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Joxer, Amarice, and Arman burst into the stable in a riot of noise just as Gabrielle got Handsome to trust her enough to eat from her hand.
The next thing the bard knew, Xena was shouting that she was pregnant.
Strange, Gabrielle thought in a daze. For one to be carrying life within her, use her breath to signal its impending arrival, she sure chased it all away.
Color, air, and sound fled from the boisterous group upon the announcement, or Xena took it all into herself.
The sole blonde of the group could only stare at her lover. Within seconds, she decided that the announcement had to be a joke. Gabrielle nearly laughed; the warrior princess could be so strange sometimes, made such off-the-wall comments and had the oddest methods of diffusing tension. Her own face cramped into the exact expression of amused disbelief she had worn upon hearing her newborn be accused of murder. NO! Gabrielle struck back against the sensation. This has nothing to do with Hope- She- It can’t be!
Jealousy followed relief, crashing over her with the power of a cresting wave. You cheated on me? green-blue eyes demanded what the mouth below them could not. It had other questions, “How could you be pregnant?” among them. We committed to each other, Xena. From the moment we decided to be a couple. Seeking gratification from someone else hadn’t ever been a consideration for either one of them. We’re it for each other. That’s what …I thought, anyway. All too easily, old insecurities stole the rest of the oxygen left in her lungs. Maybe I was wrong… Maybe I was wrong, and Ares was right. There are simply things I cannot give you. How could someone like you ever find satisfaction in someone like me? I’m not enough for you; I knew it! But the battling bard felt a certain detachment from her swirling emotions. Maybe this is for the best, she thought too and then couldn’t believe that the notion had crossed her mind.
Similarly having had the wind knocked out of her by the thought as it crossed the couple’s unspoken connection, Xena hesitantly replied, “I don’t know.”
Gabrielle compulsively grabbed her own collar to have something to hold onto, then let it go just as quickly. You don’t know? How many- So, you’ve not only cheated on me once but with so many people that you don’t know who the father is? “You don’t know?” she got herself to ask at a delay, surprised and then resigned when the question came out in the deeper, huskier voice that Xena found so enticing.
Gentle reassurance and authority flowed from Xena’s lips even as her speech went sideways. “I felt it with Solan, and I feel it now. There’s life within me, and it’s good!”
Really? That’s what you have to say to me? Gabrielle watched the realization make the brunette freeze a second after the words were out of her mouth, then bowed her own head. You mean, unlike with me? Because I was carrying evil itself? And you would invoke the name you told me not to speak? she wondered faintly. Creeping control inched up her spine and then spread out to the tips of all her extremities. Lock those feelings down; bury them. You can’t deal with them right now. Be happy for Xena. Reassure her. It’s all you can do.
Her beloved accepted her offered embrace with grateful relief.
“Congratulations,” she said numbly before mentally checking out of Spamona altogether. While the others leapt into action at the news that a warlord was coming to lay siege to the town and that the sheriff had abandoned her post, Gabrielle didn’t move, staring at flapping doors as her friends crashed through them a second time.
Halfway past the stable entrance, Xena noticed that Gabrielle was not beside her. She spun around and then winced at seeing the long-absent but keenly familiar hollowness enveloping her soulmate. “Gabrielle, it’s not what you think. We’ll talk about it later, okay? I promise.”
The bard nodded absently but could not get her feet to carry her out of the stable, or even lift to take a single step.
Xena returned to her side, took her by the hand as if she were a young child, and wrapped an arm around her small shoulders. “Come on, little one,” she cajoled Gabrielle. “The town’s in danger, and—” she cough-laughed awkwardly—“and with me in this condition—” she vaguely indicated her abdomen just before regretting that action too—“everyone’s counting on you.” Yet again, she tried to smile for the blonde, to effect a grinning response from her.
Sentience sparked in green-blue eyes though their glassiness did not retreat fully. “You’re right,” Gabrielle said both firmly and emptily. “It’s up to us.” She shrugged off Xena’s arm but marched alongside the warrior princess into the sunlight.
