It's hard, growing up with memories not your own. Every now and then I would see something that would remind me of my past life, one that was mine, but that I'd never lived. I couldn't look at weapons without recalling the different times I'd used them myself or seen them used. When you're 15 it's hard to explain that you can't watch the movie 'Gladiator' with Russell Crowe without remembering that you'd once been a Gladiator. It's unsettling to dream and know exactly how it feels to kill a man and watch the life leave his eyes.

I remember when I was young, and used to tell my parent. They dismissed it as daydreams and I gave up. For the longest time I myself thought it was all made up too. How could the fierce dark little man from my dreams ever be real? Better yet, how could such a beautiful spirited man ever love me?

But like I said, I used to believe it was made up.

That changed one day, it took a while, you see something always bothered me, both my real brother and the one I dreamed about had the same name: Duro. They looked different, mostly because of the age difference but dreaming about a man, so like my brother dying to protect me. It messed me. I learned though that my Duro and the one I dreamed about were the same though one day in school when we got in a fight.

We were in high school, I was 17 and it was over some stupid shit that stupid teenage boys fight about. Duro had managed to piss off some big, dumb, mean kid that wasn't to be fucked with, that of course meant that Duro fucked with him. I didn't know who started it, just that some big dumb kid was fucking with my brother, so I jumped in and pulled the guy off Duro, then someone got me from behind and the next thing any of us knew it was a full on brawl. It didn't take long for me to find myself fighting back to back with Duro, and it took even less time for the pair of us to take out most of our opponents.

We were laughing, slapping each other's backs over a job well done, when Duro looked over my shoulder and threw me to the side. That stupid big mean kid had gotten up and was about to hit me in the back with a chair. As it was the useless fuck got Duro on ribs, the plastic shattered and Duro had to get stitch up in a hospital but, for one terrifying moment, I couldn't tell those dreams from reality.

Duro suddenly looked exactly like the man from my dreams, and I knew why I had never seen the similarities before: because I hadn't wanted too. But they were the same, they had to be. Duro was in my arms, young and still in school, over laid with the dreams of a man years older and a trained fighter, but they were the same, beyond looks and colouring. There was something in Duro's eyes, in his pained half smile that told me just how alike they were. But now both had been hurt protecting me, one had died for his trouble, and I was suddenly terrified stiff.

I couldn't move, I could hardly think, all I saw was my brother dying, twice, just to save me. What a waste of my brothers life.

My brave, stupid, younger brother; getting his dumb ass hurt for me.

"I save you this time, brother" Duro was grinning at me, trying to joke despite the obvious pain at having a hand sized bit of shattered plastic chair embedded in his ribs.

That was my undoing. My brother hurt, in such a similar way, for the same reason, saying the same thing.

I went mad then, I got up and hospitalized the big dumb mean kid. Then I started crying right then and there in the school yard.

That little episode got me kicked out of school. Two months to graduation and I was expelled. But I couldn't really care, Duro hadn't died this time, and I'd finally accepted what I'd alway known but never faced. Somehow the times I had dreamed were all real. They had all happened once, a lifetime ago.

Did this mean that my fierce dark little lover of a man was real too?

~~o~~

"This life or the next, I'm no longer complete without."

I woke, the last line I'd spoken in my dream echoing between my ears, half hard, and with the fuzzy memories of my past life mixing with reality to blurring the lines between 'then' and 'now'. For a moment I even looked for the fierce little man of my dreams. My hand blindly searching the empty expanse of bed beside me before I remembered the truth; he was part of a dream, he belonged in the far off past, a lifetime away. Where I was a rebel, an ex-Gladiator, and he an ex-body slave, both of us following Spartacus on his mad quest to free the slaves of Rome.

With a groan I rolled out of bed and right onto the floor. Falling out of bed in the morning in one hell of a way to wake up.

It was already past noon by the time I was showered, dressed, and heading for work. After having been expelled from high school I took a job at the first place that would hire me, which was an art supply shop in a trendy uptown neighborhood. Five years later I was still there and now an assistant manager.

More so because I had failed to get fired rather than showing any aptitude for the arts.

When I wasn't at work at 'Minerva's Supply Closet' I worked part time at a local Gym as a Trainer. Duro and I had both started working at 'Oenomaus' Gym' nine months back when we first decided we wanted to try our hand at both American Ninja Warrior and Modern Gladiator; Modern Gladiator was Duro's idea and I found I couldn't say 'No' to him. The pay wasn't even half as good as 'Minerva's' but we did have full access to anything we wanted. With they way we went at training it was a good thing.

"Why hello Mister Gladiator," Sibyl, my boss, looked up from her sketch. She was quite definitely the same Sibyl I used to know, and greeted me with a smile. Whenever she would speak like that I had to bite my tongue not to ask if she had strange dreams of a possible past lives like I did.

Between working with Sibyl and Saxa at 'Minerva's' and then going to the Gym only to see Oenomaus, Spartacus, Crixus and many others who had once upon a time been Gladiator's in Batiatus' Ludus. It was sometime confusing, I am forever questioning what time I live in.

"Mornin' Sibyl," I nodded to my boss, looking over her shoulder at the sketch, she would often draw scenes like the ones from my dreams, she knew what the characters would do and say but she never gave them any faces. I didn't know this one; two women, barely dressed, draped in gold and jewels, the taller one half hanging on the smaller girl and showing her off to a man.

