He could experience this over and over again – his hand in hers and the downpour of heavy rain above the two of them, the initial fear of the surprise weather attack transforming into a spontaneous feeling in his gut.
A scene from @spideysmjs beautiful fic I Might Do Anything For You (If You Let Me)!
❄️❄️❄️Happy Holidays, bb! I love you lots and am so happy to call you my friend!! ❄️❄️❄️
rating: T
pairing: bellarke
chpt: 1/?
summary: ancient rome!au. Bellamy’s a gladiator, Clarke’s a senator’s daughter, and they might as well be Rome’s Romeo and Juliet.
The sun beat down harsh and hot, and the streets were uncannily quiet as Clarke sprinted through the roads of Rome.
Men and women wandered the marketplace and vendors called out from booths as she moved past them, but the sea of bodies was thinner than she was used to, allowing her to move much more quickly than expected. The cobblestone road radiated heat through her flat shoes, and before she knew it, a huge stone building emerged into her view.
The colosseum.
No doubt most of the people that would be crowding the market were at the games instead. As she slowed her pace and tried to steady her breathing, she reached around her shoulders and pulled a small shawl up over her head, ducking down and hoping the guards didn't notice her.
“Woah, woah, woah, there,” a guard stepped out at the entrance of the arena, blocking her path. “Where are you going?”
Smiling sweetly at him, Clarke batted her eyes and said, “To watch the games? Where else would I be going?”
He smiled, a toothless grin, and Clarke had to keep herself from visibly gagging at the smell of his breath. “And what is a pretty woman like you doing traveling all by yourself?”
Clarke’s mind raced, trying to find a reason, any reason, for showing up to the arena so late. A voice interrupted her thoughts, saving her the effort.
“Oh, let her in Dax,” a woman guard growled. “What is that, the seventh girl you’ve harassed today?”
The guard’s eyes broke from her’s, looking at the red-haired guard. “Piss off, Monroe,” he snapped back.
His distraction had given Clarke just enough time to sneak past him. Shooting the female guard a grateful look, she turned and pulled the shawl tighter around herself. She hadn’t taken two steps into the arena when it all hit her.
The sound. The smell. All of it.
The roar of the crowd rang in Clarke’s ears as she pushed through the sweaty bodies. A man’s scream pierced the air, and then was suddenly silent before the bloodthirsty yells of the masses surged forward again. The noise hit her like a wave, almost knocking her breath out of her. For a brief moment, she wondered why she was here, why she brought herself to such a barbaric place over and over again.
Her hand tightened around her bag, slung over her shoulder, and she gritted her teeth.
Suck it up, she thought to herself. You’re not here for you.
From between the heads of onlookers, her eye caught sand and blood and sword. And a head of curly brown hair.
Read More (AO3) (FF.net)
So, he was still alive. That was good. Every time she heard a man’s screams, she worried it was him, that she would catch a glimpse into the arena just to see his body laying lifeless in the dirt. Worried that she would blink, and he would be dead.
Even from a distance, he was a fearsome thing to behold. A snarl was painted on his face, blood splattering his cheek and his chest. He must have lost his helmet somewhat earlier, leaving the sun to glint off of his curls. His dark skin was slick with sweat and she could already read the exhaustion in his figure.
It was going to be a hard night. Assuming he made it that long.
Something glinted behind him. A figure with a trident approached behind him. Clarke’s heart caught in her throat. There was no way he would see it in time. Her mouth opened, and she thought for a second her lungs would fly from her mouth, two birds carrying a message to him, to protect him, warn him.
There was no way he would hear her. She was too far away. The crowd was too loud.
She made the decision in an instant. Raising her hand, she pulled her shawl down, revealing her bright blonde hair. The hot Roman sun hit it like a beacon.
He never ceased to amaze her, just how quickly he could find her in the crowd, in the chaos of everything. His eyes snapped to hers, and the expression on her face must have told him enough, because suddenly he was dropping to the ground, the trident driving clean through where his chest was moments before.
He swung, his sword slicing across the thighs of his attacker, and the man screamed, dropping to his side. In an instant, Bellamy was behind him, dragging the man to his knees and turning to face the north end of the colosseum.
Emperor Thelonious was sitting under a small canopy on an outcropping, his harsh gaze looking down at the last two gladiators. Wells sat beside him, looking somewhat disgusted as he gazed at all the bodies littering the sand below.