#
The battling bard of Potidaea hovered above Xena facing her, both surrounded by darkness.
Her lover sat in a crab position next to the crackling fire, panting with her eyes clamped shut. A terrible scream tore from Xena’s chest.
Gabrielle almost fell out of the sky, only to yet again find that she could not move. Trying to use her voice didn’t work either. Her frantic eyes scrutinized every inch of the older woman to find out what was wrong. That’s when she witnessed the warrior princess’s swollen belly jump and then quiver. Lowering her gaze showed Gabrielle that her love’s leather skirt was darker than ever, a pool of liquid gathered under the other woman’s bare bottom where she crouched. She’s in labor! Green-blue eyes darted around the camp. Where am- What? I’m here! Xena, I’m right here! Once more, the blonde tried to call out, flailing, so that Xena would notice her presence.
“Gabrielle!” Xena cried in blind panic, per usual as of late. Pale-blue orbs too cast uselessly around the forest clearing. “Where are you?” But wordless screams and panting breaths overtook all else emitting from her contorted figure.
The blaze between them billowed. Foul chuckles emanated with its heat.
“Yes,” came that voice Gabrielle only knew too well, for once being audible. “Bring forth my child, chosen one. Bring forth my heir!” Tendrils of flame shot out and grasped Xena around the thighs to drag her into the evil god.
“NO!” At last, at once, Gabrielle escaped her paralysis. She dove and rolled into action very close to her shrieking love. Wedging both feet against the circlet enclosing the campfire and wrapping both arms very tightly around her soulmate just under the bust, Gabrielle refused to let Xena go. “You can’t have her, Dahak! She’s not your chosen one! Her child is good!” She kicked out before the evil one could answer, knocking one of the stones into the kindling and smothering part of the fire. Her other foot quickly did the same. Gabrielle closed her eyes to summon the boulder worst-nightmare Xena had dashed worst-nightmare Hope upon. The baby’s namesake glowed in her mother’s heart as the giant stone materialized, blood-spattered and dripping.
But the bard paid no mind to its appearance. Instead, with tremendous effort and force, she brought the boulder down upon the blaze and extinguished it completely.
Dahak’s enraged cries faded into nothingness.
“Gabrielle,” Xena whimpered, thankful, tearful, and joyous. Her strong hands held her love’s arms in place. “Thank you; thank you!” But all too soon, she was screeching her agony to the heavens anew.
“Xena!” Gabrielle cried back, compressing her love’s body even more. Her feet lifted to cross over the other woman’s splayed legs, lower next to her knees, and hold her open.
“No, no!” Xena began to squirm against her. “Let go of me! Stop!”
“Never, Xena. I’ve got you! Lean on me. Just try to relax,” Gabrielle coaxed her love.
“No, no!” The older woman began to cry like a toddler would.
Or perhaps like I did, Gabrielle realized with a mild surprise, when she was checking me. “I’m sorry, Xena, but you have to. It’s the only way…”
Xena collapsed into muted whimpers and sobs, slumping against her love and weakening ever faster.
Reassurances flowed from Gabrielle’s mouth. “I’m strong enough to carry you now, Xena. I’ve got this. I’ve got you. I won’t let you go.” Then she impulsively used the words she had heard Ares sing to Xena as the pair danced around her dead body in Illusia. “Melt into me,” she whispered at the same time that her arms cinched even tighter around her love.
The warrior princess obeyed so well that she literally evanesced into her sidekick, much like had happened when the god of war pitted them against Mavican.
Gabrielle pulled Xena into herself such that they physically became one. A second time in her life, her womb expanded to accommodate a pop-up fetus while the rest of her reproductive tract altered with it. She threw her head back in an attempt to release her anguish. In that same moment, however, the sensation of warm protection that she had felt whilst possessed by Xena in the Amazonian cave of ambrosia seeped into her blood. “X-Xena?” she panted her love’s name for once.
