New Xena Fic: "In the Valley of Disregard" - Prologue and Chapter 1
Okay, in future this fic will be posting on my website as well (with pretty cover art and formatting, etc.:)), but since I'm already a day late for the dosomethinscary ficathon (and...um....::cough::about 5,000wds short::cough::...) I'm posting the prologue and first chapter here without the bells and whistles.
This fic will be a pretty long involved ride. I hope I can keep up a decent posting pace. It's one of my main writing goals this year.
Welcome to my new playground.:) Hope you like it here in Angstville.
Disclaimer: This all belongs to Renaissance Pictures and Universal. I wish I could say it was all mine. Truly I do. But I'm just borrowing this wonderful world with all due respect.
Title: In the Valley of Disregard
Author: LadyRowan (rowandarkstar@gmail.com)
Rating: Mature
Spoilers: Through "When Fates Collide"
Categories: Angst, hurt/comfort, Xena/Gabrielle, hints of Xena/Ares UST
Summary: What if Caesar clipped the wrong thread?
Huge thanks to my beta squad: Teddy E, elsieaustin, and annakarrennina (and to triciabyrne1978, vampire_cookies, and tularia for the best of intentions :))
IN THE VALLEY OF DISREGARD
by
Lady Rowan
Copyright (c) 2008
"Who am I, to break this young girl's heart
How the mighty rise and fall"
-- 'Shining' by Kristian Leontiou
Prologue
I deserve to burn in Tartarus for what I've done. I deserve to burn for eternity and never be cleansed of the pain I have caused.
I have spent my life devoted to a path of peace, a path of caring and compassion for my fellow man. I fashioned myself the warrior princess's flame of hope in her ever threatening darkness. She believed in my light and fashioned herself unforgivable. But I look at us now, and I think we had it all wrong. Hers is the soul of eternal light, ever fighting, ever determined not to be doused by the darkness. Childlike, resilient, and so very beautiful.
While my soul -- my soul, at its core, is a mature and deliberate shade of black, capable of such intimate cruelties as Xena in her simple and misguided lust for security would never imagine.
I am the darkness.
And I deserve to burn through eternity in Tartarus for what I've done.
*****
(End Prologue. Continued in Chapter 1...)
--------------------
Disclaimer: This all belongs to Renaissance Pictures and Universal. I wish I could say it was all mine. Truly I do. But I'm just borrowing this wonderful world with all due respect.
Title: In the Valley of Disregard
Author: LadyRowan (rowandarkstar@gmail.com)
Rating: Mature
Spoilers: Through "When Fates Collide"
Categories: Angst, hurt/comfort, Xena/Gabrielle, hints of Xena/Ares UST
Summary: What if Caesar clipped the wrong thread?
Huge thanks to my beta squad: Teddy E, elsieaustin, and annakarrennina (and to triciabyrne1978 and tularia for the best of intentions :))
IN THE VALLEY OF DISREGARD
by
Lady Rowan
Copyright (c) 2008
Chapter 1:
"I see the course we're on, spinning farther from what I know
I'll hold on
Tell me that you won't let go"
--'Say It's Possible' by Terra Naomi
Maybe the dream was a coincidence, maybe I somehow sensed what was coming, or the Fates chose to plant the seeds of destiny in my subconscious. In any case, the dream feels like the beginning of the tale.
I was alone. I felt as though Xena had been there only a moment before, but then she was gone. No trace of her around me, and there was nothing but the mist and the damp chill that clung to my skin like a cloak. Something about the color of the twilight sky makes me sick to my stomach even now.
Emptiness Nothing but mist and trees, sickly green in the fading light. No campsite, no horse. I didn't even have a satchel, nor my sais. I remember walking, searching, thinking my footsteps too loud on the pine needle bed, struggling to remember everything Xena had ever taught me about moving in silence, listening to the air.
I saw the first splash of blood. A vibrant crimson against the trunk of a white birch. I stopped mid-step, staring at the crude smear in the colorless landscape, my senses charging to life with the familiar battle adrenaline I had never quite learned to love. My hands fumbled toward my boots, wishing for a weapon, clasping at empty air, catching fog between my fingers.
I walked.
The smears grew larger, more frequent, splashed across tree trunks and patches of grass, drizzled over stones and patches of leaves. The smell thickened like rust in my nostrils, and after twenty paces I saw the first body; a young woman, bound to a dead tree, her vacant stare white against the red strokes on her cheeks. Something about her reminded me of Lila. I stood before her, staring into her frozen and haunted countenance, searching her tattered clothing for any clue, any hint of who she was, where I was, what this was about. But I found nothing.
