A/N: this chapter took a little longer, but hopefully the length and content will make up for that. Shout-out to Jess82x who gave me the idea for the little h/c scene in here.

Also, my plans for this narrative have shifted a little as I've been writing it. Unfortunately as a result I've kind of retconned Artie. As in, it will probably be better for you to think of him as an OC with Artie's name, rather than as an actual AU representation of the Artie we know and love. He is a very minor character in this whole thing. The flipside is that I think the new plot plans are better than the skeleton I started with, so. Enjoy.


Myka leaves you swimming in the scent of the unfamiliar perfume that had mercifully covered the scent of her, which would have drowned you. You curl up on the floor, under your blanket, and close your eyes. Sometime during the night your torch burns out and you drift into a dark abyss that smells like your memories of Myka and sounds like your daughter's laughter.

Your shoulder cramps suddenly and you stretch your arms over your head to relieve it. Your fingers brush against cloth. They find an edge and pinch, pulling the fabric toward you: it's the pouch of Latrunculi playing pieces. As if of their own accord, your fingers fumble with and eventually untie the pull-string. The stones inside are smooth, polished, as ever. You palm two of them and bring them to your face: one black, one white.

You close your fingers around them. Their cool surface warms against your skin as you roll them slowly, rhythmically, in your hand. They click in meditative consonance.

When you eventually drift off, your hand lies open, palm-up, on the ground, the pieces nestled against one another in the space between your thumb and index finger.

\\

You wake from fitful sleep when Leena comes in, one hand balancing a tray with food and a stack of cloth, the other hand carrying a bucket. She has a water skin slung over her shoulder.

"It's dark in here," she says, as she sets everything on the floor. She pulls your burned-out torch from its sconce and trades it for one of the lit ones from the corridor.

You sit up slowly, leaving the stones on the floor. Your ankles are definitely bruised from where they rested in the shackles and you feel stiff from the awkward position of your sleep.

"I'm sorry I didn't get up for work this morning," you say, with a small, wry smile, "I've been a little bit tied up."

She smiles down at you, only a hint of pity showing through—your pride compels you to ignore that. She cocks her head to the side. "Happens to the best of us," she says, crouching down beside you. "I don't have the key, I'm afraid. You're stuck here until Artie comes by. So I brought you some breakfast, some clean clothes, and the rags and water are for you to clean yourself up if you want to. And the bucket… well. Like I said, you could be stuck here for awhile, so you might… need it."

You look around at the items scattered around you on the floor.

"A change of clothes would be lovely," you say, "but…" you hold up your chained wrists.

"We can just cut the seams at the shoulders of the tunic you're wearing now," she replies. "A quick stitch will fix it up later. And this clean one knots at the neck so it'll be easy to put on."

When you nod in acquiescence, she pulls a small knife from her waistband and carefully slits the seams at your shoulders so you can pull the tunic over your head. You use the water and rags to wipe away the grit clinging to your skin from your night lying in the dirt, and then you wring a rag of clean water over your head and comb it through your hair with your fingers. Leena helps you to twist the clean tunic around your body—a difficult task to handle alone with bound wrists—and knots it behind your neck. You dislike the way this style of dress leaves your upper back exposed, but the comfort of wearing something clean outweighs your concern.

By the time you're done, you feel human enough that the idea of food is not unappetizing. You tear a few bites from the piece of bread and swallow them.

Through this whole ritual, Leena has been silent apart from the soft commands and questions ("lift your arms," "is this wrapped tightly enough?") she spoke to help you dress.

"Do you know what's going to happen to me, today?" you ask her, quietly, as you sit back down together on the floor.

"I don't know more than you do. I have a guess, but it's probably the same as yours." She meets your eyes. "I will help you if I can."

Your eyebrows raise before you can stop them. You look at the items surrounding you on the floor: evidence of her kindness.

"I don't understand how you do this," you say.

"What?" she asks you.

"This." You gesture to your surroundings. "You're so kind. So patient, and thoughtful. You bear the burden of the slave life like it weighs nothing."