I’m here, Gabrielle, the brunette answered in a replica of the tone she’d used outside the ruined temple in Britannia.
No! Green-blue eyes rebelled against the latter remembrance, locking onto the boulder she had used to crush Dahak. He’s gone; gone! Because of me! No one else! I defeated him! The exhilaration replacing all other emotions in the bard’s heart cheered her lover as well.
Because of you, the warrior princess echoed. You did it! Though she no longer had hands of her own, Xena somehow held both of Gabrielle’s, and though it was excruciating, the couple found solace in birthing their child as one. Together? the elder half asked unnecessarily when Eve crowned.
Gabrielle smiled from so deep within her soul that Xena felt it too. “Together.” Her mind’s eye showed them both a similar scene from Tripolis as they had waited for the Persian army to attack.
Their hands squeezed each other tighter.
“Forever?”
“’Til then.”
A new life entered the world.
#
Dreams are not reality, Gabrielle bemoaned the next morning as she told her lover about her dream—“You and I were both giving birth to your baby. It was like it was coming from both of us!”—and got mocked for it.
“That’s very nice. You know, if I could give ya half the labor pains, I would do it.”
Then Hercules showed up.
#
Xena nudged Gabrielle a week later. “Go get some sleep,” she said with a strained laugh that didn’t mask the concern lingering in her voice.
“No, I can’t,” the bard mumbled drowsily, her red-rimmed eyes not leaving their sleeping infant’s face.
“Yes, you can. Come on.”
Rather than her new usual of jolting to full alertness and pulling away from her lover upon being touched, Gabrielle slumped into Xena’s embrace.
The taller woman shrugged and swooped her other arm under Gabrielle’s knees. “Bedtime for the bitty babies,” she declared in a playful sing-song while carrying the blonde to her own bedroll.
Gabrielle flinched back to consciousness. “No, I can’t!” she insisted in urgent whispers. “Put me down!” Her raking hands caught Xena’s shoulders while her back arched to lift her head higher so it could swivel around to find their child.
“Sweetheart, you haven’t slept since Evie was born.”
“I know! I can’t!” she half-screamed close to incoherently, getting more frantic by the second to lay eyes on the newborn.
“And why’s that?” Xena asked in her usual calming tone, shifting her grip on her love so that she could bring Gabrielle’s face to the side of her neck once more.
“Stop it!” the blonde cried even more shrilly. “I can’t take my eyes off her, ever! We don’t want another Goewin, do we?”
The warrior’s jaw dropped, as did her arms. She nearly let Gabrielle fall before the younger woman leapt out of her reach anyway.
“There you are,” she noted with a relieved sigh. “I have to watch her every second, Xena; I have to,” she whispered with less fervor, though her jitters remained. Her shaking hands set upon their baby, stroking her sparse hair and chubby cheeks to try and keep her soft, good. “It’s the only way. I can’t let- …that happen again.” Gabrielle flinched even more dramatically when Xena laid a hand on her shoulder. “Please!” she squeaked. Then she was crying. “Please give me a chance. I won’t mess up again; I promise! No more children are going to die because I didn’t do something I should’ve done, especially not yours! N-never again. Please!”
“Gabrielle…” Initial fury at the comparison between her child and Gabrielle’s gone just as quickly as it had come, Xena knelt beside her trembling lover. “That- You- It wasn’t- …You have to let that go now.”
The blonde jerked away from her touch yet again. “I can’t do that, okay? I’m not you!”
But before either of them could say more, Eve howled at having been awakened in such a manner.
“Gabrielle,” Xena grumbled. Then an instinct she half-supported, half-didn’t, had her shooting out a hand and putting a modified pinch on her love.
Gabrielle keeled over unconscious before she even hit the blankets.
Xena sighed.
#
The couple came to a grudging understanding the following day, Gabrielle agreeing to sleep every other night and Xena promising not to put the pinch on her again if she kept up her end of the bargain.
