Chapter 9: When the Time is Right
Chapter 9: When the Time is Right
Morning came.
And the first thing Alex felt was something hard pressing into his ribs.
Then again. Harder.
"Oi." Someone called out.
Alex groaned. His face was in the sand. The sun was already up and already brutal, pressing down on the back of his neck like a hot hand. His mouth tasted like something had died in it.
"Get up, you little shit."
He recognized the voice before he opened his eyes. Deep, intimidating African accent.
Akosa.
Alex pushed himself up slowly. Sand stuck to his face, his arms, his everything. He blinked. The courtyard swam into focus.
Then he noticed the smell.
He looked down.
He was sitting in the middle of a dark puddle of something thick and foul that had soaked into the sand around him in a wide circle. It smelled like the shit pit. Worse than the shit pit. Like the shit pit had fermented overnight and then been left in the sun.
’What in the—’
He looked at his hands. Dark residue on his skin. On his tunic. In his hair.
"Is that... coming from me?" He asked the obvious.
"What the hell happened to you?" someone said from the circle.
Alex looked up.
There were at least fifteen gladiators standing around him in a loose ring, all of them maintaining a very deliberate distance. Some had their tunics pulled up over their noses. One man in the back had actually taken a step backward.
Nobody looked like they wanted to get closer.
Alex opened his mouth to say something.
Then he caught Akosa’s expression.
The tall dark skinned man was standing at the edge of the circle, whip at his side, staring down at Alex with an expression that Alex had never seen on his face before. Not contempt, nor mockery. Not the twisted grin he wore when someone was suffering entertainingly.
Just... stillness. Eyes slightly wider than usual. Jaw set. The look of a man whose brain was working very hard and very fast, trying to make sense of what he was witnessing.
He was staring at Alex’s arms.
Alex looked down at his own arms.
He stared for a second.
Then he looked at his hands again. Turned them over slowly.
The lean muscle that had been there before was still there. But it wasn’t just lean anymore. There was definition where there hadn’t been before. Not the dramatic barrel chested bulk of the men around him. But real and solid. The kind of muscle that takes at least, a month or two to build.
He’d been here less than a week.
’Holy shit. What the hell happened last night?’
He pressed a hand flat against his own chest, feeling every detail of his own bidy.
’Oh.’ He thought. ’So this is what being ripped feels like.’
He stood up.
The ground felt noticably different. Nothing dramatic. Just — slightly further away than it should have been. Like someone had adjusted the world by a few centimetres overnight and forgotten to tell him.
He straightened to his full height.
Across the circle, Akosa’s eyes tracked upward. His eyes bulging in utter disbelief.
The silence stretched.
"You’re taller." Someone said from the back, flatly. Like they were reporting a weather change.
A few people looked at each other.
Akosa said nothing. He just kept staring. The whip hung completely still at his side.
Then from somewhere to Alex’s left —
"Woah."
Alex turned. Spartacus was leaning against the wall of the training building, broken arm still wrapped in linen, watching the whole scene with those ashen eyes that never seemed to miss anything. He had a look of amusement on his face. But they masked something else entirely, buried within his eyes.
He was staring between Alex, and Akosa’s face.
And he was filing something away. Alex could see it happening in real time. The slight narrowing of the eyes. The almost imperceptible nod. Like a man adding a number to a column he’d been keeping in his head.
Then Spartacus stopped his gaze on Alex, before saying; "You hit a growth spurt."
To which Alex just shrugged.
"And smell terrible, too." Spartacus added
"I know." Alex said.
Akosa still stood there, still trying to process the whole situation.
"What is that on your body?" He finally asked. At long last.
"I... Don’t know." Alex managed to say.
"Go to Gaius to have a look." Akosa said, as he turned to leave. "In case it’s infectious."
And just as he was about to leave, he turned back and took another look at Alex, like he was gonna say something but didn’t. And finally walked away.
And then it hit him.
Like someone had driven a nail directly into the space between his eyes from the inside.
A serious migraine.
He hissed. His hand went to his head automatically. The courtyard tilted slightly.
"You alright?" someone asked.
"Fine." Alex said through gritted teeth. He wasn’t fine, obviously. It felt like his skull was trying to rearrange itself.
