thecapitol | Thicker Than Blood Start

Thicker Than Blood Start

For Tributes with keen eyes, they'll notice that Peacekeeper presence seems increased and yet infinitely more ineffective in the last few weeks. Peacekeepers seem harried, as do the Stylists, and most of the Escorts titter and plot without alerting the Tributes as to what, exactly, is so exciting. They simply say that this weekend they'll know.

And so it happens that on the weekend in question, the Tributes are woken by their Escorts early and brought to a restaurant for a hearty breakfast. The restaurant is nothing spectacular, although they seem to be trying to make an impression on the television cameras that float around. The sleepy, cranky meal goes by and then the Tributes are led back to their Suites for a mandatory meeting.

Sitting on couches and the floor, in chairs and on windowsills, standing off to the side - people from the Tributes' homes are waiting to greet them in each District Suite. Some are confused, some accepting, some frightened and some elated to see their beloved. Either way, it should be an eventful reunion.

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Faizan stared at his brother, smaller, as ever, than himself. The thought of him raising sword was foreign to his mind. The other one, Agron, he could see wielding a weapon all too well. He was built for it, perhaps born for it.

"Do I break words with the same Nasir?" Faizan smiled. "Now I know I dream yet even thought that Spartacus did what I could not lifts heart."

It was not impossible that it could have happened. And, now that he thought, Nasir had always been spirited. Perhaps he could raise arms against the Romans. Faizan knew he would given the chance but he was far from Spartacus and would never survive the escape let alone the journey.

"Spartacus fights for all who yet bear chain of slavery," Agron replied confidently. But the words were not his own. He might not have agreed with every painfully (or in Agron's mind, ridiculously) idealistic strand of Spartacus's dogma, but the lines were etched in to the walls of Agron's heart as if they were his own beliefs. Never mind that he hadn't always believed house slaves worth recruiting to their cause, and never mind that he himself fought purely for vengeance rather than lofty ideals: the words came easily, because he had always loved the man who said them most. And if Spartacus was not there to say them, then Agron would voice the words in his stead - ever the faithful, loyal lieutenant, even in his absence.

The arm around Nasir's waist squeezed momentarily and Agron dropped his gaze to the little man pressed against his side as he added darkly: "And he would share similar thought to my own, to hear you so enslaved."

The idea of their surroundings being a dream seems preferable to that, at least.

"He would not have me lose life in vain attempt, not without taking the lives of many with me." Nasir replied evenly.

He didn't want to say any more on the subject. He wasn't going to tell Agron that he had tried and been incapacitated before he could get his hands around one of the Peacekeeper's throats. That was not a moment he was proud of. All that would help him now was too take his time and see if he could form an alliance between tributes, as Spartacus had with his gladiators. That way he would stand a chance. The difficulty was learning who he could trust when all were pitted against each other in the Arena. To make matters worse, he had not reacted favorably immediately after being brought here.

He looked back at his brother.

"You take this for dream. Is thought of my taking up arms so far removed from mind that you hold it impossible?"

This seemed a safer route to direct the flow of conversation. When Agron proved himself calmer, when they were not surrounded by people, then they could discuss Nasir's plans.

Yes, Spartacus fought for all, but he could not save them all. Faizan's smile turned bitter.

"I recall a boy who fought birds and lost, even when he at last caught them." It was a fond memory, one he had tried to cast aside for many years to be conjured again in dark moments.

"Yet you stand no boy."

He looked at the way Agron and Nasir held each other so comfortably with envy. If this took place only in his mind he wanted Nasir's attention solely on him. He wanted an arm around him in embrace, for however short a time. It had been denied him all these years.

"No," Agron agreed proudly, oblivious to Faizan's envy as he turned a satisfied smile on Nasir and held him tightly against his side. There could be no doubting Agron's overwhelming love for him as he declared appreciatively: "Not a boy. He stands a warrior."

No slave, either. Not any more, Agron thought to himself. The hand at the back of Nasir's neck strayed ever so slightly as he faintly traced the pads of his fingers against the ghost of where Nasir's collar had sat against his neck so long ago. His expression turned grim and resolute.

Never again.

Nasir could almost hear Agron say the words "one I am most proud of." But he had not yet spoken them. He had not yet left. There were too many secrets between them now, along with tensions both new and old, but Nasir allowed himself to appreciate the touch though the meaning it carried worried him.

Did Agron think Nasir cared so little for his own freedom that he needed reminding? That he would let himself be enslaved if he had no other choice? It was for Agron that he lived.

"I may yet prove it to you." He told his brother... if it was permitted.

On the other hand, Agron would have to be kept far from the weapons until he could be trusted not to kill them both in his recklessness.

Nasir slid his hand up Agron's side. By the gods he had missed him but there were reasons enough he had hoped Agron would never be taken here.

"Agron..." Were it just the two of them, Nasir would have surged up and claimed his lips in a kiss but as it was... "It is hard to break words with my brother with both arms around me. I will live with only one." There will be time later.

He hoped.

The request was reasonable, of course, but Agron wasn't always a reasonable man. Insecurities carried with him from Sinuessa still plagued the back of his mind and the dark spaces of his heart, but he managed to take Nasir's request with outwards good grace. He reluctantly disengaged his arms, stepping away slightly and allowing Nasir his own room, but one hand remained pressed against the dip of Nasir's lower back.

"Should you desire time to talk alone..." He said with difficulty, words loaded with the heavy weight of Duro's absence and the grief that was still to this day so sharply felt. He didn't finish the sentence but the unhappy implication was there: if it's privacy they need, Agron would leave them to it.

Nasir noted the way Agron spoke. He saw in Faizan the ghost of his own brother though Nasir was sure they could not look more different.

