#lucius gladiator

Lucius Verus x Aelia (healer at the colosseum)

warnings: angst, fluff, violence, maybe some cursing??

A/n: Hey guys! Ik it’s been months since I’ve written anything but so much has been going on and I haven’t had the time to do any writings but I’m back ! I just watched gladiator 2 yesterday and loved it (and Paul) so yall already know I had to make this one! Lmk if you guys want a series for this! I’ve been debating but I can’t decide lol. Anyways yes I’m back and enjoy this fic!

The overbearing heat of the sun was so intense that her eyes could barely open, sweat dripping down from her head to her brows then onto the ground. Her sweat hydrated the ground of the colosseum more than rain ever could. Her breaths were getting heavier and the crowds antics and cheers were becoming more deafening.

Gladiators. Her mom and dad. Two of the most bravest, honorable people she knew, had to fight against the worst, most dangerous gladiator of them all. And she had to watch. Her mother and father had gotten into some trouble by senate, which was at the time ran with almost full force of the emperor, and they were forced to fight in the death oval (what Aelia called it).

The senate figured out they had a daughter and forced her to watch. In the senators watch box. They tied her down to a chair in the front row of the box and made her watch everything.

Her mother and father told her to always be strong and keep a positive mind. But how was she supposed to in a situation like this? She looked down at her necklace, the one her parents prepared for her before she was born. It was always a little too big on her as a kid.

Seeing that necklace made her want to cry. She internally knew what was going to happen, even if she didn’t want to admit it to herself.

But she remembered what her father preached to her about being brave. She was always told by her parents that they would get out of there some day and live a peaceful life. That was a lie.

Her heart pounded so fast she thought it might burst. Below, her mother and father clashed swords with the gladiator, their movements desperate yet determined. For a moment, it seemed they might win. Until her father was thrown into the wall.

She screamed. “PAPA!”

His body slumped to the ground, lifeless.

She wailed in agony.

Her mother turned to her at the box and mouthed “I love you Aelia” she was impaled by the blade of the enemy and fell to the ground.

“NO!” “MAMA!” She was mad, hurt, and afraid.

Aelia sat in the chair, feeling numb and undetermined, as the desensitized crowd cheered at her parent’s bodies getting dragged out of the colosseum.

After the crowd left, she was still in the chair.

She heard footsteps approach from behind her.

“Do you see what happens when people defy me?” The emperor yelled in her face.

He came all the way down from his box just to yell in a girl’s face. He was a horrible man.

Aelia already crying just cried more. But this time not a screaming cry just silently.

He grinned, his voice cold and sharp. He mimicked Aelia’s mother’s death, driving an imaginary sword into his gut and stumbling dramatically. “Just like that. Gone.”

Aelia’s nails dug into her palms. She pulled at the ropes until her wrists burned, but it was no use. She refused to look at him, her body shaking with fury.

He laughed and walked off. “Guards!” The guards untied the ropes from Aelia’s wrists and ankles and dragged her all the way out of the colosseum, she didn’t really even notice that she was being put out.

She was in so much pain, mentally and physically, she didn’t even care what would happen to her now. She was left outside the colosseum like she was trash, like she was nothing.

She lay on the ground for what felt like days, and as the night was taking over day, her eyes were closing more and more. Cheeks dry from the tears that streamed down.

“Child.” The voice was soft yet stable.

She looked up, blinking through her tears. A woman knelt before her, older, with graying hair tied back and calloused hands that smelled faintly of herbs.

“Leave me alone,” Aelia whispered, her voice cracked.

The woman didn’t leave. Instead, she reached into a pouch at her waist and pulled out a small vial. “Drink this.” When Aelia hesitated, she added, “It’s for the pain. You’re bleeding.”

Aelia glanced down at her wrists, the raw, skin stinging. She took the vial and sipped. It was bitter, but the throbbing in her wrists began to dull.

“Who are you?” Aelia asked.

