Title: Both Curse and Blessing

Fandom: Spartacus: Blood and Sand/Spatacus (Starz)

Pairing/Characters: Sura, Spartacus/Sura, Spartacus/Crixus

Rating/Category: PG-13/Slash/Het/Gen

Prompt/Summary: Written for Round 14 of the Small Fandom Fest on Livejournal. Prompt: Prophetic dreams where both a curse and a blessing for Sura. She'd always known her husband was destined for great and unfortunate things.

Spoilers: Spoilers for the entire series to be safe, but specifically S:BaS.

Notes/Warnings: I've recently been re-watching the series and got the idea for this story and it kinda wouldn't let me go. In the show Sura's prophetic dreams are downplayed, but in this AU she's more aware and able to connect to those dreams than in canon. This is the set-up to a longer, multi-chaptered Spartacus/Crixus fic I want to write… if I ever get around to writing it though, we'll see. :)
Also, as fair warning, this is my first foray into the Spartacus fandom and the first fanfic I have written in quite a while… so beware there may be questionable writing and a troublesome problem with modern-day speech in the Roman era.

Both Curse and Blessing

When Sura was a child her grandmother once told her that the women in her family were known for being touched by the Gods. Sometimes it skipped a generation, as seen by her mother lacking the gift of foresight, but their familial gift persevered through the generations… bestowing a somewhat cursed gift upon the daughters of her people. She would never be so well regarded as a true conduit of the Gods like the Oracle of Delphi, but Sura had a gift of prophetic dreams that allowed her to interpret the will of the Gods and the Fate of those around her.

It wasn't a gift that was always there as it had a mind of its own; choosing when, where and, most of all, who was the subject of her dreams. Sura had praised it in the past when the Getae would have attacked and killed all her people, providing them with the much needed time to prepare for the attack. Other times, she cursed it for being unbearably silent when Roman soldiers raped and killed her mother when she was but a child.

The fact that her dreams led her to the man that would one day be known as the infamous Spartacus could be nothing less than a gift… no matter the outcome or the pain it would cause her in the end.

When she first met him he was a man of little responsibility with an aim to sleep his way through the village; lying with every willing woman who caught his eye. Sura held no qualms about this, she knew the man he was… and she saw glimpses of the man he would one day become. She told him so, stating it very plainly, and then she told him that whether he knew it or not he would love no other woman besides her. She left silent the fact that he would love no other man besides Crixus as well… it was a glimpse into his future that he wasn't ready for and that Sura would hold off on, treasuring her time with him for as long as she could. She would share her husband with Crixus in her dreams and then for a year they would be separated, only Crixus his refuge, until the time when the Gods saw fit to remove her from this mortal coil.

Before she met the man who would one day become her husband, she dreamed many times of the life they would have together. Of the nights spent learning each others' bodies, of warm summer days spent basking beneath the sun together, of chilling winter nights wrapped in each others' arms… of the painful time when they would be parted and the brief moment of their reunion upon her death at the hands of one commanded by Lentulus Batiatus.

Later on, her most cherished and most difficult dreams were the dreams of the man who would heal her husband's heart and give him the strength to lead a slave rebellion that shook the very foundation of Rome herself. They were both a curse and a balm to her soul; they spoke of a time when her husband would be tested immeasurably by the Gods, when they both would, and they spoke of a time when Sura was no more and her husband, by then only known as Spartacus, would love another.

Her first true dream of the only other person who would ever hold her husband's heart came on the night of her wedding as she lay sleeping beside her new husband. Before, she had only seen glimpses and felt a sliver of the promise of Crixus, but that night she awoke from the dream with tears in her eyes and a cry on her lips, her husband waking to pull her into his arms and shush her nightmares away. She cried silent tears, unable to speak, unable to tell the man she loved of the fate that awaited them all. She cried tears of sorrow for the fate that awaited her, for the pain and guilt her husband would carry after she was gone… but she also cried tears of joy in knowing that Crixus would be a worthy man to guard her husband's heart and stand beside him, protecting him through to the bitter end.

Crixus was a man of many layers; a hard, cold and boastful exterior presented… but beneath, he was a man of deep conviction and an endless well of love for those he held dear. Sura saw countless visions of him in his life in Gaulia, of his efforts to find a place for himself amid the honor of his brothers in the arena. She witnessed his slow rise to glory as the Undefeated Gaul… and she watched the slow burn of a growing love as Crixus and her husband first butted heads against each other, their strong personalities waging an unknown war of love together. Then, she saw as they banded together as brothers for strength and then as lovers, taking the reins of their destinies and forging the fate that they wished for together.

Sura wished she could speak of what was to come, of the troubles and the joy, of the pain and the pleasure, of the death and the life that they would all three face… both alone and together. How was she to speak it though? How was she to tell him that long after her death her husband would live on, loving another and making a life for himself amid the ashes of the old. How was she to tell him that the two strong men would work together, forging a destiny that would be spoken of in whispers and awed praise for generations long after their bodies had withered away to dust? That the name he took up as his own in pain and then in defiance of those who enslaved him would live on, known as the name of the man who defied the Roman Republic and made them tremble before his name?

However much she wanted to let him know, to share the triumphs and the pain to come, she couldn't… it was too much. Too painful, too heavy a burden for the man she loved to bear into the future. So she kept her lips sealed and treasured the last few moments of eternity that had together… knowing that when she was gone he would have the long of another, a strong man who would keep her husband standing strong after she was gone, who would love him with every fiber of his being just as Sura did. Though it pained her to know that soon she would be gone from this world, ripped away from her husband by a petty man who wouldn't allow himself to be slightly, that Crixus would be there to take up her place and guard her husband's heart, body and soul in this life and the next.