"I would not have you from my side." If it were in his power he would always be by Agron. He had learned too well from his mistake. He never should have let Agron go.

Also he didn't know what he was supposed to say to his brother. He had the sense that being alone with him would only heighten that feeling of awkwardness. Suddenly he wished for the opposite of Agron's offer-- that they were alone together and Faizan the one without them. It was a foolish hope and he regretted it immediately. That was the reason for Agron's jealousy. Nasir had been given a chance he had not. He should not waste it.

"Faizan." He spokes slowly so he would not have to pause as he considered his words and whether he should speak them. "Are you yet bound by collar?"

Faizan smiled at the two of them and his smile remained in place at Nasir's question but more because he had frozen.

"My dominus... is not as cruel as some. I am not mistreated." No more than any other slave. "It is too far a distance to join your cause."

Not as cruel as some. Words that could cover a whole spectrum of abuses considered 'normal' by house slaves who had forgotten the taste of freedom. Agron snorted dismissively.

"Your dominus is a cunt, as stands any man who seeks to enslave us," He replied with simple, factual coolness, easily batting aside Faizan's protests with what Agron will always believe to be the blunt truth. It's a sentiment inherited from Spartacus, but perhaps the man himself might have chosen his words a little more diplomatically.

Blunt and harsh Agron might have been, but Faizan couldn't find fault with him.

"I cannot argue with you in that." Faizan held no love for his dominus. In fact, he held nothing but hate and resentment toward the man.

"Yet he is not as cruel as some. I cannot escape as you have. If only one of us were to have freedom, Nasir, then I would not deprive you."

It had taken years but he had, for the most part, come to accept that this was his fate, even if it should not have been so.

Nasir had gone still, not moving save to breathe. He had thought his brother would still be a slave but it was harder still to be confronted with that reality, as well as to hear the way Faizan dismissed it.

"I once thought as you. I believed it was the way my life would always be and it was my place. I thought myself well treated." He had position and respect, as he had said what felt like a lifetime ago. But what he had was nothing and what he thought were favors from his dominus was only abuse.

"I was mistaken. Given choice, I would not deprive you of that knowledge and your freedom."

Faizan was his brother. Nasir had taken part in freeing many slaves and yet he could not save his own family. It tore heart.

"When we march on Rome, all those who who yet bear shackle and lash will rally to the name of Spartacus. Perhaps you will join us then."

There was an honest confidence in Agron's words, devoid of any artifice. They were not empty idealism on Agron's part - Agron didn't ever have many ideals, just simple necessity and a belief in Spartacus that would carry him through fire and flood. His words were just fact. It was the plan. This is how it will be, this is how it will end.

"And if we should die in vain attempt, then-" The hand at Nasir's back moved slightly, readjusting itself as if anchoring his thoughts with a little more purpose. "-Then we die as free men by the sword in battle, not under some Roman fuck's lash and chain."

Fuck the gods. Of all that Agron had to say it was that. Nasir had no way of knowing from when they had taken Faizan but it was too good a chance that he knew that Crixus had marched on Rome-- and that he had fallen.

"As all men should fall," Nasir said quickly before Faizan could so much as open his mouth. "If you prepare you may yet gain your own freedom, with or without us." Now to quickly move the subject away but to what? Any subject was bitter. Speaking of family with his brother would prove hard for Agron, slavery was a subject that proved impossible with the way Agron talked of marching on Rome.

It was not hard to catch Faizan's eyes and shake his head slightly. He hoped meaning was clear. Drop subject and make no reply to Agron.

After that Nasir had no choice but to say the first innocuous thing that came to mind. He didn't have the time to consider his words further or how obvious the change in conversation would be.

"If you are hungry there is much food here, of a kind you have never seen. Agron, I know you will enjoy as I have." Food, as he well knew, had always been a concern and it had remained so until Nasir had been captured.

Food. When it came to glossing over the abrupt change in subject, he had picked a rather good tactic. Agron frowned down at Nasir beside him with a question on the tip of his tongue but he reluctantly bit it back - despite the wary, mystified scowl that remained.

"You trust the offering these Roman shits provide?" He may have only just allowed himself to believe that some how this was not a dream, but Agron could not quite yet allow himself to think of the residents as anything but scheming Romans.

Nasir could have sighed in relief. He didn't, however, he had more control than that. He also saw that Agron was starting to suspect something but for the moment they were-- he was safe from the truth.

"Even Romans do not poison their slaves if they have use for them. I have been here for some time and yet live. Though they stand their likeness, these people are not Romans and their treatment of us is-- peculiar for slaves. We have as much food as we desire and I would share it with you when you desire the same."

Nasir ran his hand over Agron's back to further the distraction.

Faizan was lost. Why would Spartacus march on Rome when the now defeated Gaul had failed in the same task? Had Nasir changed the subject so hurriedly in an attempt to keep Faizan from questioning their foolish plan?

"In this matter I hold trust in you, Nasir. I would taste their offerings."

Perhaps it was a result of his lack of freedom, but he also was less inclined than Agron to believe that any harm would come of eating the food.

Also he was still fairly sure this was a dream, which meant surely the food would make his mouth water in memory when he awoke.

There was a long moment of suspicious silence as Agron slowly turned his wary frown on the rest of the room, scanning their features and forms as if gauging just how many of them he could potentially take in a fight. Seemingly unhappy with what he saw, he looked from Faizan to Nasir before nodding grimly.

"As do I," He agreed, lowly; Agron might not trust any of these people, but he could certainly trust Nasir - and if Nasir has been eating their food and still stands amongst the living then he begrudgingly supposed it can't be poisoned. With a roll of his shoulders he stood a little taller and nodded his chin towards the door. "Lead on, then. Let us be free of this room and its fucking riddles."

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Thicker Than Blood Start

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cw: offensive slur

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