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“This is fucking bullshit, they can’t just - he can’t just -” Shoulders hunched, hands sealed in a tight fist, muscles taught. He’s shaking. “I still can’t believe - after all this time, why’d he pit us against each other now? This isn’t fair, none of this is fucking fair -”
“I think it’s almost romantic. Retiarius and secutor, partners until the bloody end.”
He pauses. “... Are you joking?”
“Maybe.”
He snorts, even if a little reluctantly. The tension leaves his shoulders, and he slumps onto the floor. “Partners, huh.”
“Yes. No matter what.”
“No matter what,” he echoes. “Maybe they’ll let us both live.”
“... Maybe.”
The fire returns somewhat, and he twists over with an over-earnest gaze and pleading note in his tone. “Listen, we’re so fucking close. Another half a year, Tetsu. Another half a year, and we can leave. No more of this godforsaken arena, no more friends dying, no more killing.” His features twist. “If it’s a show they want, then it’s a goddamn show they’re going to get. You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“Promise me.”
“I … I promise, Aomine. I’ll do my best.”
His eyes are wide and searching, the warmth of his body a familiar press. A moment passes before he seems to find what he’s looking for, and he leans back and sighs. “Good. We’ll live through this Tetsu, I swear it.”
His trident goes flying with a clang, and the crowd roars like a restless lion starved for that first whiff of blood.
Kuroko’s seen this scene in his nightmares since the first day the gates to the fortress closed behind him. Aomine’s towering over him, distinctive hair - hair that has women hooking in navy hairnets and other similarly cheaply dyed hairpieces - on proud display, helmet long since thrown to the sand, lying next to Kuroko’s abandoned net. His sword is gripped tightly in his right hand, and his chest rises and falls like clockwork. He’s clearly not even winded, not the way Kuroko is - not like Kuroko, who can’t stop the wheezing gasps from rattling out of the aching dryness of his throat.
Hardly surprising. He’d always known this would be the outcome.
Aomine’s advancing, now. He’s taking steps that are slow, painfully slow, and to the inexperienced audience member it would be for the sake of dramatic indulgence in his sure victory, but Kuroko knows better. He likes to think he understands Aomine better than the average fawning citizen, but then again, maybe it’s just because Aomine wears his emotions like an accessory, and Kuroko’s the only one close enough to the sharp end of his blade to see.
Or maybe it’s because he can read him, read him the way he’d always dreamed of reading scrolls upon scrolls of freshly inked papyrus.
The sand is warm against his bare back even as the hard grains dig into the uncovered elbow of his right arm. It’s a sort of paradoxical comfort, he supposes, as he watches the setting evening sun scatter blinding glints of light off Aomine’s newly polished weapon. At least, more so than the terrified horror that has itself etched in the contorted features of Aomine’s face.
Kuroko waits. The crowd screams. And the dust twirls between them, like a fluttering veil between the world that could have been theirs - the one that lay but fifty meters away - and their own hideous reality.
Aomine, seemingly subconsciously, reaches up to run his free hand through his hair. The movement is so boyish, so quintessentially Aomine, that Kuroko wants to laugh.
“Tetsu,” he says, and it comes out so quiet Kuroko wonders for one brief moment if he’d imagined it, “Tetsu, come on, please …”
The crowd jeers. Kuroko takes a shuddering breath, lets his hand curl tight into the sand. His fingers come in contact with a familiar hard surface. One last attempt.
“I haven’t surrendered yet, Aomine.” He remembers his promise, of course he does, and the wave of bitter determination comes surging up once more. “‘If they want a show, then give them a damn show,’” he quotes, and gives him a wry smile. “Right?”
The desperation in his eyes doesn’t fade, but just as Kuroko expected, right on cue, Aomine’s eyes flicker to the stands.
Kuroko snatches his dagger and dives at Aomine.
Aomine lets out a surprised grunt as they tumble to the ground in a mass of limbs and metal. He can’t hear the crowd anymore, not through the blood that is roaring in his ears and the thump thump thump of his wild heartbeat. He raises the dagger - he can’t hesitate, he can’t - and with a strangled cry -
Aomine’s hand comes slamming up, and Kuroko’s once again reminded of why Aomine’s so revered - and feared, in equal parts, as his knife, too easily, is sent flying out of his hands. Kuroko scrambles to bolt to his trident - his best bet, he knows - before Aomine can catch up. It’s a real blessing, sometimes, that Kuroko’s not so equally loaded down on armor.
No amount of words can express his relief when his fingers close around the warm metal of his trident, and he stumbles to a stop, turning to face Aomine with the prongs held out defensively. He can’t run; he’s worn out, too much so, and he’s long lost his net so it’s pointless anyways. But the longer he has, the more time he has to give the crowd - the Emperor - what they want.
Give them a damn show.
He does the only thing he can - he charges.
Kuroko sees the complete bemusement in Aomine’s expression even as the other gladiator is swinging his own weapon to parry in well-practiced reaction. He grits his teeth against the jarring clang.
Aomine swipes away the trident when the next strike comes, and the next, and the next. It’s so frustratingly easy for him, and it’s all too apparent that the only reason Kuroko’s stayed alive the last two years is because of Aomine’s raw strength. Already Kuroko’s arms are shaking from exertion even with the lack of heavy weighted armours and he’s partly blinded from the sweat that clings stubbornly to his eyelashes, and he knows it’s hopeless even before Aomine’s sword catches between the prongs and the trident is forcibly ripped from his weak grip.
For one brief second, Kuroko hears nothing but his own breathing. He closes his eyes, opens them again. Kuroko never once lifts his gaze from Aomine’s stricken one as he slowly, slowly, raises one finger into the air.
The crowd roars.