I walked.
I didn't know where to go, where I belonged, how to find my way back to familiar ground. There were more bodies. Then one man who was alive. By a breath. I tried to speak to him, help him, free him, but he was ranting, incoherent, and fighting against me with thin, fragile fingers like pincers on my skin. I gave up and backed away, promising him I would look for help. That I would not forget him.
But he wasn't the only one in need. The smell of pain and death was dizzying; soft moans broke the silence of the forest. The light was dimming, but the black-shadowed bodies were starting to match numbers with the trees. Some lay on the ground, others had been impaled on crudely crafted stakes.
A young girl called to me and I couldn't stop myself from approaching her, answering her plea. There was nothing I could do to save her, the stake ran clean through her midriff. If I pulled her free she would bleed to death. My fingers moved restlessly over her form, hovering a whisper from her skin. "I'm sorry," I whispered. "I don't...I don't know what's happened."
She said something I couldn't understand. Then, "Stop...her." And she slipped away.
I remained crouched in front of the girl, breathing deeply and staring at her silent form.
I walked.
I felt her before I saw her.
I felt her on the air, in the breath of the trees, in the crunch of sticks beneath my boots. I felt her in the darkness of the thickest forest; the lifeforce beside me in the deepest night. I had felt her on the wild wind when the slavers' hands were cruel upon my skin, not even knowing so long ago what force of nature was coming for me. I felt her like sun on my flesh, water on my lips.
I could smell her.
Xena.
The smell of blood turned to an ache in the pit of my stomach.
This could be her. Her work. Her cruelty. Her past, her style. The core of her I forever denied. Were these ghosts of her victims? Had I slipped into her nightmare, after so long sleeping a breath away?
I had my answer when I saw her at the center of the violence.
And the truth was more horrible than anything my mind had conjured.
Xena hung, impaled to a massive tree trunk, stripped of her armor, flesh more blood than skin. Her hair fell in heavy matted clumps, her bare limbs tied to straggling branches.
And she was breathing. Rasping sounds that carried on the wind. Her eyes blinked open, staring at me through the shadows.
I ran to her.
"Xena...by the Gods, Xena, what's happened? How do I help you?"
She tried to speak, but words caught in her throat and blood sprayed my chest as she coughed. My fingers smoothed the smears on her cheeks, tangled in her ragged hair. Her blood, my sweat, our pain. "Xena..."
"Gabrielle...I shouldn't have...she wanted..."
"Xena, don't talk, don't try to-- Xena. Xena!"
"Xena!" I startled into consciousness, rolling onto my back in the thin moonlight, eyes wide to the half-hidden stars.
For a heartbeat I didn't know where I was, and I could smell the foggy dampness of the dream valley as sharply as the real remnants of our evening's campfire. The air was quiet, the night steely and chill, but my skin was sticky with sweat and all I could feel was Xena's blood on my skin, her muscles quivering beneath my fingers. I pushed at my blanket, rested a shaking hand on my midriff, stomach muscles trembling as I fought for breath. The sickening sense of the dream thickened and clouded my thoughts.
Xena...gone...blood... Where did...what did...
My fumbling thoughts caught the sound of Xena's breath, the warmth of her nearness, and I heard the sigh of desperate relief cross my own lips. Then before I could register the progression of events, she was just there, awake and wrapping strong arms around me, pulling my weight onto her chest. Her heartbeat was steady, leather-clad midriff smooth and unmarred. Her skin was wind-dried and soft to the touch, her voice a gentle rumble in my hair. "Hey, hey, whoa...Gabrielle..."
I could only cling to her skin, bury my face in her shoulder, breathe in the scent of her leathers, the grass in her river-clean hair. I had grown decades in our six years together, but in that moment I was once again the childish bard from Potedeia, hanging onto my warrior in the dark of the night.
As always, I was cocooned by open arms, welcomed without hesitation. Xena was real and safe and I was so grateful for this simple fact it hurt. "Oh, Gods. Xena...you're here..."
"I'm here. I'm right here, I didn't go anywhere. You were just dreaming. Hey..." Her fingers moved in my hair. A warrior's confident touch with a current of infinite tenderness. "A nasty one, too..." she added in a whisper, lips brushing my tousled hair.
"I'm sorry..." I whispered, hardly able to speak through my tears.
"No, no, no, hush...Gabrielle, it's all right. It's all right."
Her voice was hoarse from sleep, her skin soft and warmed by the fire. And I wanted to lose myself in it all.
She let me, for a while.
