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Something had happened to Xena that Gabrielle had missed - Gabrielle was sure of it.
It took her awhile to fully realize it. Briefly finding oneself in the Elysian Fields and meeting one’s departed friends and family members would take a lot out of anybody; and for a few days in Asclepius’ temple, she’d drifted in the impossible awareness that somehow she had done it. She’d visited the other side. She’d hugged her Uncle Merops. She’d clasped Talus’ hand.
“It was so beautiful,” she vaguely remembered lilting to a hovering Xena in those first few hours after she’d returned. “So full of light, and life.”
Xena’s hand had tightened around hers, almost to the point of pain, but Gabrielle hadn’t complained. “I know,” Xena had said. “I’ve been there, remember?”
But there was a sadness in her voice that was all Gabrielle could focus on. Xena’s worried face was close enough that Gabrielle could reach for it, however clumsily, and her hand landed on her cheek.
“You’ll be back,” Gabrielle had assured her, and promptly fallen asleep.
The next time she’d woken up, she was much more cognizant, but then again Xena also informed her that she’d been sleeping for almost a full day.
“Guess you needed it,” she said when Gabrielle blinked owlishly at her. “Can you try sitting up? I want to listen to your breathing.”
“Can’t you do that when I’m lying down?” Gabrielle asked, but complied, groaning as the movement pulled at the stitches in the wound in her side and she wheezed out a “by the gods!”
“Yeah, well, maybe next time don’t run into an active warzone,” Xena said sharply. Gabrielle, who really did not want to have this argument with her, mostly because she knew she would lose, stayed stubbornly quiet. Xena didn’t push, and only paused for a minute with her hands on Gabrielle’s back as it expanded and contracted with her inhales and exhales.
“Xena?” Gabrielle prompted after a long moment.
Xena’s response was to lay her ear over Gabrielle’s back. Wincing, Gabrielle leaned forward a little to accommodate her. “Breathe for me,” Xena commanded gently, and Gabrielle did, coughing only once. Xena moved to face her, her hands incredibly gentle on Gabrielle’s body, and prompted her to shift her head to make room for Xena’s as she laid it, ear to chest, just above Gabrielle’s breasts. Without instruction, Gabrielle breathed deeply and watched the way it moved Xena, an inexplicable tenderness twisting in her chest just under Xena's ear at the sight of her dark head rising and falling under Gabrielle's breaths.
“Your breathing sounds good,” Xena finally announced when she lifted her head.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I think it’s just the head injury we need to keep an eye on.”
That much was old news to both of them, or as good as. Gabrielle tilted her head and regarded Xena, who had stood to her full height, and was plainly using the excuse of examining Gabrielle’s aforementioned head injury to avoid Gabrielle’s eyes.
“Xena?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you okay?”
Xena appeared surprised by the question, but finally looked at Gabrielle. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”
“I don’t know. You just seem - different, somehow.”
Instantly, Xena’s guard went up; and internally, Gabrielle sighed and smacked herself metaphorically on the head.
“Different how?” Xena asked warily.
“I don’t know,” Gabrielle said again, as her hand raised itself of its own volition towards Xena’s eyes, only to fall when Xena swiftly moved out of reach. It wasn’t anything she could pin down; more like something had changed in Xena’s eyes or just under her skin, something Gabrielle couldn’t feel or sense for herself. “How long was I out for, anyway? You never said.”
“Long enough,” Xena replied, cryptic and terse and suddenly about a hundred miles away. It was enough to confirm Gabrielle’s suspicion that whatever it was that had changed had come about because of her brief visit to the Fields. Gabrielle liked to think that she knew Xena pretty well by this point, well enough that she could see when Xena was afraid. The idea that Xena was even capable of feeling fear would have made her sputter and scoff a year ago, but Gabrielle knew better now.
“Xena, I’m fine,” she said, putting as much reassurance behind the words as she could. “I’m going to be fine. You said it yourself.”
Unexpectedly, Xena softened and smiled bittersweetly. “I did,” she agreed. “Don’t you worry about that.”
“Okay,” Gabrielle said uncertainly, tracking her eyes. “Then what is it?”
Even more unexpectedly, Xena bent to press a kiss to Gabrielle’s forehead.
“Don’t you worry about that either,” she said when she drew back and Gabrielle was looking up at her bemusedly. “Just focus on getting back to full strength, huh?”
Later, Gabrielle found her sitting alone on the temple steps, her spine ramrod straight and every part of her tense.
“Hey,” Gabrielle said, trying to inject some confidence into her own bearing as she stood next to her. “Is there enough room for me down there?”
“Sure,” said Xena. Gabrielle lightly rolled her eyes - typical Xena, this was why she'd put herself in charge of the sensitive chats - and eased down next to her. Xena’s arm shot out to steady her, and with it, Gabrielle managed without too much stiffness and only one muffled gasp.
“You shouldn’t be out here.”