A small smile passed Clarke’s lips. Wells had always been somewhat soft when it came to the games. She had no doubt his father had forced him to come, offering some lecture on the “duties of the future emperor”. Her shawl was quickly repositioned over her hair, providing a disguise before her childhood friend could see her. Along with everyone else, Clarke’s gaze fixed on the emperor, wondering which he would grant: life or death.
Thelonious’s hand raised; his thumb parallel to the ground for a moment of suspense before it slowly turned downward.
The crowd roared. Clarke’s eyes darted back to Bellamy.
He masked his emotions well, but she could see the anger in his eyes, even if he managed to keep his expression blank. His mouth pressed into a tight line before he raised his sword and drove it into the space between the man’s shoulder and neck.
A quick death. Somewhat painless too.
It was going to be a very long night.
The man’s body fell to the ground, lifeless, and Bellamy turned to the crowd and raised his sword. An unearthly cry fell from his lips and the onlookers echoed it, the whole arena shaking with the noise. Then he turned and began walking back towards the gate, towards the guts of the colosseum, the place where men waited to die.
The place where she should be.
The crowd was chanting his name now, but he didn’t look back, his focus set entirely on the gate. She pushed back through the crowd, running between the stone seating, brushing shoulders with strangers who smelled of wine. The earth was hard beneath her feet and she could smell the stench of decay and rotting flesh baking in the hot sun the closer she got to the arena.
How can people come here for fun? she asked herself, trying to reign in her disgust as the men and women around her laughed loudly. The blood, the smell, the violence. She hated it. She hated what their empire had become.
A tall archway stood before her, and she pulled her shawl tighter around her head, lifting the edge to cover her face. Glancing both ways, she made sure no one was looking at her before she slipped through the gates and into the depths of the colosseum.
She was met instantly by the smell of blood and the groans of the gladiators.
Since she had arrived late, she had missed most of the earlier fights, and with it, the earlier injuries. Men laid on stone tables throughout the lower room. Some had sharp gashes on their legs, others had gaping wounds in their shoulders, sides, backs. One man was missing a leg.
Her eyes locked with his from across the room. He was sitting on a table, leaning forward. There was already a healer beside him, inspecting a large gash across his back, and she could see numerous cuts across his arms and legs. Close calls, is what he’d always refer to them as.
The healer he was with looked up and caught sight of her over Bellamy’s shoulder. “Viator!” Jackson said, “You’re here! Great! We need all the help we can get.”
Traveler. That was what they called her here. She remembered when she had first arrived, rushing past the guards after a young gladiator had been gravely injured. She had yelled that she was a healer, and, thank the gods, Jackson had listened. They hadn’t been able to save the boy; his wounds had been too deep. But she had impressed Jackson with her skills, and he had allowed her to return under the condition that they keep her identity secret.
“Can’t have people coming in here asking why I have a noble-born working as a healer with some of the most violent men in the empire,” he had told her. “You’ll get me crucified.”
“Sorry, I’m late,” she said. “Had some trouble getting past the gate guard.” She dropped her bag to the floor before kneeling beside it, digging through to pull out fresh clothes and ointments she’d purchased at the market a few days before. “Who needs help?”
Bellamy looked like he was about to open his mouth when Jackson cut him off.
“Go look at Finn,” he said. “He took an arrow in the calf and we’re having trouble getting it out.”
She nodded and grabbed the tools she needed, not missing Bellamy’s perturbed look. Glancing around the room, she saw Finn wave his hand, catching her attention. He was leaning back on his elbows, his leg dangling off the edge of the stone table.
“Viator,” he said, giving her somewhat of a rueful smile. “Got a bit of a challenge for you today, any chance you’re up for it?”
She didn’t grace his question with an answer, instead setting to work immediately. “I didn’t know they allowed range weapons in the arena,” she said as her hands worked deftly, wiping blood away from the wound, careful to avoid the broken arrow sticking out of his calf.
He gave a rueful smile. “So, did I. I think someone snuck it in. Luckily, he was a shit shot.”
She motioned for him to flip over so he was laying on his stomach, his calf facing upwards to allow her a better look at his wound. “You’re lucky this didn’t go clean through your leg,” she said, tenderly touching the muscle around the wound.