Still, Gabrielle did not sleep well on the nights she was not allowed to obsess over Eve, plagued by anxiety, nightmares, or both.
Xena became ever more reluctant to leave them alone together. It wasn’t that she feared for Eve’s safety from anything Gabrielle might do to her but that Gabrielle might pass out with Eve in her arms or while the baby was wiggling around on her own. Not to mention, the toxic levels of stress and other negative energy radiating from the bard at all times couldn’t be healthy for their child either. What am I going to do with you, Gabrielle? Xena wondered, not for the first time. A fleeting memory of when she’d asked that same question hours after Hope had been born wiped the thin smile from her face. Her frown lines deepened. “It’ll just be a minute, alright?” she said to reassure herself more than she did to soothe Gabrielle or even Eve.
Her love smiled. “Take your time! Evie and I’ll be just fine. You’re getting used to your, uh, aunt Gabby, arencha, honey?” Gabrielle cooed, rubbing noses with the infant.
The warrior princess’s smile died another quick death, not even having fully emerged that time. “You’re not her aunt, Gabrielle…”
“Well, I’m certainly not her mother,” the bard answered offhandedly but firmly too.
“S-sure, you are…” Xena responded with one of the most inauthentic smiles known to mankind stretching across her face.
Her beloved didn’t turn around to notice it. “No, I’m not. Never! Any child from my loins or line is destined to be evil and then die. We both know this very well, Xena.”
“Gabrielle!”
“What?” she yelped at being yanked around, instinctively pulling Eve close so as not to jostle the baby’s oversized head on her weak neck. Confusion and even a bit of fright began to bloom in her wide eyes as they beheld the agitated warrior.
“What- What; what you just said!” Xena sputtered, captured by those eyes and confused by them in return.
“‘Thank you’? What’s wrong with ‘thank you’?”
“That… That’s not what you said!”
“Uh-huh!” Gabrielle glanced down. “You heard me, right, honey? Tell mommy what Auntie Gabby said.” Fully engaged with the baby in an instant, just as she’d been with Hope, she scooted away from Xena’s nearly painful grip and then blew a raspberry on Eve’s tummy before Eve could cry.
“R… Right.” I must have imagined that. Gabrielle’s not the only one losing sleep lately, eh? “Well, like I said, I won’t be but a few minutes. Just a quick wash in the river and then we can go.”
Once more, Gabrielle told Xena to take her time.
Xena didn’t.
#
The warrior princess just didn’t know what to do. During daylight hours, Gabrielle was quite fine, just as dedicated to and capable of nurturing and defending her second family as she had been throughout her partner’s pregnancy.
Nighttime was another story, one that would never make it into any of her scrolls.
Gabrielle jerked out of Morpheus’s realm and flailed for another moment. Then she whipped around under her covers in search of her baby.
Eve was awake too, quietly gazing up at the stars and sucking on her fist.
Blissful contentment spread across Gabrielle’s face and lit in her soul. “Aren’t you just the most beautiful little gem? How could anybody ever think you’re evil?” she crooned, scooting closer to the infant and enfolding her in a loose embrace. A soft kiss to the forehead lulled them both back to sleep.
Xena, across from the pair and watching them, didn’t sleep a single wink until the next evening.
#
Just as the little family finally got to a point where both parents could slumber somewhat peacefully through the night, Eve developed colic.
“What is wrong with this kid?” her birth mother groaned in exhaustion; neither she nor Gabrielle had been able to keep their babies more than a single night each before Eve and so didn’t know what to make of the infant’s new habit of screeching at all hours, hadn’t even known to expect it.
Timid nervousness answered her complaint. “N-nothing! I’ll get her quieted down. Don’t worry!” With that, Gabrielle hopped over Xena, scooped up Eve in standing, and then carried the infant several paces away.
Xena sighed. The moment she was able to force her muscle tension out of her body in order to get some more rest, her ears perked up.
“What’s the matter, my love? You never used to cry like this. I barely remember you ever crying before now…”
Familiar dark suspicion wound itself around the warrior princess’s spine and stirred in her gut. Evie cries all the time, Gabrielle.
