TW: Gladiators, arenas, blood, gore, fighting, death, nightmares, guilt
9 years ago
Marcella stood in the ring, standing over the bleeding body of her most recent opponent, a cheetah hybrid. Her head was bashed in, an ear was missing, and her wrist was hanging on by a thread. Two weeks ago.
She stood over the bear hybrid, not much older than her, begging for mercy as she struck him down with the fighting staff she had been instructed to use that day. Five days ago.
She hovered over the almost unrecognizable mound of flesh that used to be the butterfly hybrid she had fought, wings mangled and hanging limp behind him as he raised a hand in a futile attempt to protect his face. Yesterday.
She pressed the knife into the neck of the avian hybrid, whispering a solemn apology before swiping the knife across her throat, mourning what were surely once beautiful pine green wings, now marked with dried blood and bent in ways they weren't supposed to. That one had really hurt to do. That morning.
Mare couldn't get the images out of her head, all the faces of her victims bleeding together and forming one large nightmare that haunted her every moment.
She would huddle in the corner of the cell some days, sometimes crying into Techno's shoulder. Nightmares were a constant occurrence, it was rare she went a night without waking from them, though she could usually go without waking Techno with her screaming more than once a week.
She hated the fact that she was forced into this life, where her only light was Techno, always at her side. She hated when the crowd cheered her name, hated how the blood coated her skin and under her nails, hated the lives that were placed in her hands each day, and hated that she always inevitably tore those lives apart.
And that was the worst part. No matter how many times she told herself she would resist and not fight, at least try to talk her opponent out of fighting, she never did.
Always she silently stalked into the ring with whatever weapon they chose for her that day, or maybe none at all, and always she walked out, blood on her clothes and another soul felled by her hand.
Always she thought of an excuse as to why she wouldn't let her opponent live and fell her instead, be the greater person.
Sometimes it was the fact that Techno was still untrained and relied heavily on his instincts to get him through a fight, which would inevitably get him killed.
Sometimes it was the possibility of escape around the corner, the hope that a guard would slip up and leave their door unlocked.
Sometimes it was the need to make sure the other person didn't have death on their hands, guilt weighing down their shoulders.
She was selfish. Selfish for keeping herself alive before all others. Selfish for killing those who begged for mercy, for relenting to the pain she was always rewarded with when she tried to resist.
Surely she was being selfish.
Right?
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Gladiator
FanfictionWhat if Technoblade was a gladiator as a child? What if a younger girl taught him to fight? What if this is the story of the two of them, a pair of fighters stolen from their homes as children, only to be eternally connected by fate? This is complet...
