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Egypt has need of a girl with a chakram, but after she’s been there a while, Gabrielle thinks they got sent the wrong one.
The chakram always flies straight and true, its sound filling her ears over and above the chaos of whatever fray she’s in. It always returns, and her heart always beats faster until she has it in her grasp again. Sometimes she wonders what would happen if it didn’t come back, and she was left without its weight on her hip to remind her.
The heat of the south warms her bones, but Xena’s memory at her side isn’t enough to warm her soul. Sun and sand have little appeal when her bed is empty at night, and her mornings are filled with bitter disappointment as her dreams fade away. Worse are the nightmares, when she wakes to a soft touch on her face and Xena’s voice in her ears, “They’ll get better, Gabrielle, just give it time.”
Time, she has. Guiding herself through it is the struggle. The Amazons are across an ocean or more, her family as far from her as they’ve ever been, and the only friend she has is a touch from hands that no-one else can see. Xena should have the answers, but Gabrielle’s problems are of this world, and Xena is not.
--
Four men die when Gabrielle encounters a slave ship, and many more lie bleeding on the road after she’s escorted the girls home. The village is grateful enough to offer Gabrielle hospitality for as long as she wants it.
It’s been more months than she can count since she started wandering out here. She accepts, and spends the first evening by herself on a sand dune, looking out over the desert as the setting sun lights the sand in soft colours. Clutching her knees to her chest, she presses her forehead against them and clenches her eyes shut.
It’s peaceful, but it won’t last. Soon she’ll move on, and the fight will go with her. She doesn’t seek it out, or at least she doesn’t think she does. It’s harder without Xena at her back. She’s trying, but she’s tired, so tired - of the violence, of not being able to avoid it, of not knowing how to stop it once it’s started.
“Xena,” she whispers. It’s a plea to gods who don’t exist any more, and couldn’t do anything even if they did.
There’s a hand on her back, soft against her skin, rubbing slowly over the lines of the dragon there. Gabrielle knows that if she were to lean sideways, her head would find Xena’s shoulder, and she could rest for a while.
“Gabrielle,” the answer comes back, a murmur filled with sorrow.
Guilt mixes with the shame Gabrielle feels, causing her friend so much pain when she should be resting peacefully.
“Hey.” Xena’s voice strengthens, and a hand on her cheek brings her head up and around, to look into blue eyes that blaze with something Gabrielle sometimes forgets can exist with such intensity. “Don’t even start blaming yourself for this. It is not your fault.”
A small smile quirks on Gabrielle’s face. The dead can hear your thoughts. Xena knew them just by looking when she was alive anyway. “I can’t… I don’t know what to do, Xena.”
“Go home,” Xena says.
“Home? My family barely know me, the Amazons wouldn’t have me now, and you’re dead.”
“But Eve isn’t.”
When Xena pulls Gabrielle to her, Gabrielle buries her face in Xena’s neck. Hot tears spill, and she wonders if she can face the girl whose mother she didn’t save, whose path is so different from the one that Gabrielle finds so hard to veer from.
--
The journey is mercifully free of trouble, a calm ship with passengers who leave Gabrielle to herself, and a cabin big enough for her to practice the steadying motions of Tai Chi.
“See,” Xena murmurs, as her hands lift Gabrielle’s foot slightly, helping her stretch to the fullest extent. “You can do it.”
“It’s not much of an achievement when there’s no-one around to cause trouble, Xena.”
“You’re here, and you’re doing just fine.”
She just has to keep it that way.
Once ashore, Gabrielle forgoes food and rest in favour of a horse, and sets out for Eve’s camp. It takes just over five days to get there, resting only for as long as the horse needs to sleep, while Gabrielle sleeps in fits and starts that are eased only slightly by the brush of a touch on her forehead.
As she gets closer to the camp, her dreams turn to nightmares where she wasn’t able to defeat Varia to save Eve’s life, and Xena had fought only to lose, standing broken and howling as the verdict was carried out.
She wakes one morning with a scream stuck in her throat, raging at the injustice of it all. Xena’s hands on her shoulders push her back down, and still her wildly swinging arms with a firm grasp. Collapsing against the ground, Gabrielle shuts her eyes against the dark head above her, and fights not to shake Xena off.
“Xena,” she murmurs. “How many people did Eve kill when she was Livia?”
The hands stop, lift. When Gabrielle opens her eyes, she’s staring up at the canopy of leaves above again.