My breathing slowed. Sleep beckoned. The movements of Xena's fingers in my hair never slackened. She should have been exhausted, too. We'd been travelling all day, she'd had to hunt down our dinner, wrestle a drunk warlord. And though she wouldn't admit it, Xena tired a bit more easily than she had six (or thirty-one) years ago. But I knew she wouldn't sleep until I did.
"You want to tell me about it?" Xena asked softly.
I wanted to. And I didn't want to. I wanted to forget, never think about it again. "It's just a dream. I just...want to forget." We have known dreams to be more than dreams, she and I. The notion is ever-present.
Her heavy exhale ruffled my bangs, sent a wave of warmth down my spine. "All right," she said simply. Because Xena is the queen of nightmares. And she never talks. Never tells.
Once in a white moon...she lets me hold her.
"Get some sleep, Gabrielle," she whispered, "it won't seem so real in the morning." I nodded into her shoulder.
She pulled the blanket closer around us as an icy wind snaked over the forest ground.
We breathed together in silence, each knowing the other was still awake. At long last Xena began softly, "Once upon a time, there was this little squirrel, who could never get enough to eat..."
I frowned into the darkness, shifting to half glance toward Xena's face, as though I could see her in the deep black shadows. "What?"
"Sshhh, you want a story or not?"
"I..."
"Hmmm?"
"I...well, yes. Yes."
"Okay, then. Be quiet and let me be the bard." She cleared her throat and the sound echoed through her chest and into my ear. "As I said, there was this squirrel, and even though he wasn't much fatter than the other squirrels, all he could think about every day was where his next nut was coming from. And all the other squirrels, especially the ones he liked to travel with, were getting really bored with his constant whining--"
"Xena...is this about--"
"Ssshh. So one--"
"Xena, I am not--"
"So, one day, when the weather was starting to get colder..."
I didn't remember the end of the story. I only remembered the sound of Xena's voice, and the warm nest of her arms.
When I woke, she was gone.
*****
He watches the man in the white robe and the golden laurels. He knows this moment is crucial, knows the fates of many run in the fine gold threads sliding over the skilled fingers of this man called Caesar. This man who once touched Xena with the tenderness of a lover and the cruelty of a demon. The god watches from the ether and wishes he had the power to stop the inevitable. But this is not his domain. And his brother is no more. Because of Xena. In the end, all things in the god's universe trail back to Xena.
"Stop. Back it up. Now. There. Let's take a look at that."
And in this, the God is not alone.
The man's arrogance remains even in death. The god had admired that arrogance once, the way it lead to power, served its own purpose. But he had hurt her. And even in those early days the god had noticed. He had watched her when he should have been doing something else.
"It's ironic, isn't it? How a single stick can change the entire path of one's destiny. Had I not betrayed Xena, I'd be ruling Rome today. Instead, I get stabbed in the back by my good friend, Brutus, while Xena gets to ride off into the sunset with her girlfriend. Hardly a fitting end for Julius Caesar."
Caesar. Julius Caesar. The god can still hear the words rolling off her tongue, her voice in his ears like ambrosia on his lips.
"You cannot change your fate," says the mother.
"--once it has been chosen."
"Unchain us now and accept your destiny."
The irony of the word choice is not lost on the god nor the man.
The god sees this in the glimmer of Caesar's eyes.
"Let me tell you...about my destiny. With Hades out of the picture, Underworld security's become rather, uh...lax. Which brings me to this defining Xena moment. Mysterious, romantic...good light."
The god tries to look away. But pale eyes hold him transfixed and again he feels the shifting of the universe, the quivering of paths not taken. It is coming.
"Tampering with the loom...will alter the very fabric of life--"
"--changing not only your destiny--"
"--but that of countless others."
The smile is one the god would have been proud of...in another life.
"Oh, I'm counting on it..."
A single snip, and the world implodes. The god feels the rip and shatter, and he clings to what he can with every power he has left.
*****
"Xena?" My own raspy cry rang back to me through the trees.
I sat up in the too bright sunlight. The sun had risen far above the tree line. I couldn't remember the last time I'd slept this late. I didn't understand. Xena had wanted to start out early, make it into Maedicea before dark...had she let me sleep after being awake in the night? Not her style.
"Xena?" Silence. The shuffle of a bird's wings, rustle of a rabbit in the underbrush.
I pushed back my blanket, my breath breaking rhythm at the shock of the chill air. The sun had done little to warm this valley, despite our shelter from the wind. This valley that...that we...this...
...valley...was all wrong.