“Are you cold?” Gabrielle knelt a good distance from the center of their camp. “Let’s try this,” she muttered, quickly removing her own top and Eve’s onesie.
Xena, stunned, didn’t make a sound.
Her beloved held their baby close again, engaging in skin-to-skin contact with her before wrapping one of the extra animal furs that had been warming by the fire around them both. “That’s better, isn’t it?” Light voice becoming even more dreamy, she added, “I’m sorry, my love, but this is the best I can do. If we get too close to- …Your father will never touch you; I promise.”
“Gabrielle…” Xena said in low warning before she could help it. Luckily and not, she went unheard.
“You can suckle too if you want,” the bard offered. “It’s okay. I’m feeling pretty good, and I’m not letting my guard down for anything. I won’t pass out this time. Promise!” A weak smile shone down on the contented child. “Mommy will keep you safe.”
A growled “Gabrielle…” at last reached her ears.
The blonde squeaked and then scrambled to her feet. “X-Xena…” she breathed next. For every step her lover took in her direction, she took one back. “Xena, please.”
Knowing she was going about things the wrong way but too frustrated and sleep-deprived to come up with better options, the warrior princess stalked toward her partner and daughter, twitching hands poised to snatch the latter. “That’s not your child, Gabrielle!”
Tears streamed down the bard’s face at once. “Yes, she is! She’s not Dahak’s; she’s mine!”
“No, Gab-”
“Yes!” she insisted with a petulant little stomp before getting spooked, turning tail, and fleeing into the night.
“Gabrielle!”
Much like in her worst nightmare, her flight didn’t take her very far.
There was no long hair for Xena to grab, but the older woman made do with her love’s bare shoulder, not knowing that the way she dug her fingernails into Gabrielle’s skin and yanked her around in a circle only heightened her disorientation.
“Please!” the blonde begged desperately. “Oh, please don’t do this, Xena! You! You were right!” she cried as she hunched over the child in her arms. “I-I-I know how angry it made you l-last time, when I lied- Last time?” Faint recollections of that awful dream dissipated when Gabrielle shook her head hard. “You were right, okay? I admit it! H-Hope did kill Goewin. But it was an accident! She didn’t mean to, Xena! She’s just a baby! Xena, she’s half-god like Hercules! She doesn’t know her own strength! It was an innocent mistake; please!” She collapsed to her knees, instantly rocking back and forth on them, her upper half still protectively curled around Eve. “Please don’t hurt her,” the bard repeated many times. Her body flinched backward onto its heels when Xena overcame the cacophony of her own emotions to kneel before her beloved. “I-it was my fault! I fell asleep, and I shouldn’t have! But I won’t let it happen again! You’ve got to believe me!” She cringed away from the hand coming for her cheek too, changing tactics just as fast. “Please don’t hurt her! U-us! Please don’t hurt us, Xena! N-not again! Please-please-please-please! We’re sorry!”
“Gabrielle, wake up,” Xena tried to call her lover out of the shadows. Making sure to only touch the much smaller woman with tenderness, she cupped Gabrielle’s face in both hands, rubbed at the tear tracks on her cheeks with both thumbs. “I’m not going to hurt you or Evie. …Gabrielle, that’s Evie you’re holding. Evie.”
For the innumerable time, only half-listening, the blonde felt herself relaxing for her life-partner. Every one of her muscles went slack as she nuzzled Xena’s fingers. “You promise?”
“I promise,” came out of a mouth stretched into a forced grin. “No one’s going to hurt you ever again, Gabrielle. Not if I can help it! Evie and I are going to protect you. Isn’t that right, Evie?”
But the atmosphere shifted when Xena ruffled her baby’s hair.
Perhaps wanting to be held by her true mother or getting another pang of colic in her gut, Eve wailed.
