Shiro studies his face, his grey eyes scan everything of Keith. “Yeah. That’s true.”
There’s relief upon Keith over the fear of losing Shiro because of stupid dreams of a past life, yet there is also sadness and disappointment. The past Keith has something Keith wants with all his heart, he has Shiro’s love. In his mind, the memory of the first kiss plays again, the soft gaze Shiro looked at him, the way he places a hand on his cheeks and leans towards him, and he can even remember the taste of his lips. They’re a little humid, but warm, and they pressed hard against his, and Keith hasn’t manage to do anything but reciprocate the kiss, his hands that presses on Shiro’s back and caressed his hair – they weren’t white at that time yet – and he pants under his breath between a kiss and another.
Until Keith realizes that dreams and reality are melting together, and what he’s feeling are Shiro’s lips on his one in that moment, in that reality when they’re both standing on the Black Lion’s cockpit and not outside a roman camp.
Overwhelmed by the moment, Keith is frozen, unable to do anything but standing it, trying to impress in his mind everything, Shiro’s face so closed, his smell, the way his left hand is rubbing Keith’s arm and the taste of his lips.
“I want it to mean something,” Shiro says. “If you agree with this.”
“It’s a lifetime that I’m waiting for this,” Keith replies, as he brings Shiro nearer, his hand clawed his shoulder.
They have a second chance, and Keith isn’t going to waste it.
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