All remnants of sleep swept from my head as my senses flared into high alert. I scanned every inch of my surroundings. The blanket now resting at my ankles wasn't the one Xena had pulled over us the night before. It was darker, thinner, a different texture of fur. I hadn't seen it before. The rolled up blanket Xena had used for a pillow was gone. Our horse, Tesla, wasn't grazing at the edge of the tree line. And the tree line...was closer than it had been the night before. The fruit tree Xena had climbed to snag our dessert now held no fruit, only sparse leaves and some variety of nut.
This was almost the valley I had fallen asleep in. Except it wasn't. *By the gods...*
"Xena?" The sharpness in my own voice carried to me on a dull echo.
The world around me was too quiet. No birds, no rabbits,
I held still for a long moment, crouched beside my crumpled bedroll, and forced myself to think through my options. I was clearly in a different place from the one in which I had fallen asleep. So what were the possibilities? Someone had moved me? Could Xena have moved me? Had we been attacked? Had she taken me somewhere safe? Lead the assailants away? Was she off dealing with them now? Or maybe hurt... Could I possibly have slept through being moved if I hadn't been drugged?
I didn't feel as though I'd been drugged. My vision was clear, muscles quick to respond.
So my other options were... I was at a loss.
Feeling increasingly disoriented in the silent stillness, I turned to my only known defense -- action. If years with Xena had taught me nothing else, I had learned never to hold still. Xena can't stay, she can't wait, she can't let life happen, she grasps its essence by the throat and forces it to bend to her will. For years, I wanted to be like her, while I wished she would just...hold still. Somewhere along the way, I learned to move with her. Perhaps we found our own kind of stillness in the motion. Together.
So to restore the balance? Keep moving. Find Xena.
I loaded what little supplies remained in the clearing into my pouch. My mind registered that the small bit of leather was more weathered than it had been the night before, the shape more square where it had been round. But I couldn't deal with this absurdity, couldn't process the ramifications. My mind stored the information into its relevant compartment, leaving these facts to be retrieved and sorted later.
Even as I searched the ground and underbrush for signs of Xena's trail I knew I would find nothing. The words crept beneath my skin, prickled at my tongue and refused to stay buried in shadows. Xena was never here.
There was no trail. No clue for me to follow. I chose North, because the sun would light my way without glaring or casting my own shadow in my path. I started into the trees.
*****
"Xena?" The call had begun to sound hollow on my own lips. I had ceased calling out with any force or belief, yet the sound of my voice kept me grounded and sharp.
The unnatural stillness of the forest remained, and I hadn't caught the trail of so much as a deer, let alone a person. I was unreasonably grateful when a single bird darted past, fluttered into the thick leaves of a tree and assured me I was not utterly alone.
The voice from the tree line scared the Tartarus out of me.
"She's not here."
I whirled on my boot heel, sais up with blades turned out.
"Ares?" Crap.
He leaned casually against a tree trunk, arms folded across his thick chest and shoulders glistening in the late morning light. His expression was unreadable, impassive and characteristically dark.
I had never been so infuriated and so grateful to see the God of War.
"You were looking for Xena, yes?" he drawled.
I stared at him, shook my head a bit in disbelief, weapons still at the ready.
He didn't let my silence faze him, nor my battle stance. "Yeah, you were. Well, she's not here. Nowhere near here, in fact. She's on a ship off the coast. Won't make port until tomorrow morning."
"What are you talking about? What ship? Xena was here last night."
"Here?" he asked. He pushed away from the tree, took a step to the side and dropped his weight onto a large boulder, leg strewn across the smooth stone, hands resting on his thighs. His eyebrow cocked in mock question as a single bird's cry rang overhead, and I wondered if it were the same solitary creature. "Here? Oh, I don't think so. You see, I don't even think you know where 'here' is."
I swallowed hard, knowing the truth in his words and thinking of the oddly square pouch at my hip. Everything wrong. This wasn't the quiet glade where we'd curled up together the night before. This wasn't the air that Xena had breathed onto my temple or exhaled to whisper me to sleep. And he knew... "So...where am I?" I cursed the tremor in my voice. The confidence that had come with movement, with the definitive steps of my boots in the grass, was slipping in the face of confrontation.
"Ah, but that's not the most important question for you right now. You might want to start with 'when am I'?"
"Ares, what in Tartarus are you talking about!"
He pushed away from the stone and took a few easy steps in my direction. "Well, first of all, the world you went to bed in last night doesn't exist this morning. Even if I had left you in it."
What the...left me...I didn't want to hear this. I wanted to go back to sleep and wake up next to Xena and Tesla and know everything was okay and this was just another torturous dream. Surely this was just another dream? Ares' words spun like mist in my head, mist from the unnamed valley. "Excuse me?" I managed to protest. "Left me in it?"
He nodded, too casually.