With grim determination, she gets up, and whistles for the horse.
--
Despite everything, for one small moment, Gabrielle is afraid that Eve won’t welcome her. She grips the reins of the horse tightly as Eve walks towards her, dress trailing through the dust and stirring it around her feet. Then Eve reaches out, and Gabrielle can’t let go of the reins fast enough.
It’s a good thing that Eve is stronger than she looks, because as Gabrielle holds the living, breathing woman she helped raise, her knees shake and her head swims. Her trip to the ground is slowed by Eve, who kneels with her, and dips her head to meet Gabrielle’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Gabrielle says hoarsely. “I…”
The words won’t come, but Eve is wise enough to guess at them now. “You and my mother both need some sense knocking into you sometimes,” she says.
Gabrielle chokes out a laugh, and wipes away the tears that she won’t let fall, not now. “Yeah,” she agrees. “I don’t know how you’re going to manage that though.”
“We’ll talk about that later.”
Exhausted from the journey, and on her way to being overwhelmed with even this vague sense of home, Gabrielle just nods and lets herself be guided to a tent. Sleep comes deep and dreamless, and when she wakes, her head is clearer than it’s been in weeks. She’s not quite ready to seek Xena out, but she feels her presence as she washes her face, and is content to let her stay.
Outside, Eve is giving out chores for the day, so Gabrielle sits on a log out of the way and waits for her to finish. She’s almost drifting off in the sunshine when Eve sits beside her. “Here,” Eve says, holding out stew and bread. “Eat.”
Gabrielle’s stomach growls, surprising her, and drawing a laugh from Eve. “Sorry,” Gabrielle says. “I guess I’m hungrier than I thought.”
“You’ve slept for a day and a night; I’m not surprised.”
That, and the weeks she’s spent with no appetite for food, would do it.
With the food gone, Gabrielle sits and stares into her empty bowl for a while. “I did the wrong thing,” she says eventually.
“When?”
Holding back a sharp laugh, Gabrielle bites her tongue on all the answers that clamour to be let out. “I let your mother die.”
“And whose idea was that?”
Lifting her head, Gabrielle looks into eyes that know both she and Xena so well. The fact that they both know the answer doesn’t lessen the pain. “Why did she ask me to do it, Eve? I thought it made sense at the time, but… Xena’s been responsible for more than forty thousand deaths in battle, surely. And it wasn’t even her who killed Yodoshi; why should she have to stay dead to avenge the souls that he took?”
Gabrielle can’t sit still any more. Standing, she kicks the log they’re standing on, pacing away from it and forcing herself to breathe deeply before she turns back.
Eve’s answer comes with a quick smile that helps tamp the anger the rest of the way down. “My mother always is stubborn once she gets an idea into her head.”
Breathing out, Gabrielle sits down again. “Not ‘is’, Eve. Xena’s dead. I poured her ashes into an ocean half a world away from here, and now she’s gone.”
“Really?”
Eve’s innocent expression is as genuine as it should be coming from a follower of Eli, but Gabrielle’s heart trips when she sees it anyway, a painful flare of hope fighting to ignite inside her. “Tell me, Eve,” she demands.
“A soul held to this world by the strength of a love such as yours for her is never truly gone, Gabrielle. Tell her what she needs to know to come back.”
“It can’t… It can’t be that easy.”
Compassion on her face, Eve shakes her head. “You’ve done the hard part, Gabrielle.”
“I have?”
“Keeping Xena in your heart when there’s so much else in there fighting to push her out.”
Gabrielle looks away, shifting her feet, trying to ignore the flash of light on her Sais as they catch the sun.
Eve stands. “Bring her back, Gabrielle. Bring her back, and go home.”
--
Gabrielle spends the day helping out around the camp, clearing her mind while she makes herself useful, until she can go back into her tent in the evening and say with complete honesty, “I promise not to shout at you if you show up now, Xena.”
The bed doesn’t dip beside her, but all of a sudden Xena is pressed warm against her side. “Thanks.”
In the silence, the words that Gabrielle meant to say get buried under the ones she can’t keep in. “I don’t know who I am without you,” she chokes out. “I’ve been so many things, sometimes I don’t know which one is me.”
A strong arm around her shoulders pulls her close, and Gabrielle lifts her hands to clasp around the arm that Xena lays across her waist. “You’re my Gabrielle,” Xena says fiercely, pressing her lips to the top of her head. “And I’m sorry I ever left you before you’d worked that out.”
