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Duro was fourteen when the fever hit.
Duro was fourteen and Agron was sixteen and there was one sister, Adelais, in between who'd spoiled Duro rotten until he stopped being a baby and letting her dress him up and another baby was born and their father'd been dead six months.
Agron was sixteen, and was just learning how to be the patriarch of his family and how to be himself, and to show Duro how to do the same and he wasn't entirely sure what he was doing half the time or even half of that and Duro caught a fever.
At first, Agron hadn't known what to do. It'd started when they were out in the fields, tending to the small group of sheep they had – a task that Agron hoped to largely pass on to Duro soon because the younger of the two was by far the gentler, and Agron wanted to see him far from the battle field that'd claimed their father's life, and would probably claim Agron's own one day.
“Agron, I don't feel well.” Duro'd complained, when Agron sent him round to gather a lamb who was beginning to wander from the fold. It was only about a quarter of the way across the field, but Duro'd given him a look complete with great brown eyes, and Agron'd been absolutely certain that Duro was faking. Duro liked to fake sick to get out of work.
“Well, maybe if you weren't so full of shit you'd feel better.” Agron'd replied, shaking his head a couple of times before jerking it off in the direction of the sheep. “Go get him, or we'll have to skin you instead, come winter.” It was spring and hardly cold at all, but Duro's teeth were chattering. Agron was so caught up in the ram who had a rock wedged in his hoof that he didn't even notice.
By the time he did notice, Duro'd carried the lamb back over and set it down beside him with an incredibly sarcastic sort of snort, and Agron'd looked up and his heart'd nearly jumped out of his chest.
He'd never seen Duro look so lifeless.
His cheeks were pale, and almost grey, and his eyes – which usually danced with a now accepted sort of mischief – were dead and barren and Agron was struck very suddenly by memories of his father as they'd carried him home to them. He'd been alive most of the way home, but it'd been a fever from a wound that took him, and they'd not properly gotten a chance to close his eyes before they arrived at their little hut. Agron and Duro'd been out front, tanning the fur of a recent deer they'd killed, and Agron'd run over to greet his father, even if it was clear from where he'd stood that the man was injured, and had nearly fallen to his knees when he saw him.
The only thing that'd kept him standing was that he'd had to spin around and catch Duro, spinning the younger boy around and pointing him back towards the house, and told him to go get their mother, and there was a smudge of blood on their father's forehead almost identical to where there was a smudge of dirt on Duro's now, and Agron thought that his heart had completely jumped out of his chest.
“Duro, you fucking idiot! Why didn't you tell me you were sick?”
“I tried, fuck face.” Duro replied, but there wasn't any heat in it, and that'd only scared Agron more, and even though the boy was nearly as big as him because Agron was growing awkwardly and was more limb than muscle right now, he'd carried him back to their house at a trot and laid him down in the bed that the two of them shared and tucked him in under the covers.
By the time their mother came home that evening from her runs to sell the goat cheese she made, Duro was in a state somewhere between waking and sleeping and Agron was planted beside the bed, his brother's hand in his own and offering up whispered prayers to every single god he knew. Their gods. Gallic gods. Roman gods. Norse gods. Any of them that might possibly be willing to hear his prayers.
It was no good.
The fever raged on for a week and a half. Adelais and Gisila were sent to stay with a neighbor, and his mother stayed with them as often as she could, but Agron refused to leave Duro's side. He crawled up into bed with him on occasion, and pulled him into his lap and told him stories about the heroes of old. He let Duro sleep with his head against his chest, and watched as his breath rose and fell in his chest and he hushed him and rocked him when the pain and inability to get comfortable enough to sleep when he felt so bad that all he wanted to do was sleep caused Duro to begin sobbing.
His heart broke for his brother.
His baby brother, who was so full of life, and so fun, and who looked so little all tucked alone in the bed, overwhelmed by blankets and sheets and furs in an effort to sweat the fever out of him. His baby brother who was so much better than he was. Who could make people laugh, and was kind-hearted and full of life, and maybe just as prideful but who was really completely innocent.
About eight days into it, Agron'd been going to the well to gather water, and had caught a glimpse of his reflection. His hair stood on end, and was beginning to separate at the top into different sections, and out of some absent-minded sixteen year old impulse, he'd stopped for a bit, because he felt like he was drowning in that house, watching Duro waste away and not being able to do anything for him, and twisted the bits of hair until they were tight knots. It was a fidgety sort of action, one that was forgotten almost as soon as it was completed, and he continued gathering water.
Or at least it was forgotten until he walked back in the house, and Duro saw him, and for the first time in over a week, he heard what had to be the most beautiful fucking sound in a world filled with piss and shit.
He heard Duro laughing.
“You look like an idiot.”
And Agron might've been offended, but Duro was laughing, and he couldn't even be assed to care about the insult, and he'd just grinned in a way that lit up his entire body and made him look almost younger than he was and dropped the bucket of water to the floor, spilling half of it so that he could pounce on the bed with his younger brother. “I look better than you will, when I get done with you!” He cowed, practically reeling inside to have heard Duro's laughter. And again he pulled his brother into his lap, Duro's thin little back resting against his chest that wasn't much broader, and he'd twisted Duro's hair into the same sort of knots.
“There. Now we match. Asshole.” He informed him. But Duro was still grinning, and Agron wasn't at all mad. The fever'd broken that night, and Duro continued getting better, even if it took four more days before he was really up and going again, and Agron'd gone to wash the knots out of his hair, because he was sixteen and he was concerned with looking good and impressing people, but it'd been the first time the two of them had bathed together and Duro reached out to stop him.
“Then we won't match anymore.” He'd said, and his voice'd nearly sounded as weak as it had when he was sick. It had nothing to do with illness though, and everything to do with the fact that Agron was his big brother, and was changing so quickly with his hormones and his new role in the family and Duro was scared that maybe he'd lose him and that maybe if he wasn't sick Agron wouldn't stay around him so much, because that's what people did when they got older, just like Adelias had.
Agron'd left them alone.
Because he would always be there for his little brother.
It wasn't until Duro died that he'd cut them off. A couple of the other gladiators noticed, and made comments about his new hairstyle, and Agron'd said something about mourning, and let them think that cutting their hair was a cultural thing among his people, because Agron would keep that secret for himself. He would keep Duro's fear of being abandoned by Agron as he had been their father to himself. He would keep the memory of that day in the river, where they bathed together for the first time in a week and a half and splashed about in the water and Duro caught him off-guard and pulled him under and revealed so much more weakness to him than he'd ever intended to himself, a secret part of his memory that would forever be to raw to share.
It just seemed silly to keep them then.
After all, he'd broken his promise.
He'd let Duro down.
And so he'd shaved off the locks that'd bound them together. And from that day on, while he might've let his hair grow wild, and even let it come closer to what the style had once been, he never twisted his hair in knots again. The knots belonged to Duro and him, and without Duro, they were nothing but the mark of an empty, failed promise.