I wanted to scream and shake him, make him flash his god-light and fix it all. But he was still talking and I knew I should listen.
"..hmm. You see, I was reaching for Xena, but I just caught you. Because you're the key, unfortunately. Always have been, it seems. That sticky little thread that won't dislodge, no matter who interferes."
The anger was good, it was clearing my head. "Ares, just cut the cryptic crap and tell me what in Tartarus is going on?"
"I'm afraid this isn't Tartarus, Blondie. It's just plain old Greece. Except it's all different, now. Everything's different."
"Why?"
"Because Caesar is an idiot. He always was an idiot. All that talent gone to waste... If only Xena had figured that out a little sooner..."
"Caesar." I shook my head, lost. "Caesar is dead. What are you talking about?"
"Yeah, Caesar's dead. But your favorite warrior did her part to eliminate the underworld security system. And things have gotten a bit...unorthodox. In all the time Caesar's had to sit down there in Tartarus and contemplate his navel, it seems he decided where it all went wrong for him during his run in this mortal coil. He decided it was all about Xena. That if he hadn't betrayed her, if he'd joined her in their quest like she wanted...maybe things would have worked out for the best. So, he decided to take fate into his own hands. Rearrange things."
I drew a long breath. I had lowered my sais to my sides, but held eye contact with a narrow gaze and unwavering intensity. After all, wasn't that how Xena always got him to talk? "What are you saying?" I asked.
"I'm saying...the idiot clipped the wrong thread. Or at least he altered things in ways he never intended. You see, what Caesar wanted, was to erase the moment when he betrayed Xena. To go back and accept her offer of a joint army, conquer the world together, blah, blah, blah... But what he did was snip the connection between Xena and himself. He fixed it so he and Xena never met."
"Caesar clipped one of the threads of fate?" My incredulity was clear to my own ears.
But his reply was casual, snarky. "Indeed."
I bristled. "So Xena and Caesar never met. Isn't that...a good thing?"
"You'd think, wouldn't you? Funny thing, fate... No, here's the thing." He took a few steps closer, spread his fingers, curled them like he was holding an invisible ball of the world. He was still snarking, but there was an undercurrent of sincerity that kept me listening. "Fate is all tangled up, in ways so complex even the gods can't always comprehend. Break one thing, you change another, and so on and so on until the world just isn't the world you know, anymore. Turns out...Caesar and Xena kind of kept things on an even keel."
"What things? Where is Xena now?"
"Okay, let me make it a little clearer for you. Here's Greece right now."
So fast I didn't have a moment to breathe, Ares whipped his arms to one side, throwing a great flash of blue light that temporarily blinded. When the world settled into existence again, I was standing just where I had been. But an expanse of at least 10 paces across the forest path had become a kind of window, through which we were watching another place entirely.
"What is..." I breathed.
"That would be Potedeia."
*****
I was running. Running from Ares, from his words, his plans, his glimpses of a future I couldn't understand. Running so hard my breath drug through my chest like fire. A few short years ago I could never have covered this terrain like I did. Flying over rough ground, dodging branches, leaping over half hidden trenches, rushing through the greenery like a soaring hawk. The trees seemed to stretch into eternity and I couldn't shake the memories of the dream, nor the echoes of Ares voice in my head. The speed was numbing and I wanted to needed to wash the unthinkable images from my mind.
But as fast as I ran, boots slamming the ground with the beat of my heart, I couldn't shake the flashes.
Blackness. Burned grass, burned houses, burned trees, burned flesh. Screams. Lila. Sara.
"What are you showing me? I don't want to see this!"
"Reality, Gabrielle. Or the coming one."
Fire.
The sun was strong overhead, hot on my skin as though I could feel the burns I had witnessed, feel the heated whips.
"What about Amphipolis?"
"Do you really want to see?"
A flicker of movement off to my right. I scanned the trees, never slowing my pace. The foliage was thinning. On the air I caught the vaguest scent of water. Maybe a whisper of cooking fire. Something...someone...was near.
"You see, you kill one dictator, another grows in his place, sometimes far worse than the one you intended to stop."
Blood in the dirt, slashes on his skin, flesh like rags. Joxer?
No matter how fast I ran, Ares' voice wouldn't silence in my head.
"Lila works for a man who sees her as no more human than a sheep. She is his bitch to be used."
"Stop it."
I could hear the water, now. Moving. A river. The river would lead me to a town, to people. But none of them would be...
"And Xena...where's Xena..?"
My legs were aching, muscles straining and throbbing as I pushed my strength to its limits. I had left the god of war in my dust, tried to outrun his unfathomable truths.
