in
He can hear the crowd roar. There must be at least 50.000 people here today. They know he´s coming.
out
In front of him are heavy wooden doors, he wonders if he could open them.
in
probably not.
out
But he was strong, always had been. He could lift things that others couldn´t, he would win every fight.
in
That´s what got him here in the first place.
out
Someone shouted, outside of the doors. He couldn´t make out what he was saying.
in
the crowed answered with cheering and yelling
out
The door opened.
There was an almost unnatural brightness, robbing him of his eyesight for just a brief moment.
in
As he regained his vision and stepped forward, the crowd exploded.
out
Now, he almost lost his sense of hearing.
in
He looked around and saw the other guy, a fragile boy, who couldn´t be older than 13, shaking violently.
out
He thought to himself that he would do that too, in this situation.
in
Faced with terrible injuries, or worse, death.
out
He looked down at his hands, they were perfectly still.
in
In one hand, he had a trident, in the other, a net.
out
The helmet on his head made it hard for him to see, but it also protected him from the audience.
in
He was afraid of this fight. He was afraid of every fight.
out
He didn´t want to fight, he wanted to run, run away and never look back.
in
He turned to the other boy and approached him.
out
He stopped focusing on his breathing and let his survival instincts take over.
-------
He had won, of course he had. He hadn´t ever lost a single fight, obviously. He would be dead. But he had won the most fights out of everyone here.
After every fight, he made a new cut in his helmet, to remind himself of the lives he had taken. But it didn´t keep him up at night, eat or get eaten, that was his motto.
Or it had been. He wasn´t so sure anymore.
Over the past year, he started having doubts. Was his live one worth living? He took more lives each day as anyone else would in their whole life, but he wasn´t able to feel guilty about it at all.
He was stronger and that was the way that natural selection worked.
He used to be satisfied with what he had, but that all changed. It was changed, not by himself but by someone else. That someone planted doubts in him.
He didn´t know, how those doubts were started, but he suspected it was a very simple moment.
-------
"What´s your name"
He felt his palms sweat, that simple question made him feel uncomfortable, he didn´t want to answer but he also didn´t want to keep it a secret.
"Uh it´s, it´s remus"
"That´s a beautiful name.", the other one said, smiling in the dim light of his little chamber. "Remus"
He hadn´t heard his name spoken for years and he was glad that Sirius was the first one to say it.
It gave his name, something that he´d only had a very distant relation with anymore, a new meaning. A new life.
-------
Perhaps it had been that moment, where he felt those doubting thoughts for the first time, always having been satisfied and unbothered before.
Perhaps it started changing things for him, but after thinking about it, he realised that the first seed of doubt had been planted a while before.
-------
"Hey gorgeous."
He flinched. Why was there somebody standing over is little bed? The quarters where he and the other gladiators lived were guarded and not even a bird could fly in unnoticed.
He looked up and saw a beautiful face, white skin, almost like porcelain, with sharp bones and a long nose, framed by long black hair that shimered in the moonlight.
He couldn´t see anything else, the dim moonlight coming through the small window covered by a grid, was his only source of light.
He didn´t know who that beautiful boy was, but that didn´t matter to him.
-------
From that day on, Sirius Black came to him at least once every five days. Over the past years, he wasn´t very aware of time, only noticing a shift in temperature, when summer ended and longer days, when it came back, but Sirius Black changed that for him.
He started to eagerly count the days leading up to every visit, aching for Sirius every night he wasn´t there.
He stopped wondering how the slim framed boy, who looked no older than himself, got inside. He figured that the guards had been bribed, he just couldn´t figure out why Sirius would do that.
The only thing he knew was that every second away from the blackhaird boy felt like an eternity.
And then, finally, he heard his door creak open.
"Hey Remus" the familiar voice sounded like he was grinning and as he stepped into the moonlight, Remus could make out the mad grin on the other boys face.
It would look terrifying to anyone else but Remus.
He knew that grin better that anything and he longed for it.
He longed for Sirius´mouth.
He got up and their lips crashed together, like a wild dance, mirroring eachother perfectly.
It was as though they´d been made for eachother, fitting together perfectly, always knowing what the other one wanted.
They sat down on Remus´s small bed, even though that was streching the term bed.
It was a wooden bench with a thin blanket and a little headrest.
The bench was stuffed into a small room, where he had about one squaremeter of space.
The door was thic and made of plain wood, but there was no key.
Luckily, otherwise Sirius couldn´t come in anymore and Remus would rather die than never meet him again.
They barely talked, to engaged in their feelings to do anything else.
Only a couple of sentences where spoken every night, nothing of grave importance but little pieces, that Remus used to paint the picture of Sirius Black.
-------
Sirius Black was wealthy. Drowning in his own wealth even.
His family was one of the most influencious ones in the city, direct contact to the Caesar and rotten.
They were terrible people, looking down on everyone, including their own son. He hated them more than anything.
Sirius parents didn´t love him, they needed him to be their heir and to keep the name Black. That was everything, they didn´t care about anything else.
The other thing that Remus knew about Sirius was, that his friend James and his brother Regulus were the most important things to him.
He would die for those people instantly and would do anything to make them happy.
-------
He didn´t know if he could take it serious, when the boy looked him into his eyes and said
"I want to get you out"
He didn´t elaborate, just kissed him briefly and then vanished.
He was used to that, but tonight it left him confused.
But Sirius´ words had sparked hope in him, hope that the other boy would follow up on his words. He wanted to get out. Out of there. Out of this place that he had called his home for a long time. Out of the terribele pressure each day.
He didn´t want to fight for his life every day anymore.
So he was left to hope.