’Is this a side effect of the reconstruction?’
He took a step forward. The circle parted immediately. Nobody wanted to be downwind.
He then began to make his way towards one of the buildings by the south wall.
-
-
The corridor outside Gaius’s room smelled like burnt herbs and vinegar. With limited sunlight, the only source of light came from the few torches, scantily lit along the hallway.
Alex pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Gaius was at his table, grinding something in a small clay bowl with a stone pestle. He didn’t look up immediately. Just kept grinding, slow and methodical, the way he did everything.
Then the smell hit him.
He stopped grinding, looked up, and saw Alex.
Then he reached up and pinched his own nose with two fingers.
"Last time I saw you, you looked like shit." He said, his voice slightly nasal from the pinching. "Now you smell like it."
Alex opened his mouth to say something.
"Don’t." Gaius held up a hand. "Just... stand over there. Downwind."
Alex moved to the indicated spot by the wall. A man on the next bed over shifted away from him without saying anything.
Gaius set down his pestle and came closer, reluctantly, still pinching his nose. His sharp eyes moved over Alex slowly. Taking inventory the way they always did. Clinical. Unhurried.
They stopped on the dark residue coating Alex’s skin.
"What is this?" He reached out and touched a patch on Alex’s forearm with one careful finger. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. Examined it. Smelled it. And squeezed his face in bewilderment, and disgust.
"I don’t know." Alex said. "I woke up like this."
"You woke up like this." Gaius repeated flatly.
"Yes."
Gaius looked at him for a long moment. The expression on his face said many things. None of them were complimentary. Then he turned back to his table without another word and started mixing something into a cup.
"Sit."
Alex sat on an empty bed. The straw poked into the back of his thighs.
He held his head in his hand, wincing from the splitting headache.
Outside in the corridor, two guards passed. Their voices were low. Barely above a murmur. Alex caught fragments through the splitting pain in his skull.
"...Agrippa..."
"...Egypt..."
"...Octavian..."
And then they were gone. Boots fading down the stone corridor.
Alex stared at the doorway for a second.
Those names.
He knew those names.
Before he could pull the thought together properly the migraine spiked behind his eyes and scattered everything.
He pressed the heel of his hand against his temple and hissed.
Gaius appeared in front of him holding a cup. The contents were brown and smelled like tree bark dissolved in something bitter.
"Drink." He said.
"What is it?" Alex asked.
"What will make your head stop trying to kill you." Gaius said. "Drink it before I change my mind."
Alex drank it. It tasted exactly as bad as it smelled. He set the cup down carefully and stared at the floor while the bitterness spread across his tongue.
Gaius pulled up a stool and sat in front of him. Started unwrapping the bandages around Alex’s chest with practiced hands. Quick, and efficient. His eyes on his work.
"Arms up." He said.
Alex raised both arms.
Gaius paused.
Just for a fraction of a second. So brief Alex almost missed it.
His hands had stilled on the half unwrapped bandage. His eyes moved from Alex’s arms to his ribs to his arms again. The way a man looks at something that doesn’t add up.
Then he continued unwrapping. Slower now. More deliberate.
He pressed two fingers gently against Alex’s side. The spot where the ribs had been cracked. Where every breath had been a reminder for days.
Alex felt nothing. Just pressure.
Gaius pressed harder.
Still nothing.
The old man sat back slightly on his stool. He looked at Alex’s face. Then at his ribs. Then at his face again.
"What happened to you?" He asked.
"What do you—"
Gaius cut Alex off, with a slight jab to the ribs, where Alex had been injured. But Alex felt no serious pain.
That’s when the realization set in.
"I don’t feel pain anymore." Alex blurted out in disbelief.
"Mmhm." Gaius responded flatly, staring skeptically at Alex.
Alex could feel the scrutiny in Gaius’s gaze, and was expecting a query. But it never came.
The old man just stood up, picked up his pestle, went back to his table, and resumed grinding.
Like nothing had happened.
Alex sat there for a moment. Watching the old man’s back.
"You may leave." Gaius said. He didn’t turn around.
As Alex was about to stand to leave, he noticed his knee.