Breathless and shaking. "This is the world we're in now? This suffering..."
"Well, yes and no. It's the world we're headed for. But when I snatched you and brought you here, I also pulled you back in time. We're in that reality, yes, but about fifteen summers back from what I showed you, give or take. Time travel can be a little imprecise between realities."
No, no, no. I hated him, hated Caesar, felt the rush of emotion through my own veins as I had felt it wafting off Xena all these years. I could almost feel her presence tangled up in the hatred.
"Fifteen summers back?" Scrambled mind snatching at a misplaced fragment. "You said Xena was on a ship? What--"
"She is indeed, on a ship. A lovely vessel, though I've seen her on better in days past. Or future, as the reality may be. But this one is all hers, and I do believe she's quite proud of it."
I could catch sparkling glimpses of the river coming to run by my side, moving parallel to my flight. The scent was thicker now, and it wasn't just water, it was salt water. The sea. The river was running into the sea. Where Xena sailed....
"Ares, what is it you want from me? Why bring me here, what do you want me to do?"
I slowed my pace at the first sign of human life. A young man in a distant field, watching over a straggly flock of sheep. The trees were breaking open into a meadow now, and as I reached the crest of a hill, I was afforded a sudden and expansive view of the valley below; the comfortable little town, and the cliffs and seashore in the distance.
"I want you to fix this. Restore the timeline we know and love."
"And how am I supposed to do that?"
"The key event, Gabrielle. When Caesar betrayed Xena, she turned against the world, turned all her anger and hatred and fury on an unsuspecting countryside. And everything that happened from there, good and bad, came out of that time."
"So you want me to force Caesar to meet up with Xena? Make sure he betrays her again? You have to be kidding me."
"No, Gabrielle. That's not it. The thread has been severed. Xena and Caesar don't cross paths in this reality. Even I can't change that, now, let alone you."
I could see the town. I kept running through the smaller, well-tilled fields, right up to the first of the houses. I brushed past horses and pedestrians, townsfolk who turned to stare at the flushed and racing Amazon tearing blindly through their streets. I slowed my pace only as I approached the massive well in the center of the square. My feet carried me to a place beside the well, first at a walk and then a rhythmic stagger. I dropped one hand to the rough stone edge of the well, and the texture connected with a random memory; dragging my thighs across such stone, climbing up Xena's armor and clumsily over her head. Drugged and young and painfully naïve. My hero to my rescue.
"If she can't meet Caesar, what in Hades do you want me to do?"
"Caesar isn't the catalyst event. Not the man, at least. It's the response in Xena. The change in her. I know she's told you the story."
"I know the basics."
I leaned my hip against the cool stone and turned the stubborn crank to raise the water bucket. I was still breathing so hard I drew wary glances from all who passed. The streets were unusually busy for such a small town. No doubt I had stumbled into the makings of a market day. I raised the water ladle to my lips, clumsily slopping the cool liquid across the stone and onto my skirt. A young girl giggled at my fumbling, pointed, and then hurried along behind her father. The water flowed down through my chest and caressed my stomach. Every part of me was hot and overtaxed.
"Then you know how that betrayal changed her, darkened her. The destruction Xena wrought in her quest to become the Destroyer of Nations was the greatest of her career. Caesar awoke an anger, a drive, a passion in her as yet unseen."
The subtle whispers of admiration in his voice made me sick to my stomach. He spoke of Xena like a goddess, as though her darkness were something beautiful. He was talking about the massacre of innocent lives.
"She was in pain," I whispered.
For the first time since I'd known him, he truly sounded human when he said, "Exactly."
An old woman was the only villager to approach me. She walked up to the well, a bucket in her hand. No doubt fetching water for her family, something she'd done a thousand times before. Except this time I was here. She hoisted her bucket onto the side of the well, then reached out a wrinkled and disjointed hand to pat my knee. "You need any help, little one?" The woman was a good head and shoulders shorter than I.
I took a moment to find my voice to speak. I continued to struggle to even out my breath, focused irrationally on the pattern of mud splattered on the sides of my boots. Xena had only just mended these boots. The night before last. "I don't, uhh..." I swallowed hard, tried another sip of the water. "Could you...could you tell me the way to the docks...near the cliffs?"
"What cliffs?"
"Beyond the town. Her boat should dock there by first light tomorrow."
"Ares, this is...I'll find Xena if I can, but..."
"Gabrielle."
"The docks? Are you expecting someone, little one? Haven't been any boats in today."
"No, I...well...I'm meeting someone. Tomorrow."