She smiles a little and inclines her head. "My mother taught me to keep still and be patient until the next course of action becomes clear. I'm… waiting."

"Waiting?" you ask. "For what?"

She looks at you with a piercing gaze that feels like she's seeing through your skin to the shade of your blood, the shape of your brain, the color of your soul. Then she says: "My chance to make a move."

You cock an eyebrow at her. She cocks one back at you. Then you hear a soft "thunk" and the knife that had been on the floor between you is wedged, vibrating, in the center of a dark brown knot in the wood of your cell door. The distance is short, but she moved so quickly you barely had time to register the throw. You blink at the knife for a minute, and then turn to stare at her, eyes wide.

"I didn't begin my life as a slave," she says. "I don't intend to end it as one, either."

You shake your head a little. "Are you hoping for manumission?"

She shrugs. "Maybe, though I doubt I'd get far as a freedwoman." She runs one hand up her opposite forearm, drawing your attention to her dark skin. "Mostly I'm hoping that when the opportunity comes up to get out, I'll notice it and have the strength to take it."

You shake your head and smile at her, broadly. "To think I thought I knew you, Leena."

She smiles back and ducks her head shyly: the resurfacing of the Leena you know. "Helena," she says, after a moment. "I'm going to do what I can to help you stay safe through…" she gestures to your chains. "If there's anything I can do."

You look down at your chains and suddenly the reality of your condition, of where you're going to wind up today, settles over you like a yoke. You take deep, calming breaths, and will your hands not to tremble.

"Actually," you say, "there is one thing."

She nods, waiting.

You inhale deep and shuddering. "There are herbs that help to prevent pregnancy."

Leena bites her lip and reaches out to squeeze your shoulder. "I've heard of that. I'll talk to Claudia. I think between us, we can get some for you."

"It costs money," you say, "and—and I don't have any."

"It's okay. I have some, Claudia has more, and—" she looks away, then back at you—"I think Domina Myka might help, maybe, if Claudia asked her."

You swallow hard. "You are a blessing, Leena, you know that? You have done more than any person I've met to remind me that goodness still exists in people."

She smiles softly, then inhales, and says: "You killed MacPherson's wife."

Your brow furrows. "How did you… did Domina tell you?"

She shakes her head. "Slaves talk, Helena. You know that. Claudia gets to go out often, with the Lady Myka, and she met some of MacPherson's slaves out in the market. I've had a hunch for months that you were the one who did it."

"Why didn't you say anything to me?"

"Because I didn't want to scare you away before I could get to know you." Her hand slips down from your shoulder and grips your hand. "You're a good person, Helena. They say the slave who killed Lady MacPherson had a child taken from her. And if that was you, well-were I in your position, I would have done the same thing." Her eyes hold yours gently, but unapologetically. "There but by the grace of the gods go any of us, I'd say."

This is the first time since you committed your crime that anyone has looked at you and said it was understandable. Not forgivable, necessarily, but understandable. The simple moment of recognition—of being truly seen— makes something well up in you, hard and hot in your belly. You pull Leena to your chest, fingers clutching her shoulders in an awkward semblance of a hug despite your chained wrists. Her arms immediately fold around the outside of yours and she hugs you back, warm and solid.

When she pulls away, she gathers the rags, water-skin, and your old tunic from the floor, then stands and pulls the knife from where it remains wedged in the door. She leaves you the bucket and the food.

"You're tough enough for this, Helena," she says, with a tight smile, before she ducks her head and steps out into the corridor.

\\

Artie comes in to get you much later, after you've attempted to eat a second meal, as evening approaches. Wordlessly, he unlocks the cuffs from your ankles and waits while you flex your feet to relieve the stiffness and tie your sandals back on.

"Come on," he says.

You follow him through the armory and across the yard, through a locked gate to the area where the gladiators' cells overlook the training space. Gladiators crow at you through the small windows in their doors, whistles and catcalls and keep the chains ons and you'll like it when it's my turn, babys.