Finn winced. “I think that ‘lucky’ would imply I didn’t take an arrow in the leg in the first place.”
She offered a small smile. “They may have to start calling you Sandlimper instead of Sandwalker now.”
“The gladiator with unmatched skills of stealth,” he said through gritted teeth. “The only trace left behind is a dragging footprint in the sand.”
That one pulled a small chuckle out of her.
Finn looked at her over his shoulder. His eyes held that look she knew so well. “Viator,” he said softly. “If I were to ever get free…”
Whatever he was about to say was cut off by a sharp yell as she chose that moment to pull the arrow out of his leg.
“By the gods, viator!” he grumbled. “Give a man a warning!”
She flashed him a sweet smile, wrapping his leg with impossible swiftness. “Good as new,” she replied, gathering her things. “Sandlimper will have to wait another day. I’ll check back in on it next week.” She moved to the next table, ignoring the longing look she knew followed her.
So, it went. She treated three more men, some of them conscious enough to speak, some not. She was lost in the movements, her mind empty, her hands working almost by muscle memory when Jackson’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts.
“Viator! Can you go check if Bellamy’s arm has stopped bleeding enough to bandage?” The head healer was tending to another gladiator, Sterling, if she remembered correctly, who had lost most of his left arm. She winced for a second, looking at the wound, wondering if he would make it through the night.
Bellamy’s gaze was intense as she approached him. She tried not to meet his gaze as she grabbed a few gauzes, setting them on the table beside him. The cries of the gladiators had quieted, and she could see the light coming from the entrance of the room getting dimmer and dimmer as evening set in.
She reached up and pulled his hand away from his arm where he had been holding a dirty cloth to a large gash on his arm. His skin felt hot against her touch, his gaze burning into her. The silence hung heavy between them, each waiting for the other to say something first.
She waited until she felt as though the gods themselves would appear and chide them both for being so stubborn.
“You were distracted today.”
“Fighting six gladiators at once will do that to you.”
“It never seemed to be an issue before.”
“How would you know, princess?”
Her hand swiped across his wound a little harsher than was necessary, an instinctual reaction to the nickname. He winced and she instantly felt bad. “Sorry,” she muttered under her breath. For some reason, she could never keep her emotions in check with him.
Silence. Again. She wondered if he could feel her heart pounding out of her chest. It sounded a thousand times louder in her own ears.
Of its own accord, her mind wandered back to her memories of first meeting him. It was when he was still building his name in the arena. He had taken on three tigers with two other gladiators. She remembered watching the horrifying vision play out. The three of them had taken out the first cat with relative ease, but the second two proved to be smarter than the rest. The two other gladiators, Miller and Finn, had been preoccupied with one when the second snuck behind them and pounced. Bellamy had sensed the beast and turned just in time to gut the animal from sternum to tail but had taken the beast’s claws to his chest before it had died. She remembered rushing down the stairs to him, helping Jackson stem the bleeding from the deep, red cuts across his chest.
He had gasped out his friends’ names. Miller. Finn. Miller. Finn. Over and over and over again. Each time he did she soothed him, promising him that they were fine, just waiting in the other room. She didn’t know why she did it, but she stayed well into the night with him, long after Jackson had fallen asleep across the room on a mirroring stone table. The nighttime stars were the only ones who heard her singing her mother’s lullabies softly to him as he slept. She had snuck back home in the early hours of the morning, taking the back streets as not to be spotted. She thought her mother would’ve killed her had she not convinced her she had spent the night at Senator McIntyre’s house with her friend, Harper.
“Thank you. For warning me in the arena.”
His voice pulled her from her memories and back into the present. For the first time, she finally found the courage to meet his gaze. As soon as she did, she remembered why she so often avoided his eyes.
His face was that of a stoic warrior, a killer, a slave who knew his place. But his eyes, by the gods, his eyes. They brimmed with every emotion under the sun. Passion, anger, grief, lust. They were all there. All the time. The intensity of it all was almost overwhelming. For a moment, she forgot how to breathe.
“I didn’t even do anything.” The words slipped past her lips, and she was ashamed of how breathless they sounded. How soft.
His next words confirmed her earlier suspicions. “Your face. It was enough.” There was a pause, then a small, wry smile broke past his features. The expression surprised her. She was so used to stoicism and hostility. “If I didn’t know better, viator, I’d say that you don’t want me to die. You haven’t started taking out bets on me, have you?”