The old woman held my gaze for a long time, studying my expression with wizened eyes. Her hair was thin and straggly, caught in an almost absurd little ribbon at the side of her head. For a moment I wished I had the time to stay, to get to know her. I imagined she had a wealth of stories to tell. I was almost startled by the sound when she replied, "Take that path down beyond the smithy's. Follow it past the apple grove; take the right-hand trail when it veers off. You'll see the docks from the cliffs. Watch your step, the brush up there hides some nasty drop-offs."
I cleared my throat and returned the ladle to the well bucket. "Thank you," I said, my voice hoarse, but my breath a bit steadier.
The woman nodded and patted my knee once more. "You come on back if you need anything, dear. My place is just north of the square. Red door, you can't miss it."
Somewhere in me I found the strength to smile.
Then I turned and walked through the town.
I found the orchard. The path. The cliffs. I still wanted to keep moving.
The view was breathtaking.
Lush greenery above, deep brown rocks below. White foamy waves crashed against the shore. The sun was blindingly bright, slicing off the water like a polished blade. In the distance, at the foot of a long and winding path, lay a makeshift dock of ragged and aging boards. Xena was set to arrive here tomorrow.
"You're the only one here, Gabrielle. The only one who knows the future doesn't have to be this way."
"No."
"You have to do this."
"No!"
The air of the water was cooler, first drying the sweat on my skin, then chilling my midriff and arms. I wrapped my arms across my body, shielding from the cold, from the...
"You have to break her. Win her trust, and then betray her. Do for her what Caesar did. Make her--"
"I won't. I can't."
"Gabrielle, Xena would never let this world happen. Not like this. You know that."
"There has to be another way."
"There is no other way. Xena is the key, Gabrielle, whether you like it or not. She has to become what she is meant to become. Her destiny can't be rewritten."
A lost whisper. "I can't...I ca--"
"You have to, Gabrielle. You have to--"
"I have to awaken the monster." I whispered into the trees. I could almost feel my voice floating away on the wind, bouncing off the cliffs, and dancing on the soft waves sloughing over sand.
My body, at last, had fallen inhumanly still, the desire to run drained from me with the exertion and pain. I stood, skin cooling in the wind, thirst quenched and muscles slackening. I tried to feel nothing.
Xena was on a ship, somewhere in the invisible distance, a sparkling jewel on the too-bright sea, making her way to the shore. The woman I knew better than any other on this earth. The woman I could break at her very soul, turn into everything she had ever wished she could rise above. To save our world.
I doubted very much this was something I could do. But I didn't know where else to go, what other path to take. All I knew was that Xena would hit shore here tomorrow, and this was where I had to be.
I stood in the sunlight and breathed.
"Sshhh, you want a story or not?"
"I...well, yes. Yes."
"Okay, then. Be quiet and let me be the bard."
"So, one day, when the weather was starting to get colder..."
****
(End Chapter 1. Continued in Chapter 2...)
This fic will be a pretty long involved ride. I hope I can keep up a decent posting pace. It's one of my main writing goals this year.
Welcome to my new playground.:) Hope you like it here in Angstville.
Disclaimer: This all belongs to Renaissance Pictures and Universal. I wish I could say it was all mine. Truly I do. But I'm just borrowing this wonderful world with all due respect.
Title: In the Valley of Disregard
Author: LadyRowan (rowandarkstar@gmail.com)
Rating: Mature
Spoilers: Through "When Fates Collide"
Categories: Angst, hurt/comfort, Xena/Gabrielle, hints of Xena/Ares UST
Summary: What if Caesar clipped the wrong thread?
Huge thanks to my beta squad: Teddy E, elsieaustin, and annakarrennina (and to triciabyrne1978, vampire_cookies, and tularia for the best of intentions :))
IN THE VALLEY OF DISREGARD
by
Lady Rowan
Copyright (c) 2008
"Who am I, to break this young girl's heart
How the mighty rise and fall"
-- 'Shining' by Kristian Leontiou
Prologue
I deserve to burn in Tartarus for what I've done. I deserve to burn for eternity and never be cleansed of the pain I have caused.
I have spent my life devoted to a path of peace, a path of caring and compassion for my fellow man. I fashioned myself the warrior princess's flame of hope in her ever threatening darkness. She believed in my light and fashioned herself unforgivable. But I look at us now, and I think we had it all wrong. Hers is the soul of eternal light, ever fighting, ever determined not to be doused by the darkness. Childlike, resilient, and so very beautiful.
While my soul -- my soul, at its core, is a mature and deliberate shade of black, capable of such intimate cruelties as Xena in her simple and misguided lust for security would never imagine.
I am the darkness.
And I deserve to burn through eternity in Tartarus for what I've done.