The warm, soft parts inside you, made safe this morning in your short visit with Leena, shrivel and harden in a familiar way with each step you take. When Artie stops walking and faces you, you imagine your face a mask, your eyes vacant, your soul small and hard and far away.

He unlocks your wrists, wordlessly, and then opens the cell door and shoves you inside.

"By your request, Lattimer," he says, as he closes the door behind you. "Have fun."

Of course it's Pete. He probably thinks you owe him something after everything you put him through that day with Myka.

He's standing near the back of his cell, contemplating you, arms folded across his bare chest. When he doesn't move, you look down at your wrists, stained a little grey from the manacles, and rub them a little.

"Sit, if you want," he says, finally.

You don't want. You cross your arms over your chest and stand there, waiting for him to make a move.

When he does move, it's only to the bench where he sleeps. He sits down and wordlessly begins to untie his sandals.

"If you're expecting me to come over there and offer you some kind of seduction, I fear you're woefully mistaken about how this is going to work," you say.

Pete drops his half-untied laces, sits up, and tilts his head back in exasperation. "No offense," he says, " but the only time you and I have spent together involved you coming this close to murdering my friend. That memory? Is not sexy. So I can't say I'm interested."

He goes back to unwinding his sandal laces. You palm the back of your neck, the other gladiators' catcalls echoing in your skull.

"Why am I here with you?" you ask, as he pulls his second foot free.

"I should be asking you that."

"I killed the Roman who sold my child," you say

His eyebrows raise at that, and he cocks his head. "I think I heard about that when it happened," he says, thoughtfully.

"Your turn," you say. "Why am I here, in your cell, watching you take your shoes off, when I was sent here to—to be a plaything for you lot as punishment for my crime?"

"Because despite what the nobles like to think, gladiators are not all monsters. I had a mother and a wife, once. I don't like the idea of treating a woman like that, no matter what she may have done." He bends down and resumes untying his laces.

You shift uncomfortably from foot to foot. "So what, then? Are we to sit here and face one another, twiddling our thumbs?"

"If you want," Pete says, as he finishes removing the second sandal and flexes his feet. You notice they are rubbed raw in places, where the arena sand worked its way under the leather straps. "We can twiddle our thumbs, we can have staring contests, we can play word games. Or we can just ignore each other, which, if I'm honest, is probably going to be my preference most of the time." He looks up at you. "Though I'd really prefer it if you'd sit down. Makes me nervous, the way you're hovering."

You reach behind with one hand to find the stone wall and then lower yourself carefully to the floor.

You swallow. "Did… did Domina put you up to this?"

"She might have asked me to do what I can to protect you," he says, as he turns to recline on his bench, arms folded behind his head as it tips sideways to look at you. "Best I can do is keep you with me for as long as I can get away with it. I'm high enough up the food chain in here that nobody but Artie can force me to give you up before I'm ready, and I think Artie shares my perspective on…" he gestures into the air, vaguely. "Well. You know. Rape." He opens his eyes to look at you again. "I know of at least one other gladiator in here who feels like I do and will probably help. But there are at least a half-dozen we need to keep you away from, for sure. And then everybody else, I don't know what they think."

"Which makes them dangerous to me," you say.

"Pretty much, yeah," Pete replies. "Truth be told: I don't know how long we'll be able to keep this up. I'm really hoping that Myka's got some kind of plan up her sleeve to get you out of here because there's only so long we'll be able to keep you away from Marcus and those guys."

You remember Marcus from the Armory, that day with Myka.

Pete's cell, like all the gladiators' cells, overlooks the yard. There is a window in the cell door that's larger than the one in your cell from the servants' quarters, and from where you're sitting on the floor, you can see the darkening sky.

You sit in silence for some time. Pete sits up after awhile and begins to stretch his arms, and back. You duck low, instinctively, to avoid his limbs in the small space. He spends several minutes rolling and prodding at one shoulder.

"Are you in pain?" you ask.

He chuckles a little. "Most of the time," he says.

"That shoulder?"

"When I was a fighting gladiator, before I became a trainer, I ended up in the arena with this huge guy… dislocated my shoulder. The doc here popped it back in, but it's never been quite the same." He pats his left shoulder with his right hand for emphasis.