I shrugged out of my jacket and made my way to the back room to drop off by bag and pull on my once white, now paint stained apron that was the closest thing Sibyl assigned for uniform.

In the back room I found the new guy: Pietros, it was his first shift and he had already decorated his 'uniform'. A cascade of grey, tan, pink, white, and black pigeon-ish feathers stamped across the chest of his apron in paint.

I smirked at the boy, he was a small, skinny, young man, dark of hair and skin, likely no more than 18. "You haven't even been here a week and you're apron's already covered in paint!" I teased.

Pietros flushed, the blush barely there on his dark skin. "I was helping a friend, he didn't like the plain white walls of ou-his new apartment."

Nodding as if I knew exactly who Pietros talked about, I hung up my bag and tied the aprons strings in a knotted mess across my front. I'd never get the nice bow behind my back like Sibyl and this new guy Pietros, so like Saxa I settled for a knotted mess.

For the most part my shift was almost painfully uneventful, right up until a quarter after 5, I had been sorting out the mess some teen girls had made of the glitter paints when 'he' had walked in.

I didn't notice at first, Pietros and I were the only ones there until 6, when Saxa would take over alone till closing, I was busy in paint section, complaining under my breath, and trying to guess at which glitter paints belonged where without going through the fuss of checking labels.

"Excuse me," A voice from somewhere behind and above asked, I just 'Hmmed' my attention, asking a bottle of paint if it was Plum or Amethyst in my head. "What metallic paint works well as body paint?"

That got my attention. I looked up, my green eyes meeting all too familiar brown and I was lost. Surprised at the sudden appearance of the man I'd spent years dreaming about I lost my voice and almost choked on my own tongue. It was Nasir, his hair was tied back in a high 'man-bun', with shorter locks in front to frame his face, and unlike the one ear piercing he used to have, adorned with a simple spike, he now sported four. All of them in his left ear, the black taper, with three small golden hoops high on the Helix of his ear. A matching pair of gold hoops together on the right side of his lower lip drawing my eyes to lips I would kill for a taste of.

I'd only been looking and my jeans were already suddenly, and uncomfortably tight, this man would be the death of me.

"Well," He prompted, looking rather impatent. "Body paints?"

Mentally I beat the stupid out of myself, in reality I stood up trying my best to be graceful, hide any signs of my raging boner, and smiled with all the charm I could. "You'll want 'Liquid Latex', it's the best we stock if you want to paint yourself gold."

For a brief moment I remember a party, from a lifetime ago, with Roman master's in masks, and slaves painted and decorated, fucking for other's amusement.

The memory was gone as quickly as it had come, and I lead -Who exactly? Nasir? My lover reborn? Or just some common look-a-like?- the customer down to another aisle where the metallic paints and other sorts of specialty paints were stocked.

After that, I showed him to the checkout counter, my tongue in knots, wanting to speak to him but unable to find the words.

"That comes to $54.57," Suddenly I was consumed with a need to know, so far, Duro and myself, Sibyl, Spartacus, we all had the same name. If this truly was the Nasir I had once known, his name would still be Nasir, wouldn't it? "Can I get your name?"

It was only for a moment, half a second, he hesitated, but for me that one second might as well have been an hour. "I'm called Tiberius."

In that moment almost of my doubt was wiped away. Memories flashed in my mind and for a moment I was pulled into the long gone past.

~~o~~

All about people drank, and sang, and celebrated our latest blow against Rome in the taking of another Villa. Voices raised in chat, laughter, and even in familiar song, and seated in the shadows, untouched by the celebration, was the wild little dog.

I couldn't help myself, something about him drew my eyes no matter what, so with such fine opportunity presented I wasn't about to let it slip past."You press fortune, glaring so at the slayer of Theokoles."

"His victory but proves even giants fall." Came the unimpressed reply, the wild little dog taking only a moment to look up at me.

I couldn't help the small snort of amusement that bubbled up inside me. This man, something about was so entertaining.

"What name do you go by little man?" I asked, offering drink to help loosen tongue, and hopefully grease wheels of conversion. "So I may properly mourn your passing." I teased half-heartedly, crouching down beside the intriguing ex-body slave.

"I'm called Tiberius," He replied without second thought.

"Tiberius?" I repeated the name, rolling it off my tongue, tasting the sound of it. Somehow it didn't fit him. "You are far too dark to have such a fair Roman name,"

"I' am more Roman than Syrian."

~~o~~

Then the moment was gone, the memory falling back into the faded past from whence it had come, giving way to the 'now' in which I stood before a man looking so much like Nasir and speaking the same line Nasir had once spoken a lifetime ago.

For a moment I almost replied as I once had, the words on the very tip of my tongue, but I held them back, instead I wished him a good day, counted his change and watched him leave. As I saw the shop door fall shut behind Tiberius I felt a keen ache in my heart, as if it remembered a man so similar to him and the love it once bore a man so much like him. For a moment I was a man from a far different time, watching his lover walk away before a battle, unsure if I'd ever be able to see him; hold him; know him.

It hurt; wondering such things about a man I'd never spoken to, never even seen before. But what could I do? Run after him?

No, strange dreams or not, this was my life, not some sappy romance story. So I turned around and got back to sorting out the mess people had made of the glitter paints.


Okay I have so much more to this story (17,000+ words) so there will be more! So much more that you'll me, but this is all for now. I wanna get into the habit of posting a bit each week so if I don't, feel free to yell at me (sometimes I forget). Anyways thanks for reading and everything, thank you, and as always: till next time, ha det bra! :3