Work Text:
"You have a new scar." His hand floated over Lacerta's shoulder while undoing the straps connected to his cape. "Watching me very carefully, Dareus?" Lacerta turned his head slightly ajar from its original position, his right eye meeting both of the Centurion's. "Not careful enough. Where did this scar present itself?" Finally, his index and middle fingers grazed the short scar, enticing a sharp inhale, not by pain, but by surprise. "My Legate, Caesar has his Praetorians, but who do you have to watch over you?" Lacerta found this interesting that this Centurion was offering to be his very own, his 'Praetorian' so to speak. "Dareus, do you assume I need protection?" He heard the taller man quietly groan behind him in frustration. "No, my Legate."
Lacerta chuckled at the Centurion's response. "No, of course not," he shook his head, not turning to look at his loyal Centurion. "I can protect myself well enough." He could practically hear Dareus rolling his eyes from behind him, and couldn't help the amusement that filled him. This was their routine after every battle; Dareus would insist that Lacerta was not well enough protected, and Lacerta would brush him off, both of them refusing to acknowledge the tension that filled the air whenever they were alone like this.
Lacerta felt the warmth of Dareus’s breath against his neck as the centurion lingered too close, fingers still tracing the ridge of new scar tissue along his shoulder—a souvenir from a skirmish at the edge of the divide, where blades clashed under moonlight and betrayal tasted like iron in the air. The wound had been shallow, but not clean. A glancing strike from a false Caesar’s man—one who thought himself blessed by divine right, when he bore only cowardice and delusion.
“The scars are fresh,” Dareus murmured again, voice low like thunder held back behind stone. There was reproach in it—quiet, simmering—and Lacerta exhaled through his nose.
“You weren’t supposed to be there,” he said coolly. “You were guarding the rear flank, and yet you went forward alone.” Dareus finally pulled back slightly, stepping around to face him now that most of the armor had been removed and draped over a nearby stand by silent attendants who knew better than to speak in their presence. His white-streaked face gleamed with sweat beneath torchlight; eyes dark with something more than duty.
“I didn’t go alone,” Lacerta corrected softly as he turned fully now, bare-chested save for strips of bloodied cloth wrapped tight around his shoulder and ribs—"but I chose my blade-brothers carefully." He looked up at Daerus—the man was taller even without boots on sandaled feet—and let a slow smirk curl one corner of his mouth. "You think I need your shadow on every battlefield?"
"I think," Daerus began carefully—deliberately stepping closer until they stood barely an arm's length apart—"that Caesar built an empire on loyalty tempered by fear... but you lead through solitude masked as strength." He lifted a hand again—not touching this time—but hovered it just above where fresh blood threatened to seep through bandages once more. "That is how men die unnoticed."
Lacerta stilled.
No one spoke to him this way—not unless they sought punishment or death—but Dareus wasn't speaking out of rebellion… nor ambition. It was concern carved into discipline; devotion wrapped in restraint.
A beat passed where neither moved—only watched each other across that fragile line between soldier and something profound neither dared name.
He studied Dareus, truly studied him, as if seeing beyond the white-painted mask and blood-soaked armor into whatever raw thing beat beneath. The silence stretched like a bowstring pulled taut.
Slowly—deliberately—Lacerta reached up and took hold of Dareus’s wrist.
Not to push him away.
Not to strike. Instead, he pulled that hovering hand down and press it flat against his chest—over his heart. Beneath layers of dried blood and sweat-dampened linen, Dareus could feel the rhythm: strong, steady… alive. Too alive for someone who courted death so openly. "You speak as though I fear dying," Lacerta said softly—not in anger, but wonder. "But it is not death I avoid… it is irrelevance."
His voice dropped lower, almost intimate in its gravity. "Caesar fell not because he was weak—but because he became symbol before he was man. A name on lips instead of a hand with a sword." He tightened his grip slightly around Daerus’s wrist. "I will never let that happen to me."