When the stars glow brightly from the black tapestry beyond the window, a chill settles into the room. You tuck your legs up against your body and tug ineffectually at the hem of your tunic.

"Time for sleep," Pete says. He scoots off the front of the bench so that he's sitting on the floor, just in front of you, and pulls what appears to be a well-worn deer hide into his lap. "There's only one fur," he says, looking down, almost embarrassed. "So we'll have to share it."

He unfolds the blanket and holds an edge up for you as he lays down on the floor beside the narrow bench. You slip your sandals off quickly and stretch out on the floor beside him. The fur isn't quite large enough to cover you fully, but you're grateful for anything between you and the cold. In a few minutes you'll stop shivering, you're sure.

You and Pete lie alongside one another stiffly, like stones on a game board. Eventually, Pete says: "You're freezing. And we should probably keep up appearances anyway."

He pulls an arm out from under the cover and extends it toward you. You hesitate for a moment and then roll closer to him. Your head finds the hollow of his good shoulder and he folds his arm around your back. He is warm and solid, and the fur reaches all the way to the ground behind you, now.

Pete's breathing evens out within minutes. You lie awake long into the night. For a minute, you torture yourself by imagining what it would feel like to spend a night like this wrapped around a body thinner and softer than Pete's, with curls that would tickle your forehead. But you push that away.

The irony is not lost on you, though, that this night, the first of your punishment, is probably the most comfortable night you've spent since you lost your daughter.

\\

Within two days you've learned the routine. The gladiators are gone through most of the day, and during that time you can move through the gladiators' side of the ludus relatively safely. You can bathe, then, and use the latrine. Leena comes in to clean, and you offer to help her even though you don't have to, because you can already feel the edges of boredom creeping in.

She brings you food, too, so you can avoid the gladiators' eating area.

She's relieved to hear that Pete is protecting you. But you're thankful anyway when, on the second day, she hands you a packet of the herbs you had requested.

\\

Late on the fourth morning, you are walking back to Pete's cell from the bath when you see Myka.

She is wearing a dress and not her men's tunic, and she doesn't have her sword. Her strides are purposeful as she moves from one cell door to the next, looking in each window.

Your heart trips over itself.

"Domina?" you say.

"Helena," she says in a rush, before picking up her skirts and running toward you, coming to an awkward halt a few feet away.

Your eyes widen when you see her cheek.

"What happened to you?" you exclaim, at the same time that she says "I'm so glad to see you're all right—"

"Your face," you press. A mottled blue and purple bruise paints her right cheek, with a small gash above her jawline. It's not bleeding, but it looks like it only recently stopped.

"It's not as bad as it looks," she says, her fingers prodding the bruised skin gently. "Really."

The emotion welling up inside you is familiar and terrifying. You can tell that the gash was made by the stone of a ring. Somebody struck her. And you want to find that person and make them suffer, make them pay—

"We should find Vanessa," you say, to interrupt your own thoughts. "She can clean that up for you, and—"

"Helena," Myka cuts in. "I just came from her. It's already cleaned up. It's okay."

A beat of silence hangs in the air between you. Myka's hands clench and unclench. Then, as though she's made a decision, she lunges forward and grabs one of your hands with both of hers.

"I came here to see you," she said. "I just… I had to. Can we talk for a few minutes?

You shake off the paralysis brought on by her touch. "Yes. Of course."

You wrap your hand around one of hers to lead her to the end of the row and into an unused gladiator's cell. She sits on the wooden bench and invites you to sit beside her. The bruise on her cheek glares at you and without thinking you raise your fingers to touch it, gently, as though you could soothe it away. Her eyelids drift closed.

"Who…?" you ask.

"My father," she says, and shakes her head. "Really, Helena, you're the one we should be talking about right now."

You drop your hands into your lap and look away. "I'm… I'm fine, actually."

Myka nods. "So Pete is…"

"A godsend." You look up at her again. "Truly. I can't fathom why a person like that is living in here. He's Roman, too, isn't he?"

