...because I could not stop for death - ronance

chapter 2

81 AD

Rome, Italy

            Robin is grateful for humans' aptitude towards violence. Mortals are such interesting creatures, they have such little time to live and yet they insist on cutting it even shorter, whether it be through war or just sheer stupidity.

            They think the gladiator fights are a mixture of both.

            With over two thousand years of training under Robin's belt, they are by far the deadliest warrior in the Colosseum.

The only thing is they can’t die.

            Which is a serious problem when they have a spear through their stomach and Robin should be long dead. Except Robin never is, and they have to keep an eye out for anyone who notices it.

            Granted Robin does have to wait for their wounds to heal, just like a mortal and they scar. But they do not age and they doesn’t die, and all it takes is one person to notice it and Robin will be stoned and thrown out of town. (God, they hate being stoned. Once Robin had a particularly nasty rock to the head and they had to wait months before they could go back out in public, their face was that deformed.).    

            Robin's fighting two tigers and three gladiators when they see it.

            Robin's sure it’s a trick of the light to begin with, as it’s just a flash in the crowd. But then they see it again, and then again. And then they barely managed to avoid a spear to the neck only to get too close to the tiger and feel it’s claws dig into their back. Robin lets out a shout of pain and whirls around, driving their sword into the beast’s jugular. Then they look up and Robin's heart stops.

Because the glint isn’t a trick of the sunlight, and her hair glows brown so much more when it isn’t muddy with the water of the Nile.

            She is older now, sixteen or seventeen, maybe eighteen at oldest. Most of her hair is covered in a shawl, but then the sun would hit it just right and the little bit that is visible would catch the light.

            Her eyes lock with Robin's, the same stormy grey, and for a moment they swear she remembers. But then she opens her mouth and yells something Robin doesn’t hear while pointing behind them.

            Dropping to the ground, they barely avoid being decapitated (they don't know how they’d survive that one and they have no desire to find out). They fight much more quickly than they normally would, showcasing a bit more of their ability than Robin would like to, just so that they can be finished and find the girl that Robin had met on the banks of the Nile almost nine hundred years before.

            When Robin has won the battle, they looks for her in the crowd, but she’s disappeared. The gashes on their back are throbbing and they have an arrowhead lodged in their bicep as well as a gash in their calf. Robin stumbles to their knees, the crowd roaring their name.

   “Achillea!, Achillea!, Achillea!"

            But it’s not Robin's real name.

            It’s never Robin's real name.

            Two men run out into the arena and slip their arms over their shoulders, but not before Robin raises their sword to the crowd. They all go wild. It’s their screams of excitement that give Robin the strength not to just pass out in the sand.