The Chance
Jan. 1st, 2014 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
intheheartTitle: The Chance
Rating: R
Summary: Danny makes a choice.
Warnings: slavery, brief graphic violence, bullying, background violence, brief references to sexual assault, sexual threats, and sexual activity with an underage person. A lot of very bad shit goes down in this AU, guys: be aware.
Notes: Spartacus AU, yaaaaay. I'd like to take this moment to thank my enablers. You know who you are. Also, "puer" is Latin for "boy." The -a ending is feminine and not properly applied to it. Y'all can take it from there.
It started as whispers, spreading through the ludus like a disease—now it is very nearly open talk, with mere glances over the shoulder for Doctore or dominus. Danny runs the whetstone against her sword and keeps her head down, wondering.
Nathan comes to crouch beside her, puts his hand on hers to still it. "Puera," he says, the name that they threw at her when she first arrived, the name only he uses with affection, "you know what we're planning."
She nods, doesn't dare to look up. She knows what he'll ask.
"Will you join us?"
The unanswerable question.
--
It began when they took Michael away.
Danny had expected to be sold. What else could their mother do, with their father gone? At least she saved herself.
But she had not expected to be separated, and when they took Michael away for his sweet pretty face, she fought them, screamed and scratched and bit. They laughed at first, but she got her hands into a soldier's face and pried out his eye, and they laughed no longer.
She was fourteen and they sold her for a gladiatrix, her hands still drenched with blood. There were worse fates, she supposed.
--
In the ludus they called her names, spat in her food and pissed in her bedding like they did to all trainees. But she was a girl and they were harder on her, crude sexual threats, the loathsome name puera. If Nathan had not protected her, she might have killed someone.
The others thought he was fucking her, but he was not—he had a wife, he said, to whom he was faithful. Until then Danny had not thought that any men were faithful, except perhaps Michael.
It was a good lesson, and not one she'd thought to learn here.
--
He taught her too that someone could hate the Romans more than she.
"They took my wife," he told her quietly, one night. Danny was fifteen and angry and streaked with blood from the day's training, and Nathan would not look at her. "They took also my son and daughters, all of my property. They sold me and my family into slavery; I do not know where they are, or if they live."
"I will help you find them," Danny vowed, young and impulsive. He laughed, and patted her shoulder.
He knew it could never be. She learned later.
--
Now she was twenty and the rumors had begun to spread, death on the wind. Only the name at first: Spartacus, passed from ear to ear. Slaves killing their masters, marching out to join a shadowplay leader whose face was not known. A Thracian, that was all that was known. A Thracian, and now a free man.
Freedom was sweet to Danny's taste, and terrifying. To make her own decisions again, to find her lost brother, oh yes, the promises were beautiful but the reality was the point of a Roman's sword or the cross.
She'd learned that all too well.
--
Now he crouches beside her and asks quietly if she would join them, if she would walk willingly into death for the chance to be free. If the possibility of escape means enough to risk the cross.
It isn't a question of hate. Hate is not enough to die for, nor is Doctore's whip or dominus's malice. But what is?
She looks at Nathan's face, at the man who has been father to her, uncle, teacher, and friend these past six years.
He is. Michael is.
She is.
"Yes," she says, and his face relaxes. "I will go with you."
Rating: R
Summary: Danny makes a choice.
Warnings: slavery, brief graphic violence, bullying, background violence, brief references to sexual assault, sexual threats, and sexual activity with an underage person. A lot of very bad shit goes down in this AU, guys: be aware.
Notes: Spartacus AU, yaaaaay. I'd like to take this moment to thank my enablers. You know who you are. Also, "puer" is Latin for "boy." The -a ending is feminine and not properly applied to it. Y'all can take it from there.
It started as whispers, spreading through the ludus like a disease—now it is very nearly open talk, with mere glances over the shoulder for Doctore or dominus. Danny runs the whetstone against her sword and keeps her head down, wondering.
Nathan comes to crouch beside her, puts his hand on hers to still it. "Puera," he says, the name that they threw at her when she first arrived, the name only he uses with affection, "you know what we're planning."
She nods, doesn't dare to look up. She knows what he'll ask.
"Will you join us?"
The unanswerable question.
--
It began when they took Michael away.
Danny had expected to be sold. What else could their mother do, with their father gone? At least she saved herself.
But she had not expected to be separated, and when they took Michael away for his sweet pretty face, she fought them, screamed and scratched and bit. They laughed at first, but she got her hands into a soldier's face and pried out his eye, and they laughed no longer.
She was fourteen and they sold her for a gladiatrix, her hands still drenched with blood. There were worse fates, she supposed.
--
In the ludus they called her names, spat in her food and pissed in her bedding like they did to all trainees. But she was a girl and they were harder on her, crude sexual threats, the loathsome name puera. If Nathan had not protected her, she might have killed someone.
The others thought he was fucking her, but he was not—he had a wife, he said, to whom he was faithful. Until then Danny had not thought that any men were faithful, except perhaps Michael.
It was a good lesson, and not one she'd thought to learn here.
--
He taught her too that someone could hate the Romans more than she.
"They took my wife," he told her quietly, one night. Danny was fifteen and angry and streaked with blood from the day's training, and Nathan would not look at her. "They took also my son and daughters, all of my property. They sold me and my family into slavery; I do not know where they are, or if they live."
"I will help you find them," Danny vowed, young and impulsive. He laughed, and patted her shoulder.
He knew it could never be. She learned later.
--
Now she was twenty and the rumors had begun to spread, death on the wind. Only the name at first: Spartacus, passed from ear to ear. Slaves killing their masters, marching out to join a shadowplay leader whose face was not known. A Thracian, that was all that was known. A Thracian, and now a free man.
Freedom was sweet to Danny's taste, and terrifying. To make her own decisions again, to find her lost brother, oh yes, the promises were beautiful but the reality was the point of a Roman's sword or the cross.
She'd learned that all too well.
--
Now he crouches beside her and asks quietly if she would join them, if she would walk willingly into death for the chance to be free. If the possibility of escape means enough to risk the cross.
It isn't a question of hate. Hate is not enough to die for, nor is Doctore's whip or dominus's malice. But what is?
She looks at Nathan's face, at the man who has been father to her, uncle, teacher, and friend these past six years.
He is. Michael is.
She is.
"Yes," she says, and his face relaxes. "I will go with you."