Gabrielle gasped, recoiling from the warrior princess. Stunned, soon horrified, disbelief drained the color from her tear-streaked face. “You hurt her. You got me to trust you just so you could hurt her…” she said incredulously. Fury flared in her eyes the next instant. Surging forward from sitting on her feet, she head-butted Xena and then took off running again. “I won’t let you!”
It was quite a while before she got captured again. The brunette suffered nasty bites in that time too, for whenever she laid hands on Gabrielle, little white teeth would sink into them, her fingers or wrists as well. The only thing that snapped the bard back to reality was when she stopped screaming and searching for her staff long enough to plunge her free hand into her boot and retrieve one of her sais.
Sais? But what- When- The rest of her thoughts got banished by Xena colliding with her. “What in the- What are you doing?” she cried as she fell, her love’s strong grip making her drop her weapon while Xena’s other arm cradled her and Eve; the warrior’s body reversed their positions to cushion her loved ones from the hard ground.
“Oof!” she grunted at the double impact.
“Xena! I’m holding Eve here! You know, your baby? Why would you-”
Xena couldn’t answer, not even the frazzled question about why she was laughing and crying at the same time, nor why she had a bloody nose and black eye. She just held onto the two most important people in her life, knowing that one of them would have to go.
#
“It was just a bad dream, Xena!” Gabrielle cried, hurt, dismayed, lost, relieved, and so much more, all at once, the next morning.
“You need to go home to heal. Just for a little while. I’ll come back and get you; I promise!”
“When? When I’m old and gray?” she bleated, scuffing her boot in the dirt and trying not to crumble into tears.
“When you’re better.”
“When I’m better? You’re the one who-” Silenced by her own guilt for the umpteenth time, small hand ever reaching for Xena’s battered face, Gabrielle mumbled, “Because of me. I’m sorry, Xena,” she said, too for the millionth time too many to Xena’s mind.
“It wasn’t your fault. I don’t blame you,” the warrior princess answered with warm sincerity though she stood firm in her decision too.
Her beloved’s hand and chin fell as one. “Yes, you do. You always blame me.” Tears blurred the sight of her boots. “And you’re always right. …I’m not safe around kids. I know. All I do is hurt them or get them hurt, especially ours. I understand.” That hand lifted alone to caress Eve’s face one last time. “I’m sorry. Goodbye, Evie, Xena. I’ll miss you.” Without another word or even lifting her head, Gabrielle trudged away from her unofficial wife and child. She didn’t think she’d ever see either one of them again.
#
“Waaait!” a strident voice called seconds later. “Don’t…” The goddess of love appeared between the couple in an explosion of golden sparks. “Don’t you guys want to stay together?” She hitched a grin to her face, no matter how awkward and nervous it was.
Xena hadn’t moved from watching her beloved walk away from her while Gabrielle stopped in her tracks but didn’t turn around.
“Of course we do, Aphrodite.” The bard’s tear-roughened voice broke. “But that’s just not possible right now.”
“Yes, it is! I-” Aphrodite smiled in a way that was more a wince than anything else before pursuing her usual lightheartedness anew. “I didn’t bind you two together for nothing, you know!”
That got Gabrielle to turn around. In fact, she whipped around much like she often did to lay eyes on Eve. “What did you say?”
“I… Well, I bound her to you, anyway. I didn’t want to tie you to her without your consent. That’d just be wrong!” The goddess laughed hollowly. “You didn’t tell her?” she asked, turning on Xena though she knew the answer.
Incredulity and hints of her old semi-playful exasperation begin to filter through Gabrielle’s small body. “Xena?”
The warrior princess, soon joined by Aphrodite, closed the distance between herself and her partner. “Hey, love of my life, did you know that Aphrodite blessed our union and bound me to you last year?” she asked in the same joking way she’d announced her pregnancy to Hercules.
Another moment of tense silence passed between the couple.
“S-surprise!” Once more the deity attempted to brighten the atmosphere surrounding her friends.
Gabrielle spoke again, attention not straying from the brunette. “You bound yourself to me?”