He remembered scraping it the night before, while running laps on the courtyard. But the wound was nowhere to be seen.
’I can swear I scraped this knee last night.’
He glanced back at Gaius who was still busy grinding whatever was in the motar. And than, at the other patient, who had his hand over his nose, and then walked out of the room.
-
-
Alex was still looking at his knee when he stepped out of Gaius’s ward.
He’d checked it three times already. The scrape from last night’s stumble in the sand. The one that had bled while he ran laps, was gone, completely. Like it never happened.
He straightened up and flexed his fingers. Then his arms. Then twisted slowly at the waist, feeling for the familiar grinding protest of cracked ribs that had been his constant companion since day one.
Nothing. Just clean and fluid movements. Completely painless.
’What are you.’ He thought, not for the first time, at the system window sitting quietly at the corner of his vision.
The system didn’t answer. But he could swear he saw it pulsate a bit, at the question.
He was still flexing his hand and staring at it like it belonged to someone else when a figure pushed off the wall beside the courtyard entryway.
"Took you long enough."
Alex looked up.
Spartacus was leaning against the stone, broken arm cradled against his chest in its linen wrap, ashen eyes steady and patient. Like he’d been there a while and hadn’t minded.
Alex glanced back at the ward door. Then at Spartacus.
"Were you waiting for me?"
"Yes." Spartacus said simply.
No elaboration. Just yes, stated like it was the most natural thing in the world for a man with a freshly broken arm to stand outside a medic’s ward in the morning heat waiting for someone who smelled like a fermented sewer.
Alex looked at him for a moment.
Then he started walking. Away from the ward. Away from the corridor. Toward the quieter end of the courtyard where the palus stakes cast long shadows and nobody was training yet.
Spartacus fell into step beside him without being asked.
They walked in silence for a bit. The sounds of the ludus carried from the other side of the courtyard. Wooden swords hitting stakes. Someone getting lashed and not making a sound. A guard’s boots on the walkway above.
Then Spartacus spoke.
"In the pit." He said. "You didn’t know where you were."
It wasn’t a question.
"No." Alex said.
"And the way you move in a fight." Spartacus continued. Unhurried. Like a man laying out pieces he’d been collecting for days. "Like you disappear. Like the world slows down for you and nobody else."
Alex said nothing.
"And now this." Spartacus glanced at him sideways. At the arms. At the height. At the complete absence of any sign that this was the same half-dead scrawny kid who’d landed face first in a shit pit just yesterday. "You want to tell me what’s going on?"
Alex walked a few more steps.
He thought about "very far from here." He thought about the nervous chuckle. He thought about all the ways he’d been deflecting since the moment he woke up in the sand with blood in his mouth and no idea what century he was in.
’He’s only known me a day. But after the pit, the spar, the bath – it feels longer.’
He stopped walking.
Spartacus stopped beside him.
Alex looked at him properly. The sharp nose. The stub mustache. The ashen eyes that had been quietly adding numbers to a column since the shit pit and hadn’t stopped since.
"I can’t explain it." Alex said. "Not yet. Not in a way that would make any sense to you."
Spartacus held his gaze. Patient. Waiting.
"But I’ll tell you." Alex said. "When the time is right. I’ll tell you everything."
The silence sat between them for a moment.
Spartacus looked at him for a long time. Long enough that Alex started wondering if he’d said the wrong thing. Long enough that the sounds of the ludus filled the space between them and the sun shifted slightly overhead.
Then Spartacus nodded. Once. Slow and deliberate.
Like a man making a decision he’d already made a while ago and was only now putting words to.
"Alright." He said.
That was it. No pushback. No demand for more. Just alright.
He started walking back toward the training area. Then stopped and looked back over his shoulder.
"You should get cleaned up before training." He said. "You still smell terrible."
"I know." Alex said.
Spartacus turned and walked away.
Alex stood there for a moment longer, watching him go.
’I’ll tell you when the time is right.’
He meant it. He genuinely meant it.
He just didn’t know yet how many things would have to happen first.
Alex’s eyes drifted toward the high walls of the ludus. Somewhere beyond them, the Colosseum waited. And tomorrow, the sand would drink.
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