Disclaimer: I lack ownership of Avatar, Gladiaotors, and Verus and Priscus.
A/N: I will personally respond and thank every last person that reviews this
With one last masterful stroke, the battle came to an end. Its not a death, but death usually earns punishment. If you kill another gladiator in the arena, the crowd may love you for it, but the lanistas usually don't. A dead slave is one that must be replaced. Most battles end with everyone alive, but for the life of a gladiator, sometimes death is better. When the rule is to simply be sure their heart is still beating at the end and there are no guidelines to what shape you leave them in, death some times is the greatest mercy. There will be no deaths this day, not from Zuko's sword anyways.
He raises his sword up and beside him his partner raises his. They bask in the cheering crowd. It's another victory on their part. It means one step closer to freedom. Walking away in one piece is plenty of a victory on its own, but knowing that you are that much closer to being set lose makes the heart soar like the mightiest of birds on the sunniest day.
The chants begin before they can leave though. The cries echo across the stadium and Zuko knows he can find his heart now in his throat. He feels himself choked and tries desperately to keep his feelings under wraps. Instead he turns to the reason and start of these cries. His partner.
"Verus! Priscus!" The shouts continue.
The man who still appears a boy is neither Verus nor Priscus and Zuko is convinced that if either of the two fighters were alive to look at them, they would surely feel insulted. However, they know their own story is going much the same. Though they are both convinced the out come will be much different.
Their days as slaves began the same as the mighty warriors. Zuko was the born fighter and even in a rank of various slaves was quickly chosen as a favorite for the arena. That favorite position was what had his partner throwing a punch at him. The man who was desperate to make his own path. A captured monk from far away. He was far from a fighter, but willing to learn to do whatever was needed to survive.
Lanistas gave them the names. So impressed were they by the sheer will they had to fight, but the lack of hatred they had for one another, it was easy to see the fights they would be able to have in the future. Their path was paved for them. Two gladiators that would fight side by side till one day, the call for a match would come to pit them against one another.
Zuko could not blame him for the fight the monk picked that day. He already knew that if he was in a similar situation, he would have done the same. At least as a gladiator there was a chance of freedom. Most of all there was the ability to shape the future with their own hands.
It was 'Theirs' now. Since the monk had joined in his life, Zuko knew there was no longer and 'I' or a 'Me'. They fought as a team. Even when they fought solo battles, each of them knew the other was just on the other side watching. It was easy to find strength when there wasn't solitude. Support let Zuko slash his sword where he sometimes wondered if he might never even be able to pick it up. The peaceable monk made it a point of not killing, so when it did have to be done, Zuko knew the blood would be on his hands. He would spare the monk where he could and that made washing it off so much simpler. The life of gore and blood letting was never an easy one, but sharing it made it seem that way.
It was a life that one never knew what the future held. There were far too many uncertainties. Even when you knew there was a good chance of living, life wasn't always worth living when you knew what your fate might have been. A useless slave was as good as a dead one. There was always the fear of what battle might come next. What opponent would finally be the one to take them down? Would it be another opponent or the partner at his side?
That was the fate of Priscus and Verus. The fate of the names he despised so much. A fight to the death against two friends. He wondered often if Priscus or Verus had known what fate had in store for them. If Priscus had held Verus the way he held the monk late in the night. Gazing into familiar eyes wondering if maybe the next day they might be blazing with anger against him. Touching soft skin and questioning if they had done as such and to them was it only a ruse to find the weak spot or did each caress simply mean something they couldn't say in words too? When his own golden eyes met with silver ones of his monk partner, he often could see his own questions reflected in those eyes too.
In the night it was as in the day, they sought to comfort one another. Only here it was removed from prying eyes. Here it was simply the two of them. Each trying to forget about the unwanted nicknames the crowd had given them and about the title of Gladiator. The word slave as lost as the sun at midnight. During those hours it was only the two of them able to look at each other as one person to another. Able to comfort as one human to the next. During those hours winning and losing meant only great pleasure for the both of them. It was the time just for them.
The time in the arenas always found them too quickly. Zuko would find himself blindly stepping into the sun that dazzled his eyes as he walked out of the darkness to face down his next opponent. Wondering in that blind moment if it was the face of his partner stepping from the other door or his next foe.
FN: Prompt: An Unwanted Nicknames (#36 of 50)