“I don’t think there’s any danger of fighting breaking out again,” Gabrielle said reasonably. “Besides, you’re out here.”
Xena smiled a little at that, taking it exactly as Gabrielle had meant it: a who do you think you’re fooling, an admonishment for hiding from Gabrielle specifically, and a reminder that wherever she went, Gabrielle was going to follow all rolled into one.
“Do you know you’re different, recently?” Gabrielle asked her again, studiously giving her space by not looking at her lest she spook, as she sometimes did.
"So you've said, but I'm not sure where you're getting it from. I'm the same as I always am."
If Gabrielle hadn’t known her as well as she did, she might have accepted it and dropped the issue. As it was, Gabrielle couldn’t quite help throwing her a look at that, which Xena invariably caught. She raised both eyebrows in protest. “What?” she asked.
Defensive. Gabrielle smiled. Good.
“Do you ever think about dying?” she asked. It had been calculated to startle Xena, and it succeeded - briefly.
“Yeah,” Xena admitted. “I’m a warrior. I think about death all the time.”
“How often?”
Xena shrugged. “Every day. There isn’t a guarantee that I’ll live to see the next one. Before, it didn’t bother me.”
“Before what?” Gabrielle asked, unable to help the question.
Xena didn't answer, only throwing Gabrielle a suspicious glance. “Gabrielle, why are we talking about this?”.
Gabrielle shrugged, and then, as casually as possible, asked, “Do you think about me dying?”
“Gabrielle.”
“Because I did, and I think I scared you very badly,” Gabrielle continued determinedly. “And I’m sorry I did, but I also can’t promise not to do it again.”
“You’ve already made me make you this promise once before," Xena said tightly, refusing to look at Gabrielle. "I did, and you know that I don’t promise much.”
Her voice had a hint of anger to it, but Gabrielle refused to be cowed, knowing it mostly stemmed from agitation and a stoppered grief she had no doubt reasoned with herself that there was no longer any need to express, let alone in the presence of a still-very-much-alive Gabrielle, who very much did remember that promise. As if she could ever forget it: the words dropping from Xena's mouth like she'd first had to pull them arduously out of her soul, some mysterious unseen labor leaving her raw and exhausted, and Gabrielle unable to understand it.
“I’m not talking about that,” she said softly. Her hand dared to curl around Xena’s tense bicep, just above her armband, and while she didn’t feel her relax at the touch, Xena didn’t shrug her away either. “I think about dying, too, you know. I did even before. I used to imagine how it would be, back in Poteidaia - if it would be an accident on the farm, or while giving birth, or just withering away in a house and a village I’d never be able to leave. I’d try and try, but I could never imagine very much life in Poteidaia. And the gods might be fickle, and I knew they probably didn’t care about me at all, but I just couldn’t accept that that was all there was to life - dying slowly.”
She had Xena’s attention now. This was something she’d always been grateful for in Xena - that despite how much older and more experienced she was than Gabrielle, she’d always taken Gabrielle seriously. Part of it was due to the deep well of empathy that Gabrielle wished Xena could see in herself; but most of it, Gabrielle suspected, was simply because at one point not too long ago Xena must have known what it was to fear these same things: dying in childbirth, marrying a man who could never understand her, being confined in a village that was as good as a prison. She was still a woman, after all - and she wasn't that much older than Gabrielle.
“When I was on the other side, I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there,” Gabrielle continued quietly. “I knew I wasn’t staying. I didn’t even meet Charon or cross the river. Everybody there was so happy to see me, but it was like they knew I was just visiting. They knew that life still had a bigger claim on me. And more importantly, I knew it too.”
Xena was still silent, and Gabrielle didn’t press her. Neither did she venture to say whose voice she had heard calling for her, suspecting that Xena was somehow too fragile in this moment to bear the reminder.
“I’m glad you brought me back, Xena,” she said quietly instead. “There’s more to do, even if I don’t know what it is yet. You seem to keep doing that - saving my life. I wonder sometimes if you even know.”
Finally, Xena responded, and it was with a laugh, the sound sudden and strangled in her throat. Gabrielle knew better than to be alarmed, and simply waited for Xena to win whatever fight she was having with herself.
Gabrielle knew there were things about Xena that she might never tell her, and recognized that this was as close as she’d ever been to being allowed access to the workings of her mind. She’d always known that Xena was beautiful, but there was a particular beauty to her like this, teetering on the edge of a new kind of openness here in the final brilliant rays of daylight only because Gabrielle had asked it of her. It wasn’t the first time that the sight of her had made Gabrielle’s breath catch, but it was the first time that it reached right into her heart and stilled it at the same time.
Without looking, Xena fumbled for her hand and held it with the same desperation she had in those first few hours when Gabrielle was newly returned from the dead; and Gabrielle quickly encased it in both of hers.
“Gabrielle,” she finally said, smiling like she’d won, like she’d torn some truth violently free from her soul to do it. “I wonder if you do.”