Wrapping her arms securely about her waist, Naevia stands atop the highest step and reaches out with her gaze at the dark horizon beyond the temple walls. The sun set some time ago, and a storm brews in its wake far to the west. She thrills to see the forked lightning strike on the distant side of the woods, and wonders if the rain that falls to the earth far beyond her reach instead helps Crixus to wash away the day's dust.
If he lives, that is.
And she will never forgive herself if it is otherwise.
She meant what she said to Agron before parting as he took to Spartacus' fool's errand. Crixus is a fighter, a spirit of unbridled passion within the body of a ferocious god. This rebellion needs him, and even if they did not, he has made an unjust trade. His life is vibrant and spitting fire and full of so, so much love to give, and Naevia… well, she is already dead within. She awaits only news of her heart's passing to the afterlife before she acts to join him in body.
Naevia marches Nasir back into the makeshift valetudinaria for the fourth time that day, places a hand on either shoulder, and sits him back down.
"I will not run all over the temple in search of you another time," she warns him, the ghost of a smile on her lips. It's not like she's got anything else to occupy her time, and she's begun to go slightly mad from the tension.
There is a small blade Mira gifted to her before parting with the rest in the direction of Capua. "In case of attack," the Briton girl had said, but Naevia has kept it by her side at all moments since, sharpened to a point, with other thoughts of use in mind. It is the same dagger Mira thrust into her shaking hand in the midst of their desperate plight through the woods, the one she had kept an iron grip on, crouched next to a fading Nasir, prepared to defend the man until the end.
She had not immediately sensed a kindred spirit in him. Rather she had recognized a man who was not a gladiator, a man who had taught himself against personal nature to attack and defend, who embraced the fighting way out of cause and love. She had seen his soul and respected it, and she would not see him meet a dishonorable end.
Now, relatively safe within the confines of the temple, Naevia continues to look after him and tend to his wound.
"I do not ask you to do so," Nasir responds, batting her fussing hands away with an exhausted smile.
"And would you have me and Chadara carry you in from the temple walls again as we did last night?" she asks. Yet she knows his reasons for making attempt to climb the enclosure and cannot fault him for it. "You must allow yourself rest. It is well earned. And besides, Agron will have my head if he returns to find you so pale and weary."
In Nasir she now finds a brother, not as Pietros had been but as Diona had once been her sister. Not only do they share parallel history – a house slave from childhood, eventually rising to elevated position of body slave, yet in the process losing the affection of those who did not enjoy the same protections as they – they alone in the midst of this insurrection find common ground in impending heartbreak. Chadara awaits the return of Rhaskos, but as Nasir whispers as she passes by, their hearts could not tell tales more different.
"Four times the sun has set."
"I pray the next will see Agron to your arms."
"And Crixus to yours."
Naevia lowers her gaze to the ever-present hilt by her side, and says nothing for a long while.
"My brother awaited a lover once who never returned. I pray the gods plan for you a different fate than his."
She goes inside then to another sleepless night, for she dreams of nothing but hot breath and rough hands.
She wakes up screaming.
Whispers follow her as she makes her way about the temple, preparing poultices in the valetudinaria and carrying water across the yard.
"Naevia walks as though on her deathbed," they say. "Naevia will not be long for this world," they say. "Naevia is fading," they say. Only more often they call her 'the girl' or 'the whore' and once even 'the ghost' rather than by name, and she's beginning to suspect they are not saying anything at all.
She takes lunch to Lucius Caetus, who pats her hand in gratitude and nearly makes her jump out of her skin, and quickly changes Nasir's dressings while exchanging as few words as possible and doing her best to ignore the hurt expression upon his face. Then she descends to the catacombs beneath the temple, far away from the whispers and bustle, and screams again.
Her heart returns to her the following day, and she had not been expecting that.
Closing the distance between them at last is something out of a dream – not the blood-red, violent nightmares of late, but the kind where out of a sudden gentle wind materializes that golden thing you only just dared to let yourself think about as your eyes fluttered to a close.
Crixus is that golden thing, and always was. Even from the very first time he spoke to her, Naevia could tell, though it only crept up on her within the passing of days, and at the time he did not know how to speak to her.