Xena nodded. “I did.”
“I helped!” too got ignored by both women.
“When? Why?”
“Because I love you, goober. More than anything.” Humor fading slightly, the sole brunette let ardency overflow from her being.
Her baby gurgled.
“Well, almost anything. I’d say you two are on the same level. And Evie feels the same way. Doncha, Evie?” She took a moment to rub noses with her daughter before pulling Gabrielle into a one-armed embrace. Too, she whispered into an elven ear. “Now don’t go telling her this, but you might be a little higher on my list than this blubber-wad is. Ssh!”
Gabrielle giggled like she hadn’t done in so long. The side of her head nuzzled against the side of Xena’s. Then her blue mood returned. “But that still doesn’t change anything. I’m no good for her. Ei-either one of you right now. …I-”
“I have a solution for that!”
Xena groaned though she did not disconnect from her beloved. “A masterpiece, I’m sure.”
Aphrodite sulkily crossed her arms and stomped her foot. “It is! Illusia did its job just beautifully, no? …Oops.”
Two people spoke the same word at the same time. “You-”
Their friend waved them off. “I helped. Anyway, what would you say if I told you I could send you to someplace like it?”
The lovers sputtered in sync once more. “I- You- We-”
“I’m not exactly sure how it’ll work since the F- others aren’t in on it this time, but I’m sure it’ll help.” Cobalt-blue eyes turned to green-blue ones. “You at least have my word that nothing will be able to harm you there. I’ll watch over you the whole time. If anything too bad starts to happen, I’ll get you out quicker than you can blink.”
Xena answered in her love’s stead. “Are you sure? You… aren’t-”
Those luminescent eyes flashed as they switched focus. “I’m sure.”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to risk-”
“Pft. You don’t have to. You and the kid aren’t invited. This is just for Gabrielle.” Maternal affection directed itself at the bard. “Whadaya say, sweet pea?” Aphrodite asked as she caught and squeezed both of her special mortal’s hands. “It’s up to you.”
Gabrielle felt herself melting into the goddess’s warmth. “S-sure… It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?” she asked dazedly.
“Love is always worth the risk,” Aphrodite answered just before kissing her friend on the forehead; the woman collapsed into her embrace. “And now we wait.” A strained grin beamed up at Xena, who echoed the sentiment.
“And now we wait.”
“Oh! Before I forget! Joxer’s on his way. I nudged him in this direction using his crush on Gabrielle.”
The warrior princess’s mouth hung open. “Why?”
Aphrodite laughed. “’Cuz he’s your friend. Gabrielle says he’s a great travel companion too. And you two need a buffer. I think his presence will be soothing to Gabrielle, even though she’d never admit it to his face and he annoys her like no other. Just his being here will help her keep herself under control too, if for no other reason than maintaining her pride around the dope is very important to her.”
Xena surprised both of them by putting an arm around the goddess and pulling her down onto a felled tree so they could sit. “Thanks, Aphrodite.”
Her friend snorted. “No prob.” Then she jolted upright. “Oh! One other thing! As you probably know by now, spells that affect the mind are not only unpredictable but also often have a side effect of slight retrograde amnesia.” Aphrodite made a face at her friend’s confusion, though it reminded her of similarly using big words on Gabrielle the last time they met, which then made the deity grin. “Don’t hold it against her if she doesn’t remember everything that’s happened since Eve was born.”
“I won’t.”
The goddess’s smile became somber. “She probably won’t remember me being here at all. Again. But I guess that’s just how things are between us.”
Xena studied her friend for a moment. “I could tell her if you want.”
Aphrodite’s grin widened though she didn’t look up from gazing upon her sweet pea’s sweet face. “Nah. It’s alright. I don’t mind.” Tearing themselves away from their apple, bright blue eyes peered into paler ones. “Just take care of her, alright?”
The warrior smiled with a bit of melancholy around the edges as well. “You have my word.”
Together, the pair sat in companionable silence, keeping close watch over the bundles in their arms.