"Yes. You should ask him his story. He'd probably tell it." Myka's lips quirk into a half-smile and then she grimaces, bringing her fingers to her cheek.

"What happened, Myka?" you ask softly. Your fingers are touching her jawline, gently, before you notice they've moved. She doesn't pull away.

"My father. He…" She trails off, shakes her head. Her hand takes yours from her face and wraps itself tightly around your fingers. "I tried to call it off, with MacPherson," she says.

You shake your head no and breathe, "Myka," your hand shifting in hers so you can wrap your fingers around her palm. She clings back, tighter.

"I couldn't do it," Myka says. "After I heard your story, I just… I couldn't even look at him anymore. The idea of him touching me was repulsive. I couldn't live in his house knowing what took place below it."

You shake your head in sadness, confusion, frustration.

"My father was—well, he was furious, obviously," she continues. "He's on his way over to MacPherson's now to undo what I said and make sure the wedding moves forward as planned."

"He's your father, Myka, surely he wouldn't force you into a marriage you don't want?"

"I think he's decided that if I'm left to my own devices any longer, I'll never marry. The older I get, the fewer my options." She shrugs, helplessly, and looks down at her lap. "He may be right."

Suddenly, decisively, she turns to face you fully and presses her hands into the sides of your face. "By law I have to do what my father says," she whispers. "But I needed you to know that I tried to stop it."

Her eyes bore into hers and your gaze flits from her left to her right and back again, the emerald you thought you'd lost forever.

"Do you understand?" she says, her voice cracking. "I need you to know."

You nod between her palms, you want to be reassuring but you only feel desperate, and sad, and afraid for her, so very afraid, and the feeling of her this close, of her hands on your skin is intoxicating and devastating and threatens to split your chest in two.

And then she's kissing you, hard and full. Her tongue searches for yours and her fingers weave into your hair and she tastes like everything you've missed and dreamed about and never thought you'd have again. Your hands are on her wrists, an echo of that last night in your own cell. You want to draw her closer but you know you should push her away, to end this destructive connection because the hope and warmth in your chest is the cruelest thing you could feel right now, and because she is so good, so supernaturally good and you are too broken to be trusted anywhere near her.

You feel her warm hands travel down your neck and begin to fumble with the knot holding your tunic together. It jolts you enough that you find the strength to push her away, just far enough to rest your forehead against hers.

"We can't," you murmur.

She's gasping, and you feel her warm breath puffing against your lips and chin.

"I know we shouldn't," she says, "but I just… I just…"

Her eyes are too close for you to be able to see them clearly but you can tell when they flick up and sear their green gaze into yours.

"Nothing makes me happier than you do," she says, and you can't help the way your heart trips in your chest. "Even after… after that day in the yard. I was angry and I knew I should hate you, I knew it, but I just… I couldn't."

You wish she would stop because you fear you might cry, but right now your resolve to stop her is weak and hers to continue is strong.

"And I've forgiven you for the trident," she murmurs. "I just—I try to imagine a future where I could be happy and a piece of every vision is you, Helena. It's always you but I can't—I can't…" She shakes her head. There are too few words, really, for everything she can't do.

"In a different world I would give you anything, everything," you gasp, softly. "The moon on a platter, just to see you smile."

"I don't want the moon on a platter in any world, Helena. I just want you."

The fragile threads of your resolve unravel and tear and you don't know who started it but you're kissing again, all searching lips and seeking tongues. You pull her closer and wrap your arms around her, your chests awkwardly pressed together as you sit side-by-side on the narrow bench. Her hands tug at the knot behind your neck and the top of your tunic slips down like water over rocks. You whimper a little when she cups your breast. It's her thumb on your nipple that jolts you to attention, though, because this is happening. Of all the things you don't deserve, this is among the first: another chance to have your beloved Myka in your arms, after everything you've done, after what you did to her.

