Title: Distance severed by our truth (Gannicus, Spartacus)
Rating: T
Notes: originally written for bloodandsandfic's first annual comment ficathon. Prompt: Spartacus and Gannicus, season 2, champions meet as Romans tremble.
Summary: He found they were not that different. Set in possible season 2.
OOOOO
Spartacus watched as most of the men gathered around the man who had appeared out of thin air, full of promise of blood for the cause.
His cause now.
The feeling still felt unfamiliar, as did that man. Could he trust him? He showed bravado and boldness, one needed nothing more than looking at him once, his eyes defying and his smile seducing; every woman had spared a look to him, even her.
"Mira." He called the woman who had stolen his last thought. A true friend who would give up her heart for him, and to whom he had only been able to pay with friendship.
Mira approached. "What do you make of the man?," he asked, jerking his head towards the newcomer.
Mira looked at him, slightly confused. "A free man who joined us to fight," she simply said. "I would say he should be welcomed and not doubted upon," she added. "Crixus and Oenomaus know him. Is that not enough proof of worth to you?"
There was no malice in her words, Spartacus knew. She was merely making a statement of fact, and still Spartacus held his doubts.
Mira studied the Thracian, who had become easy to read through hours spent on the same ground. She kneeled before him so his eyes leveled with hers. He was not convinced. "Then trust your instincts. Is he trustworthy, or not?" And with such words Mira stood and left to other tasks. Aurelia was waiting for her, some children needed to be tended.
What to make of him? He had never heard a word spoken on this man, once a gladiator, and now, as if some curse had been lifted, the name was in everyone's lips.
Gannicus.
And stories of blindfolded victories and of blood and sand, and rising a titan from a ring of fire were suddenly flooding every conversation around him. He was a legend, one silenced long before he set foot on that ludus.
Gannicus.
Could he be trusted?
There was only one way, one place where his instincts were never wrong. And so Spartacus sought the truth there, in a man he had always and would always respect.
And Oenomaus showed nothing but affection for him. A true friendship unfolded before Spartacus eyes, one that exceeded the bond shaped by the brotherhood.
Spartacus stood and walked to the east end of their camp, waiting for Agron to come with news of Glaber's advance, as memories of a past time he had not known surrounded him.
Perhaps the new man would ease the conflict starting to arise in Crixus, each day passing making him more nervous, Naevia absent and still not found. Glaber's intended beseech hampered his plans and took him far from the clear minded warrior he had proven to be when fueled with purpose.
"Spartacus!"
The man's voice took him out of his thoughts. Before him, Crixus and the one they called Gannicus.
The Celt approached him as Crixus left, exuding confidence and wearing that same smile he had seen upon his arrival. "They tell me you are the one to thank, or fear." He extended his arm with his hand open. "You fucking did it."
Spartacus took the gesture and nodded. "I did what had to be done," he said.
Then something happened. Some...Spartacus looked him in the eye. There was understanding, a much deeper knowledge of him that the Celt let show to anyone he had seen talk to. But understanding of what?
"They told me stories. Of you. Of what happened."
Ah.
Spartacus said nothing, and let the man speak.
"That house started to smell shit before you arrived to it, Thracian. But as to who started it..."
"I bear no concern for such thing," interrupted Spartacus. "It is but names. And all subjected us to their whims. I do not care who started it," he insisted. "But it must end."
Gannicus stood silent in reflection, and nodded. But his mind kept bringing him back to his thoughts, whatever they were, those rooted on the past.
"You were a free man. Why join us?"
"You may speak of justice, of something greater than you, or me, or any fucking man, woman or child on this mount. But it started somewhere; the seed was planted by someone. A name. A place. It doesn't matter. It is there, and it ignites the mind when you least expect it. It hurts inside, like a burning knife deep into your memory, so you do not forget." Gannicus paused. "I had my revenge, as you did. The man who ripped your heart out of your chest was the hand that granted me my vengeance, and today we join forces to fight the same enemy under the same banner, that of freedom."
"Freedom you gained years ago, if the stories are true," Spartacus insisted. "Why risk it?"
"The stories never lie," he said, a glimps of the cocky smile he had attached the face to appeared, only to fade away and replaced by a somber expression, hiding deeper feelings under layers of time and strain. "But freedom? I was never really free. A part of me died in that ludus, just like it happened to you." Gannicus rose his eyes and set them on the Thracian's. "I do not wish any slave to go through that suffering again."
The pain of a love lost.
They were not that different, the Celt and him.
Fin.