Title: The rest is unimportant (Naevia)
Rating: T
Notes: originally written for the livejournal community spartacus2010's first comment ficfest. Prompt: One more step, one more chain.
Summary: Set at the end of episode 1x12 'Revelations'. Naevia is taken away.
OOOOO
One step.
Still carrying the sting of the slap with which Domina severed the ties binding her to the house, Naevia was thrown out of the room with a disdainful shove. Her cut hair branded disgrace, and her new fate was to be a slave in another house.
Twenty-one steps.
As she approached the gates, Naevia heard his cries. She tried, for a little while, to fight back the tears burning behind her eyes. By the time she reached the door escorted by the guards, she was shaking as a leaf.
Forty steps.
And then she saw him, bleeding and hardly supporting himself but with the ropes that held his stretched arms to the wooden polls. Naevia pushed the guards and ran to Crixus, the man who had given sense to her heart, determined to see him one last time.
Zero steps.
When she was with him, nothing else mattered. Not even her life was important. Their last time together prompted her soul to decide that it would keep this moment forever, and everything else blurred away. Crixus' last words to her, that determined and desperate oath, moved her with more determination.
They were parted by rude distant hands.
Five, six steps.
She would not see him anymore, but her desire to keep him safe steered her tongue towards Doctore, the man of whom Melitta had always spoken words of admiration and respect. With time slipping away like sand from fingers, Naevia made a confession. Barca's death. And a plea. Do not let Crixus die.
Countless steps.
A new life. No love. Only slavery and hope for him to live. The rest...she had cheated life and her reward was yet another chain. But what Crixus and her had shared, that would live forever. That had mattered, and there would never be a space for regret.
Fin.