The air came rushing back into her lungs like a tidal wave. She rolled her eyes. “Bets? On you?” she teased. “Never. Maybe on Sandwalker or Miller, but not you. You’re too much of a wild card.”
“All the more reason,” he said. “It keeps things interesting. Makes the games all the more enjoyable.”
Her hands paused as she wrapped the bandages around his arm, the stark white contrasting his dark skin, even in the low light. “Is that what the games are supposed to be,” she said softly, her eyes locking in with his. “Enjoyable?” She remembered the anger in his eyes, the rage in the set of his shoulders as he walked out of the arena. Another life lost for the pleasure of the people.
He looked at her, the intensity in his eyes a fire hotter than the Vestal Flame. “Not for us,” he said softly. She wondered if he knew she could hear the simmering rage behind his words. “Not for the men I killed today.”
Her tongue was lead and she felt as though acid was dripping down her throat, burning her insides and tying her gut in knots. “Better them than you,” she said softly.
“You don’t get to say that, princess.” His words were harsh, but his voice was mild.
She turned away as thought slapped. She knew he was simply referring to her status as an observer rather than a fighter, but still, the words carried all the more punch when she reflected on her true social status. She knew the emperor had implemented the games to pacify the masses’ thirst for blood. To protect the noble-borns such as herself.
Suddenly, his fingers wrap around her hand, his strong, yet gentle grip pulling her palm away from the warmth of his skin. His movements were…almost tender. Soft, like the gentle lapping of a river upon a shore bank. Her eyes met his, and she saw something unrecognizable behind it.
“We do what we need to in order to survive,” he murmured. “Whether that be fighting in the pits or sneaking away from our villas and highborn life to tend to wounded gladiators.”
The color drained from her face. His gentle grip turned to iron as she tried to pull her hand out of his grasp. The fire in his eyes was back. That raging, white-hot flame that danced in his soul like Vulcan’s blacksmith-fire.
“How did you know?” she asked, caught somewhere between the terror of being found out and the fascination with the man before her.
His brows pulled together before releasing her. “So, I was right,” he said, more to himself to than anyone else. Then to her, “You don’t move like the rest of us. Your motions are more precise. At first, I thought it was just because you weren’t used to the pits. Then I thought you were from the south, maybe Athens or even Tarsus.” He paused, his eyes raking up and down her body, as if assessing her in a new light.
She felt naked under his gaze.
“It was the way you talk,” he finally said. “No slang. Clean. You must have been trained to speak like that.” He leaned in for a moment, his lips uncomfortably close to her ear. “Trained to speak to the masses.” He sat back and looked at her. “Am I right?”
Her nose scrunched, and her lips pressed into a thin line as she carefully thought out her answer. “You’re not wrong,” she finally said.
“Tell me, why would a woman be trained to lead the way you have?”
She raised her chin. “Why shouldn’t a woman be trained to lead?”
A small smile flickered past his lips. A ghost of a laugh resurrected by her defiant attitude. “Fair point,” he conceded.
He looked like he was about to say something when a voice broke the silence.
“Viator!” Jackson called. She glanced to see he was still with Sterling. “I need your help!”
She turned and began to move towards her mentor when a rough hand wrapped around her forearm, holding her back. When she twisted, she saw that he was standing now, his face uncomfortably close to hers.
“I guessed your secret, princess,” he murmured, his voice barely audible. “Don’t you think I should get a reward?”
She was certain he must feel her heart pounding through her chest, through the space between them, and up against his bare sternum, against the scarred remnants of the injury that first brought them together. Her breath caught in her throat like a thousand insects blocking her airway as she tried to breathe out butterflies.
“What kind of reward?” she asked, her own voice nothing more than a simple exhale. Her mind raced, wondering what he would ask for.
He tilted his head, like a curious boy. “Your name,” he breathed.
“Viator! Now!” Jackson’s voice broke the trance, and she jerked her arm away. This time he released it, allowing her to take a few steps back. Her thoughts were the waves of the sea, each crashing against the shores of her mind and receding before she had a chance to grasp them. Turning, she moved towards the head healer before stopping and looking over her shoulder.
He had not moved, his dark gaze still boring into her.
“Clarke,” she breathed. “My name is Clarke.”
She did not have the courage to meet his eyes again.