“Call me Iona,” the woman said. “I’m a healer. And I think you could use someone to teach you how to survive.”

~~~~~

Present Day

“Aelia! We need more vials! And more cots!”

The shout echoed through the cramped, chaotic healer’s station. Aelia didn’t look up, her focus locked on the gladiator before her. His leg was torn open, blood spilling onto the table like a river. Her hands worked quickly, needle glinting in the dim light as she stitched the wound closed.

The necklace around her neck—once her parent’s promise of love to her, now her anchor, thumped softly against her chest with each movement. She barely noticed it anymore, its weight a part of her now.

“I wish someone like you would always work on me,” the gladiator slurred, his lips curling into a lopsided grin.

Aelia glanced up briefly, smiling despite herself. The drug they gave him was already doing its job, dulling his pain and loosening his tongue. “Thank you,” she said lightly. “That’s very sweet of you.”

He chuckled weakly, his head lolling to one side. “You’re an angel. A goddess.”

She bit back a laugh, tying off the last stitch and pressing a fresh bandage over the wound. “I’m just a healer. And you’re just delirious.”

He chuckled and her assistant walked the gladiator off back to his cell.

The station door slammed open, the heavy wood cracking against the wall. Aelia’s head shot up, her heart skipping a beat. A gladiator stumbled in, his face pale and his arm drenched in blood.

“Help him!” someone shouted from behind.

Aelia’s assistant, a young girl barely out of her teens, rushed forward but stopped short, her hands shaking. Aelia quickly pushed past her, her voice sharp. “Lay him down here!”

The injured man staggered to the nearest cot, blood dripping onto the floor. His breathing was ragged, his eyes wild with pain. Aelia grabbed a cloth, pressing it to the wound. The cut was deep—too deep for anything less than immediate care.

“Hold this,” she ordered the assistant, who obeyed without question, though her hands still trembled.

She turned back to the gladiator, her tone steady but urgent. “This is going to hurt. A lot.”

Then, as she started working, he looked up at her, his gaze locking with hers. His expression was fierce, but there was something else there—a hint of weariness that didn’t belong to the typical gladiator she treated.

“I’m Lucius,” he rasped, his voice rough from the pain. “And you’re the one who keeps all of us alive down here.”

Aelia paused, glancing up at him. Lucius. She of course knew he was a gladiator, but she had never expected to treat him. Knowing that he was one of the best upcoming gladiators the colosseum had ever seen. She felt like she knew that name even be for this. Before he was a known name around the colosseum.

Even though everyone is human, he always seemed not human sometimes. The way he fought it was like nothing she had ever seen.

“I do my best,” she replied with a nod, working to stop the blood flow. “Stay with me, Lucius.”

“What’s your name?” he asked, his eyes never leaving hers.

Aelia hesitated for a moment. It was rare for a gladiator to ask for something personal from her, and usually, she didn’t share such details. “Aelia.”

He gave a small smile, despite the pain in his features. “Aelia. Beautiful name for a healer.”

She concentrated on his wound, not acknowledging his compliment. “This will take a while. You’re going to feel a lot of pain.”

He chuckled, a weak sound. “Pain is what I know best.”

After she finished patching him up, it was night time and she had to clean up everything. Aelia wss so tired she felt like collapsing against the wall.

Lucius got up from the cot and stood up.

You’re strong,” Lucius says softly, his gaze heavy with respect.

Aelia lets out a sigh. “I have to be. I don’t have a choice.”

“It’s more than that,” he replies, “Strength isn’t just about surviving. It’s about not giving in to the system... even when it’s crushing you from the inside.”

Aelia finally un-tensed, the tightness in her shoulders loosening as she gazed into Lucius’s eyes. There was a rawness to them, a mixture of pain and strength that made her heart ache. For a long moment, she could only look at him, as though trying to understand the person behind the fighter.

“You have striking eyes,” she said softly, her voice barely more than a whisper.

Lucius blinked, taken aback by the unexpected compliment. His lips quirked into a faint smile. “Thank you,” he replied, his voice low, almost surprised.

