Chapter Text
She sat with her sword across her knees.
The hardened leather under her breastplate creaked out the metronome of her breathing; before every fight, she counted down the breaths to what she never wanted to - yet always did - do.
It was these moments which made or destroyed the Gladiatrix’s performance - that made or destroyed her . She hated it. How all she was boiled down to the few moments of peace she had to forge for herself in between the chaos forced on her by the world.
But now her mind was empty. And all she had to do was win.
In the final moments, she opened her eyes to run over the final checks. Make sure her sandals were strapped up correctly - it was always painful to see good warriors go down because their shoe slipped off. That’s how Marcus had gone, just two nights ago; the lapse in concentration as he tripped was just the opening that his opponent had needed. Had he been up against an animal, maybe he’d have survived. She used the time to check her garters, tighten the ties on her kilt; to walk the dastardly line between remembering those that had gone as not to repeat their mistakes but remaining detached enough to not want to follow them. To pull down the end of the padded sleeve she wore on her right arm.
She sat with her sword across her knees, and let its power flow through her. She always felt a darn sight more indestructible whenever she bore her weapon. Like the promise she had made herself to never be vulnerable again was more than the fleeting, nonsensical whims of a child, but a philosophy she carried in the gaps between her ribs.
It remained nothing fancy, however - a standard issue gladius; a round wooden handle, with a blade that was both shorter and wider than what she was used to seeing back home; like a dagger scaled up. No warrior here was so casual as to disregard their sword. None were made perfectly identical, so to swap and change was madness - you needed to get to know, to appreciate , the blade you were given.
This particular gladius had a balance point that was ever so slightly forward of where it should be in the blade, making it ideal for forwards slashes and overhead swings - a trademark move which had helped her gain her name in this godsforsaken business.
The Gladiatrix curled, uncurled, and re-curled her fingers around the wood of the handle one final time. Her hand fit almost perfectly in the gap between crossguard and pommel, with the bulges in the centre fitting her smaller hands with ease. It would have been very, very simple to end up with a sword entirely too big for her.
The baying of the crowd finally reached her ears. A young, pale-looking and slightly emaciated young boy with bare feet and dirt in his hair came forward to point a greasy thumb over his shoulder at the gate behind him.
It’s time.
The half-rusted gate was the only source of light in the room. Around her, the dark sandstone pressed in, the already tiny walls shrinking even further in on themselves in the dark. The only blessing was how mercifully cool it was - none of the luxuries of wine or olives that the audience enjoyed would be afforded down here on the floor. Light pierced in from the gate, casting a grid of shadow on the floor. As she stepped into it, hopefully for the last time, she was reminded of how the bars of this prison had never been explicit, and had never been physical. She shook out her shoulders as the tiny boy raised the gate, sword hanging loosely in one hand, helmet dangling from the other, her shield braced against her side. The roar of the crowd only increased the higher the metal rose, and, as ever, it pulled her heart rate up with it. She slipped her helmet on over her head.
She stared out into the light and felt the last shreds of the woman she was disappear into the locked box she kept at the back of her mind. There was no place for personhood out there. This was the final part of the ritual: leaving the person behind and becoming fully the faceless brute so many of the ‘good’ people of Rome paid to see. Becoming the title: becoming the Gladiatrix.
Everything falls away as you step into the courtyard. As it had been hundreds of times before and as she could only hope it never would be again, she found herself alone but for the sand giving way under her sandals, the glint of the sun against her sword as she raised it to the gods, and the slow rising of the gate opposite her.
This was to be her final fight. Either she won and gained her freedom, or she was thrown into the same grave that she had been steadily sending others to since she was fifteen.
The gate across from her finally started to rise.
The TARDIS had never been a particular fan of going where she was told to, and she had never been a particular fan of Ancient Rome. There had been a couple of times that the Doctor had tried to wrangle her persistent and surprisingly stubborn (for a vehicle, anyway) ship into taking her to Rome, but the old girl had always diverted her to some sort of other crisis (see: the eruption of Vesuvius).
This was partly the reason that the Doctor so dearly wanted to go. It had been a long old few weeks - or had it been decades? - and she was starting to need a holiday. The promise of freshly baked flatbread, an expanse of open blue skies, the clamour of markets and some true human experiences like chickens milling about the streets was almost irresistible. The repeated redirection from the TARDIS also implied that it was relatively crisis-less, which was exactly what the Doctor ordered.
It could, also, however, mean that the ship was holding a grudge and just did not like Rome - but the first one was much more likely.
It actually wasn’t, but the Doctor was nothing if not an optimist.
On instinct, she stepped out of the TARDIS with her coat on, and came to regret it the instant the heat of Italy hit her right across the chest. She blew out a surprised huff, rooted around in her coat pockets for the important stuff - sonic, sunnies, psychic paper and bubblegum - before chucking her coat back into the TARDIS and heading further into the town.
Ancient Rome had been known throughout the Seven Systems for its more than adequate road building abilities, and for good reason. The stone underfoot was some of the best the Doctor, as a rock enthusiast, had ever seen, and she had to resist the urge to lick it to find out where abouts it was from. With an entire empire to use as sourcing - or, y’know, rob from , depending on your politics - the place always seemed impeccably well maintained. Hey, maybe that was how it managed to cling on for so long. The Doctor stuck out her tongue - nice, AD100. Only three hundred and seventy odd years ‘til the shops close.
The sun was hung watchfully in a pale blue sky, overlooking as he did the scurrying humans below. In older cities like this, life pushed up to the walls and didn’t keep anywhere near close to the same density beyond them - as soon as you got out of the city center you were faced with the oxen and goats kept by the farmers that tended the land just outside. Which meant that the heaving masses of people inside the gates rubbed shoulders almost day and night; and a city like this - the seat of an Empire that, at this point, straddled most of Europe, encircled the Mediterranean and had its name stamped on half the Middle East - did not stop to breathe. Between the high walls of buildings that formed tight alleyways, and underneath the awnings, was life itself: squeezed into the gaps between vendors trying to encourage you to buy their eggs was the disgruntled clucks of the chickens that laid them. There was that human experience. Rammed into shopfronts and doorways were men in belted togas and soldiers in full armour, conversing loudly, and one wrong turn would take you into an alleyway down which you’d be forced to witness two youths snogging.
It was alive, and ever so human.
The air shimmered, and you couldn't walk down an street without rubbing shoulders with eight people, and you could barely stop to listen to your own thoughts as you were assailed by the smell of fresh honey and wood and the sound of the children’s laughter - but it was that acrid, bitter kind of peacefulness that you only feel when everything around you is utter chaos.
The Doctor was just about to go and investigate this new world as it continued on through an archway when she felt a solid, calloused hand wrap itself around her arm. As she turned around to face the person behind her, she was met with the heavy stench of leather and sweat; the guards from earlier had detached themselves from their perch in the doorway and had come, together, to take her - where, exactly?
No matter how politely she asked, they refused to tell her: the first man’s hand never wavered from its grip on her upper arm and nor did the point of the second man’s sword move from between her shoulder blades as they half-pushed, half-dragged her across the dusty cobblestones. The Doctor found herself wholly wishing that she’d had the foresight to keep her coat on - there was a yo-yo in the top pocket that could have been really helpful in this situation.