Squeezed close to Xena, wrapped and held tight, Gabrielle draws in shaking breaths until she can do it by herself again. Pulling back, she reaches out and grabs Xena’s face in her hands. “Come back and show me,” she demands, letting the yearning in Xena’s eyes bring to life the love which hurts more than the pain. “Don’t even think about telling me that you can’t. You redeem yourself by fighting in this world, Xena, not by sacrificing yourself to the next.”
“You always saw those things better than I did,” Xena murmurs, and leans in to press their lips together, soft and careful, an apology and a promise all in one.
Eyes closing, Gabrielle lets her hands loosen and slide into Xena’s hair, breathing out into the kiss and shaking while Xena’s hands curve around the back of her head to keep her steady. Relief washes away the tension that’s been holding her up all day, and Gabrielle feels herself drifting in Xena’s arms. The world tilts, and she’s lying with her head on Xena’s thigh, a gentle hand stroking through her hair.
“The only soul you’re tied to is mine,” Gabrielle murmurs. “You’d better remember that, and get back here.”
When she wakes in the morning, there’s a blanket over her, and she’s alone. There’s no hint of Xena’s presence as she washes. No-one sits beside her as she eats breakfast.
“Join us for prayers,” Eve says, and Gabrielle does, holding Xena’s name in her head and her heart during the silence at the end.
Listen to what’s behind the sounds, a long-ago taught lesson reminds her as the sun nudges the tops of the trees.
“I’m going for a ride,” she decides.
Eve hands her a fresh skin of water, and a bag of freshly wrapped food. “It’s been good to see you again, Gabrielle. Don’t stay away too long.”
Smiling, Gabrielle leans in and holds her tight for a moment. “I’ll bring her back, Eve. I promise you.”
“I believe you.”
--
The forest is alive with birdsong as Gabrielle rides slowly through the trees, in and out of the sunlight coming down from the leaves high above, keeping her eyes open for someone who will blend in with the forest so well she won’t even see them.
By midday, she’s found nothing. When she gets back onto the horse, she closes her eyes, listening properly, letting her hands guide the reins before she thinks about the direction.
Water runs up ahead. The soft splash of a line in the water, the smell of salmon already on the bank. A shiver runs down Gabrielle’s spine, and when she opens her eyes, it’s to growl of frustration as the trees block her view. Then Xena walks out from behind one of them, two fish dangling from one hand, wind-blown hair across her face. Everything else fades into the background.
“Caught you your favourite,” Xena calls out.
Frozen in the saddle, Gabrielle can only watch as Xena attaches the fish to a buckle. Then Xena stands at the side of the horse, looking up at her, while Gabrielle hopes desperately that Xena is as heavy as she looks in her leather and armour.
“So?” Xena says, holding her arm up. “How about taking me with you?”
Swallowing, Gabrielle leans down and clasps her arm, taking in a deep breath before she pulls Xena up.
The saddle creaks as Xena settles behind Gabrielle, and the horse whuffles out a mild protest. Gabrielle closes her eyes and clenches her hand hard on the arm she has yet to let go of, limbs trembling and voice weak as she says, “Xena.”
“Yeah,” Xena murmurs. “I’m real, Gabrielle. I’m here.”
The tears threaten to rise inside Gabrielle, but Xena murmurs, “Shhh,” and holds her so tightly that her breastplate digs painfully into Gabrielle’s back. There’s warm breath ruffling through her hair, soft words in her ear, strong arms around her. There are things Gabrielle should say, but all she can do is twist around so she can see Xena’s face, and the smile that means so much more with the weight of the person behind it.
“Thank you,” Xena says. Her hand comes up to rest on Gabrielle’s chest, half on the cloth of her top, warm where her fingers brush against the skin that the fabric doesn’t cover. “For keeping me in here. I know I didn’t necessarily deserve it.”
“I’m not sure I deserve to have you there,” Gabrielle admits.
“Gabrielle, you will always be worthy of my love.” The hot press of Xena’s mouth against hers, firm and assured, with the gentle hand on the side of her face, convinces Gabrielle that Xena means it.
“I guess we’ve still got more to learn from each other, huh?” Xena says when she draws back.
“We do,” Gabrielle agrees.
Xena’s arms come to settle around her waist. Breathing in, Gabrielle turns around to take the reins, and lets herself rest against Xena as they ride back.