He then shifted on the floor, his body leaning against the stone wall as he sat beside her. For a few moments, the two of them shared the quiet—something rare in the chaos of the colosseum’s healer station. Aelia couldn't help but notice how his presence seemed to fill the space around them, like a force of nature. There was a certain energy to him; brave, broken, yet undeniably powerful.

She glanced at him again, her thoughts drifting. It was as if he’d stepped out of one of those ancient tales her mother used to tell her as a child, those stories of gods and warriors, larger than life.

Except Lucius was no myth. He was real. And he was sitting beside her, in the quiet aftermath of a battle, just a man.

"I never thought I’d be sitting here, talking with a gladiator," she said, breaking the silence. Her voice was gentle but held an edge of wonder, a quiet admission.

Lucius chuckled, the sound warm, though a hint of sadness lingered in his tone. "Most people don’t, I suppose." His eyes softened, though there was still a distant look in them, as though something heavy was pressing on his mind. "I’m not much for small talk, but I’m not always the monster they make me out to be either."

Aelia nodded, a faint smile playing at the corners of her lips. “I know. There’s always more to the story, isn’t there? It’s just hard to see it sometimes.”

"Yeah, it is," he agreed quietly. He leaned back, his shoulders relaxing against the cold stone of the wall. “But you, Aelia... you don’t just see the surface, do you? You’re not like the others who pass by, not really caring. You see people. That’s a rare thing around here.”

Aelia felt her heart beat a little faster at the sincerity in his words. She wasn’t used to being seen that way, not in the colosseum. Not by anyone who truly mattered.

She looked away for a moment, trying to steady her racing thoughts. "Maybe it’s because I understand what it feels like... to lose someone you love. To be forced into a life you don’t want."

Lucius was silent for a long moment, his gaze focused somewhere far off in the distance. “I know what that feels like too,” he murmured. Then he turned to her, his eyes soft but firm. “But we fight. We keep going, even when it seems like we don’t have a choice.”

Aelia felt a lump form in her throat at the weight of his words. She nodded, her voice a little more fragile than she intended when she responded. "Yeah. I suppose we do."

The two sat in quiet understanding for a while, the connection between them growing despite the silence. The world outside seemed a little less harsh, a little less overwhelming, as long as they were together in that moment.

Pairing: Lucius x Nemesis reader

Warnings: mentions of death and murder.

Tagging: @amoexii

Summary: Lucius gets help from a source unknown to him, it makes him wary of the source…yet there is no one to trust except himself and the source…

.

.

.

Decimus Aelius Meridius Meridianus Maximus — I did not notice until recently that Maximus is announced as “Aelius Maximus” in the first movie when he enters the arena to fight the veteran gladiator, but it works perfectly because the family name (nomen) is the only one he was missing. I also discovered that “Meridius” is supposed to mean either “from Merida, Spain” or “from the south”, which is cool. Although actually, now that I’m checking, it should probably be “Meridianus” instead

Lucius Aurelius Verus — this one wouldn’t even have been that hard to get right, just an easy switch. Ironically, “Verus” actually came from Marcus Aurelius’s side of the Antonine tree while “Commodus” was from Lucius Verus’s. There was a lot of name switching going on to integrate the two (really three, but actually like four) families. I suppose in the movie they wanted to distinguish Lucius from his dad though, not that it makes a difference since his father is only ever referred to as “Lucius Verus”, as he’s commonly known, and nothing more

"You could never please me as he could," she spoke softly and instead of looking into his blue and waiting eyes, the young girl looked into the candles burning beneath the small wooden figures of Jupiter. Lucius staggered, his thoughts unclear. "You know what he is and what he will be," he replied quietly and stepped closer. The rising wind made the candles tremble.

She raised her hands, silenced him and pressed her lips together. "You'd be willing to watch me die in the arena?" he asked, taking her hand in his.