Chapter Text
Out of all the factors that could have interrupted Kagami's sleep, such as the rising heat of the summer morning, the distant noise of the inner city or the hardness of the ground he had been forced to lie on, the nightmare he was having was the one that eventually woke him up. After a short period of time, during which his eyes got accustomed to the contrast between the dark wooden cage he was held captive in and the sunlight coming through the holes between the planks, he finally found the strength to lift his upper body and to sit in order to get into a more comfortable position.
" You are finally awake. Are you alright?"
The question had come from another hostage sitting next to him, a man who, at sight, seemed to be slightly too young for the deep voice Kagami had heard. It was only when he took a look at the boy's whole small and slim figure that he realized he was wearing shackles around the wrists and the ankles, realization that gave him the scary feeling that himself was wearing those as well before he even turned his gaze back to own limbs to check.
"No, not really, he admitted, where the hell are we?
He didn't mean to sound rude to a stranger, but the thirst, the exhaustion and most of all the growing anxiety that have almost physically burdended his body since he had been captured in his hometown had instinctively forced him to stay focused on remaining safe and sound, making him neglect formalities. The young man next to him, who seemed more collected and peaceful when it came to his, or rather their fate, answered with an even quieter tone than before.
"I think we're in the center of Rome, the capital city. From what I've been able to hear when we were brought here, the central governement may have decided to capture young men from different towns....and make us either slaves or fighters.
Kagami remained in a quiet state of shock while the words "slaves" and "fighters" echoed in his head without him being able to truly evaluate how critical their meanings were. After a long silence that drove him mad, the need to connect with the last person he might see in the life the Gods had granted him grew stronger.
" ...What about you, where you're from?
- My hometown is Sadiava, in a small area near the sea far away from here, he answered as his clear eyes became a little brighter from the memory of his village, My father's patronyme is Kuroko. And you, where do you come from?
- Idacus, the taller man whose pride could be heard in his voice answered, land of the brave and the Gods-fearing. Name's Kagami."
Unfortunately, the sound of the guards chatting and laughing on the other side of the small wooden door reminded the hostages that they were not alone in the area. The anxiety that had disappeard for a short moment came back, even more overwhelming than before.
"So, I guess we're in the Colosseum, huh... it's funny, when I was a young boy, I used to train sword fighting a lot with my dad, and he would always tell me stories about the fights that took place here, in Rome...Kagami said with the stern expression of a man clinging to a distant memory, " he was always telling me that the most dangerous opponent is not the one who can kill you with his sword...
- But who could it be then? Answered Kuroko with a sincere interest in the story
-... I forgot. It's weird, I feel like I've heard that sentence right before I woke up from that nightmare. But the only thing I remember from it is an inhuman, almost beast-like figure..."
He would've have had mistaken the sound of the crowd outside that had started cheering for a roar of the beast he had in mind if it wasn't for Kuroko announcing "It has begun" with a raspier voice, a voice that betrayed a feeling that Kagami thought he was the only one to have : the fear of a potential death.
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A lot of the citizens, even the most educated ones, were often oblivious to the different aspects of "power" and responsability when it came to the role, if we could dare call it that way, of an emperor. Fathers would raise their sons to aspire to the emperor's strength and wisdom, without realizing the amount of blood they would have to see on their way. Ladies would dream of seeing themsleves next to a symbol so powerful ; they would tell young girls that the emperor was the epitome of virility and the ideal type of masculinity to look for in a man, without being aware of the misery a power-drunk and out-of-reality paranoiac man would bring in their daughters' life. The public would applaud the senators' solidarity and loyalty to the emperor, without even suspecting that each one of them, depending on who, could go from despising the leader to plotting his murder out of visceral hatred or, more commonly, out of envy.
The day he had been elected for life, The young emperor Aomine Daiki already knew for quite a long time the real signification of power, how to obtain it, how to use it, and how to make people respect it. Like traditional dances or sports, which everyone knew he loved practicing, life-or-death battles always gave the accurate answer to the primitive question "which one of these two is the strongest?" which could also be translated as "which one deserves respect and glory?". Strength was what he was looking for in a soul, in a mind and in a physionomy (which might have explained his secretly stronger attraction to masculine bodies, although some feminine curves did have advantages), it was what all citizens were supposed to be looking up to ; only Romans could surpass Romans. The culture being the reflection of the mindset, it seemed only logical that displays of struggle for survival were the main event.
Sitting on the marble chair designed for the emperor, Aomine, protected by a shadow and the traditional imperial robe , observed the crowd under the burning sun with an usual expression of disdain, that nonetheless served to hide the excitement he felt at the beginning of each game. Suddendly he rose from his seat, without a word, and slighty lifted his hand, making the noise of the crowd disappear in a matter of seconds. After a long heavy silence, he sat back down as gracefully as a leader should, with an unperceivable smirk of satisfaction on his face. The competition could begin.
