"You have a fight in the morning." She said breathlessly between the kisses that trailed down her skin, her neck, leaving every inch of her shivering as she belied her own words. "We have to stop." Her protest was weak and her hands already intertwined in soft black hair, holding the other girl's head to her, tighter with each growing second, each delicate ministration that sent her climbing higher. Her nipples were pebbled hard beneath callused fingers, deceptively soft in its touch, deft and skilled.

"Tell me to stop." Was the gruff response in the dark, the words whispered between her thighs and melting into her skin. "Command me."

They said that gladiators had the appetites of beasts. Ty Lee wouldn't know. They had never had such easy labels for themselves, words like master and slave being as far off as the land that Zula had come from, distant and foreign. She couldn't remember all the times she had asked for gifts from her father, only to be denied. But she remembered precisely the day he had given her the dusky-haired girl from his stocks, the most prized of all his fighters, chained and with eyes so full of venom.

She was an unsolicited gift that had appalled Ty Lee and made her refuse almost as soon as she could overcome her dismay. But safety was a primary concern in the provinces for young girls far from Rome, and principle gave way to necessity, which when coupled with time, gave birth to tenuous friendship.

And something else, if Ty Lee were honest. But it was one thing for masters to have slaves attend to their pleasures, and another thing entirely to rely on them for things they couldn't give.

One time, in defiance of her father's wishes, and brimming with a foolishness to know more about the mysterious girl who shadowed her steps by day, and wrote script for her by night, Ty Lee had disguised herself and slipped into the stands of the arena. She had never seen so much blood, never mind the butchered bodies, the smell and steam that met the air whenever another slave's guts were spilled onto the arena floor, purple and pink snakes that mucked the sand. By the time Zula had appeared in the ring, Ty Lee's stomach had been churning with revulsion and nausea and it was everything she could do to keep herself from openly shaking.

The fight had been over in an instant, but in reality had felt like a slow eternity. Each flurry from Zula's sword was a blur to her eye, but every cut, every blow that struck back was felt all too keenly. In a moment, it was all over, and Ty Lee's scream when Zula lifted the man's head to the crowd was neither of horror nor relief, but something in between, drowning into the roar of a thousand people.

That night (stupid and naïve as she was) she had worriedly asked Zula if she ever thought of giving up fighting.

"I have to win my freedom from your father somehow." She had snapped back so viciously that Ty Lee had nearly dropped the ice pack she had been holding to Zula's bleeding, bruised temple.

"You stupid girl, you don't know anything." The vice-like grip that had taken hold of her wrist forced her to drop the bandages and sewing kit. She gasped when she felt their bodies press together, her heart hammering a thousand beats a minute when she saw the anger in Zula's eyes, her fear evaporating when she saw the sadness. "You don't know anything." Zula whispered when she lowered her head and kissed her.

She saw her sometimes in the training yard, when she could duck her father's guards long enough to be alone in a house that was a strange to her as it was to Zula. She would see the dark-haired girl standing in scant armor, fighting off one sparring opponent and the next with wooden swords, the tanned bronze of her skin catching the sun whichever way she moved. And then there were moment of stillness, of rest between practices where she saw Zula staring off beyond the gates, her eyes far away and dreaming.

Where will you go? She wanted to ask, her voice frozen in her throat as her fingers around the bars of the slave compound.

Will you take me with you? She thought again, her hands making fists in the bed sheets, her back arching, pressing herself against every stroke of Zula's tongue.

"Inside." Ty Lee begged, and Zula was unusually obedient in how swiftly she climbed onto the bed to comply.

Ty Lee had to turn her face and bite her lip to keep from moaning. Their lovemaking was rougher here than before, the bed frame complaining with every movement, every thrust deeper into Ty Lee that drove her higher, that filled her so impossibly full that she lost the point where she ended and Zula began. The other girl was towering over her, an arm braced to anchor them together, uncomplaining at Ty Lee's fingernails scrabbled down her naked back.

"Zu-Zula," Ty Lee pleaded, sounding piteous and wretched although her voice grew louder and surer. "I-I'm…"

Her words hadn't mattered. As if on cue, as if Zula had been riding a wave of her own in sync with each shallow breath, each quake from Ty Lee's body, she crushed their lips together, leave bruises and marks where otherwise would have been a scream. Ty Lee whimpered, hips bucking as Zula's fingers curled and sent her hurtling, soaring from the peak of a long-held precipice. This time, just the same as all the others that came before, Ty Lee allowed herself to forget about propriety and the culturing of proper ladies, and thought only of the soft braids in Zula's hair and golden eyes that looked (and so rarely) content.

They held each other for a long while, neither willing to say the first word that would signal Zula's departure. The urgency and hastening that had marred their intimacy hadn't gone unnoticed by Ty Lee, and its implications were a stone in her chest.

"You'll come back tomorrow right?" She asked the question every time, and each time unsure. In her mind, she was asking something else.

"Go to sleep, Tilivia." Zula said softly instead, pulling her cloak around her as she braced herself for the cold night air and the long walk back to the barracks.

Not for the first time since Zula came into her room, Ty Lee wondered about the life Zula had left behind, the life she had been enslaved from, if fighting was all she had ever known or if she had been a farmer or a scholar, if she had anyone waiting for her somewhere beyond Rome, a family or parents or maybe even a wife. It kept her awake long after Zula had gone, looking into the dark hallway that she had disappeared into, trying to recall the shape of her back, the curve of her lips, and her fast-fading touch like rain on parched, scorched earth.