"It is not easy task to sever a man's head. You must find the right angle."
and
"You are my heart. I will never doubt the beating of it again."
Words come unbidden to her mind, half-swallowed as though spoken through water. Though Naevia cannot help but feel they are the memories of another girl, when at long last she finally feels Crixus' arms wrapped around her and his warm, steady, so so familiar body nestled within her own, she remembers that this is her, Naevia, and so long as he is her own she cannot fade.
"Do I yet dream?" she asks, though she knows the answer. This resembles nothing of her dreams.
"If so, I would never have you wake."
Nor would she.
The euphoria of reunion lasts only so long until the illusion is shattered and Naevia realizes there is far less of her left than she previously thought. The overseer of the mines did not fuck her, but forced his cock between her lips and that was no better. The fourteen domini before had far longer with her than he, and then there was Ashur. Naevia has not lain with Crixus in four months, and in that time his touch has become tainted with deeds of which he is innocent.
Her heart returns to her, but her soul remains a grey and dead thing, lost somewhere in the shadow of a girl that no longer exists, and she is forgotten in a world of nightmare.
Spartacus declaims furiously the next morning that each and every member of the rebellion must learn to fight, but Naevia's attention is quickly lost to the brawl that breaks out between Crixus and Agron.
He blames the German for this last leg of life to which she has been consigned, but it is not Agron's fault and she would have them both know it. All those weeks of being carted from villa to villa and the months spent in the mines and these last days, the hope of reunion has been all that has kept her alive. If Crixus cannot reignite life within her, then there is nothing left to dream of. Placing blame will not help.
She brings him water and would have him know that the end must soon come, but he will not understand, and Naevia finds herself angry at his refusal to see the truth. The ever-observant eyes of a former body slave watch her storm across the yard.
When he finds her, she sitting in the small nook that she and Crixus have claimed as their own, the small blade bestowed upon her by Mira resting gently in both hands. Naevia does not yet know whether it shall have a purpose this day, but after exchanging words with Crixus there seemed nowhere else to go and nothing else to occupy her thoughts. Freed from the burden of her and the long shadow she casts, Crixus would never again bear the pain and confusion she has seen far too many time upon his face in the past two days.
Nasir makes no comment upon spotting the dagger, and instead settles himself with some effort upon the bed beside her.
"I suppose it's too much to hope for that Agron will ever hold Crixus in the esteem I hold you," he comments wryly. Naevia knows he is no fool and chooses not to humor him as such.
"I am unworthy of it," she snaps. "Why do you not seek out Chadara instead?"
"She is preoccupied with baser concerns. And she does not need me as you do."
A small breath of disbelief escapes her lips before she replies, "I need no one. Drowning those I love in my wake would only cause me pain."
"And if we do not give you the choice?"
"There is always a choice."
"And this is mine. I stand beside you, Naevia. Do you?"
"What?"
At long last she tears her eyes away from the dagger, her dark eyes gazing into his.
"You told me once your brother chose to end his life rather than continue living it without love. You have the choice to live alongside Crixus, to love him in the light of day, out of the shadows at last – make that choice. Make it for Pietros, and for all those who have not been so fortunate as you. We don't decide the circumstances we are given, but as you say, a choice can always be made as to how we act upon them."
Nasir takes her hand, and she tries to will away the flood of emotion that comes with that simple touch of friendship, that touch that was Diona, Pietros, Melitta, Crixus, and slipping away grapes and dates, and giggling with the good-natured whores brought to the gladiators, and the matching bracelets she and her brother wore and the smiles and messages they exchanged when they could, and everything before Melitta and Diona and Pietros were dead and Crixus was gone, and all that remained was the ghost of the girl that Nasir now tells her maybe just maybe she might reclaim some day by her own action.
Eventually Nasir must return to the yard for training. When Crixus enters their makeshift chamber that night, Naevia holds his sword instead, running her finger along the edge with new purpose.
"Bring your grip closer together," Crixus instructs, guiding her hands with his own, and she does not flinch away. Instead, a spark ignites within her chest.