The speaker, a little and fat man who always wore clothes so small that he seemed really uncomfortable in them and whose face Aomine always wanted to smash against a water jar walked to the center of the arena, and announced the two first fighters of the event. As the usual two long minutes of exposition ended, the gates opened and the two gladiators, after a short moment of useless hesitation, started walking towards each other until they meet at the center. One of Aomine's advisor standing next to him leaned in to give informations, knowing well that the emperor would barely listen :
"...and he comes from Juliem. His opponent, the red-headed one, is Kagami Taiga, your highness. He is 24 years old and comes from Idacus, a village from which we have received many good elements in our military divisions in the past.
- I see..."
It there was one thing the emperor Aomine was good at, it was estimating a man's potential not only by his height and apparent weight, but mostly by the harmony of his physionomy, his speed and startegy, and his ability to show no mercy when came the time to finish an opponent. Those were what made a peak performance to him, and those were the conditions he always followed whenever he was fighting. Out of the two gladiators he had in front of him, the one who came from Juliem, a dark haired middle-aged man, was clearly the taller and more massive one. But his opponent, Kagami from Idacus, was the one whose physionomy had full potential and from which the emperor couldn't get his eyes off.
The more they fought, struggled, groaned and attacked, the more the emperor remained captivated by the precision and the strength in the fighter from Idacus' movements. Unlike his opponent, who wore a thin protective leather shirt, he was shirtless which allowed him to be way more flexible, even though he remained easier to hurt.
" Amazing..." Aomine said under his breath, while leaning forward in his seat. And before he even had the time to realize it, the Juliemian was lying on the ground, shocked to the core, with a sword only two inches away from his throat. It was only then that the mesmerizing fighter, humble at the start, but now oozing confidence that could dangerously turn into arrogance at any moment, met the stare of the emperor, silently asking him what he had to do with his enemy. The gladiator's eyes seemed empty but needy, almost as if he wasn't fully aware that he could be seconds away from killing someone and had to be guided in that moment of euphoria.
The cheering crowd, that probably wanted the poor man dead, sounded as if it had gone quiet for a few seconds to Aomine, and the eye-contact between him and the victorious fighter lasted for a period of time that seemed longer than necessary. As the emperor stood up, the gladiator from Idacus, out-of-breath because of something else than tiredness, whispered something than even himself could barely hear through the noise of the public.
The emperor eventually lifted his hand with his thumb pointing the ground and Kagami's blade slit his enemy's throat almost simultaneously.
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It wasn't the first time that Kagami killed a man. He had once murdered a foreign soldier trying to rape his mother when his village had been attacked and he was only 15 ; the other time, a group of thieves took him by surprise at the river in the woods, and he had stabbed one while he was trying to defend himself, making the rest flee by doing so.
But this time it had felt different, maybe less difficult to carry in his consciousness, because another man, more powerful than him, had taken the decision ; Aomine Daiki. He had heard about him in the streets of Idacus, one of the youngest and yet effective emperors of the last centuries ; but seeing him with his own eyes was another experience. All the power he had felt while killing his enemy was nothing compared to the psycholgical and physical agressivity the famous man was oozing. "The one who can kill you with his will. That's the most dangerous opponent." was the only thing he had been able to say when the leader stood up to sentence a man to death that afternoon. Kagami already had blood on his hands and did not want to kill anyone anymore, and looking back, he started to seriously regret it ; but he had followed Aomine Daiki's command, the emperor's command almost instinctively, as if they both knew, at least at that precise moment, that only the rules of nature were always correct.
When he finally returned to his cell, Kuroko wasn't there anymore, as he had suspected. He hadn't participated in any fight that day, which meant that the poor boy had certainely been sold as a slave. Feeling a hint of sadness and bitterness at that thought, Kagami let his exhausted and aching body slide against the wall, and he finally ended up sitting down in the same position as he was in the morning, as if nothing had change. But something did change : the thought of the emperor haunted his mind, and he felt like he was experimenting what his also gods-fearing grandmother called " the movement of the soul" ; when the Gods forced upon a human being a passion or an obsession for another person. When their charisma or the attractiveness of someone ( the first aspect was more a characteristic of men, the latter, of women) stops one's mind from functioning healthily. Here both aspects of the emperor were disturbing Kagami's mind. His grandmother also said that the eyes reflected the spirit of someone : Both the fierce spirit behind the stare and the beauty of the eyes of a rare colour were blending to form a single truth in Kagami's mind : he was somehow attracted to them.
But he wouldn't have the time to think the disturbing yet intriguing idea through since he heard at the same time the sound of his door getting unlocked and saw a guard opening it, with two others behind him. " "Kagami T., is that right? Asked one of them.
- Yes?
- Follow us. The emperor wants to see you."