You stand in the center of the cell and pull her with you. Her dress is a more ornamental version of yours; a single knot at the back of her neck holds its pieces together and when you untie it the fabric falls to a pool at her feet. You undo the belt that keeps yours at your waist, and you are nude together in the shadows. And then you lie down together, stretched out on the cell floor, and for the first time you feel her skin against yours without the film of your ulterior motives between you.

Her lips are on your neck and she's trying to coax you onto your back—but no, you won't let that happen. You catch her wrist and push her back because you want to make love to her. You want to gather everything she makes you feel and spill it from your lips into her skin, you want her every breath to remind her of how cherished she is in this moment.

Your legs tangle with hers, your pelvis in the cradle of her hips as you find the soft center of her throat with your mouth. The last time you touched her here it was with a weapon and you wish you could erase that memory, overwhelm it with the feeling of your lips and tongue. You linger there for a long moment until she cups your jaw with both of her hands and lifts you away.

"I forgive you," she murmurs. "I do."

You claim her mouth again, deeply, as your fingernails outline the sensitive sides of her breasts, the ridges of her ribs, the curve of her waist. Your lips follow your touch downward, first to her nipples (she bites her lower lip, hard) then lower, until you nip the point of her hip and follow its crease between her thighs. Her fingers tighten in your hair when you touch her lightly with her tongue, and then you press her open and offer her this most intimate of kisses, your tongue pressing into her until she presses up into you, hard, harder, one hand in your hair and the other clasped tightly across her own mouth, muffling her soft cry as she comes. She is beautiful and perfect and you are torn in opposite directions because you want to treasure her, you want to cradle her and worship her, but at the same time you want her, make her feel the full, rabid strength of everything you feel for her, to make her yours.

You keep your mouth on her because once is not enough. Your eyes find hers as your tongue finds her clitoris and she's looking down at you with a curl in her lip like a predator, and you realize you're both in the same place, wanting to consume and be consumed. You dig your fingers into her hips, pressing them down, as she wraps both hands in your hair and you push as she pulls. Her body demands that you give and yours demands that she take all the fear and the want and the need and the love that your touch can possibly express. She whispers your name—Helena, oh, Helena—as her hips press up against you for the second time.

Her fingers slide free of her hair and you slip up her body while she pants in recovery. You settle over her and hold her gaze while you slowly, gently, slip your fingers inside her; she gasps and tightens around you. You slow down, now, the back of your hand braced against your hipbone as you languidly match the gentle roll of her body.

"I love you," you whisper, as your forehead comes to rest against hers. "I just…"

"You're perfect," she whispers back.

You curl your fingers and she twitches, her arms wrapping around your shoulders and pressing into your shoulderblades. You do it again, and again, slowly, gently, and this time she dissolves against you rather than shatters, liquefying between your body and the floor.

Later, after she has mapped your body as thoroughly as you've mapped hers, you rest on top of her. You imagine making yourself small and crawling between her ribs, making your home alongside her beating heart.

"If I let you out of the ludus, would you flee to safety?" Myka asks.

"No," you sigh. "I have no connections or resources… I wouldn't last a day as a fugitive in the city."

"Could the penalty possibly be worse than what you're living now?"

You prop yourself up on your elbow to look at her. "It could." You trail a finger down her sweat-slicked cheek and neck. "You've done a horrible thing to me, Myka," you murmur, with a small smile.

Her eyes widen at you.

"You've made me want to live," you say.

She can only kiss you in response, so she does.

By the time the sun crests into early afternoon, she is back in her dress and you in your tunic.

"I'll find a way to get you out of here," she says softly to you. "Somehow."

You smile sadly at her, because you're sure there is no way; you've banked so much more than your share of good fortune following the crimes you've committed. But you are not cruel enough to deprive her of hope, so you nod in agreement.

"But don't come back here," you say. "For you to come here, it's—it's dangerous for both of us."

It's her turn to nod, this time.

She kisses you a last time before she leaves, chaste but lingering. After you part, you press your fingers to your lips, so the trace of her touch can't escape.


a/n: both the chapter title and the sex scene brought to you courtesy of Massive Attack's "Paradise Circus" (in that I was listening to it on loop while writing this thing)