*****
(End Prologue. Continued in Chapter 1...)
--------------------
Disclaimer: This all belongs to Renaissance Pictures and Universal. I wish I could say it was all mine. Truly I do. But I'm just borrowing this wonderful world with all due respect.
Title: In the Valley of Disregard
Author: LadyRowan (rowandarkstar@gmail.com)
Rating: Mature
Spoilers: Through "When Fates Collide"
Categories: Angst, hurt/comfort, Xena/Gabrielle, hints of Xena/Ares UST
Summary: What if Caesar clipped the wrong thread?
Huge thanks to my beta squad: Teddy E, elsieaustin, and annakarrennina (and to triciabyrne1978 and tularia for the best of intentions :))
IN THE VALLEY OF DISREGARD
by
Lady Rowan
Copyright (c) 2008
Chapter 1:
"I see the course we're on, spinning farther from what I know
I'll hold on
Tell me that you won't let go"
--'Say It's Possible' by Terra Naomi
Maybe the dream was a coincidence, maybe I somehow sensed what was coming, or the Fates chose to plant the seeds of destiny in my subconscious. In any case, the dream feels like the beginning of the tale.
I was alone. I felt as though Xena had been there only a moment before, but then she was gone. No trace of her around me, and there was nothing but the mist and the damp chill that clung to my skin like a cloak. Something about the color of the twilight sky makes me sick to my stomach even now.
Emptiness Nothing but mist and trees, sickly green in the fading light. No campsite, no horse. I didn't even have a satchel, nor my sais. I remember walking, searching, thinking my footsteps too loud on the pine needle bed, struggling to remember everything Xena had ever taught me about moving in silence, listening to the air.
I saw the first splash of blood. A vibrant crimson against the trunk of a white birch. I stopped mid-step, staring at the crude smear in the colorless landscape, my senses charging to life with the familiar battle adrenaline I had never quite learned to love. My hands fumbled toward my boots, wishing for a weapon, clasping at empty air, catching fog between my fingers.
I walked.
The smears grew larger, more frequent, splashed across tree trunks and patches of grass, drizzled over stones and patches of leaves. The smell thickened like rust in my nostrils, and after twenty paces I saw the first body; a young woman, bound to a dead tree, her vacant stare white against the red strokes on her cheeks. Something about her reminded me of Lila. I stood before her, staring into her frozen and haunted countenance, searching her tattered clothing for any clue, any hint of who she was, where I was, what this was about. But I found nothing.
I walked.
I didn't know where to go, where I belonged, how to find my way back to familiar ground. There were more bodies. Then one man who was alive. By a breath. I tried to speak to him, help him, free him, but he was ranting, incoherent, and fighting against me with thin, fragile fingers like pincers on my skin. I gave up and backed away, promising him I would look for help. That I would not forget him.
But he wasn't the only one in need. The smell of pain and death was dizzying; soft moans broke the silence of the forest. The light was dimming, but the black-shadowed bodies were starting to match numbers with the trees. Some lay on the ground, others had been impaled on crudely crafted stakes.
A young girl called to me and I couldn't stop myself from approaching her, answering her plea. There was nothing I could do to save her, the stake ran clean through her midriff. If I pulled her free she would bleed to death. My fingers moved restlessly over her form, hovering a whisper from her skin. "I'm sorry," I whispered. "I don't...I don't know what's happened."
She said something I couldn't understand. Then, "Stop...her." And she slipped away.
I remained crouched in front of the girl, breathing deeply and staring at her silent form.
I walked.
I felt her before I saw her.
I felt her on the air, in the breath of the trees, in the crunch of sticks beneath my boots. I felt her in the darkness of the thickest forest; the lifeforce beside me in the deepest night. I had felt her on the wild wind when the slavers' hands were cruel upon my skin, not even knowing so long ago what force of nature was coming for me. I felt her like sun on my flesh, water on my lips.
I could smell her.
Xena.
The smell of blood turned to an ache in the pit of my stomach.
This could be her. Her work. Her cruelty. Her past, her style. The core of her I forever denied. Were these ghosts of her victims? Had I slipped into her nightmare, after so long sleeping a breath away?
I had my answer when I saw her at the center of the violence.
And the truth was more horrible than anything my mind had conjured.
Xena hung, impaled to a massive tree trunk, stripped of her armor, flesh more blood than skin. Her hair fell in heavy matted clumps, her bare limbs tied to straggling branches.
And she was breathing. Rasping sounds that carried on the wind. Her eyes blinked open, staring at me through the shadows.
I ran to her.
"Xena...by the Gods, Xena, what's happened? How do I help you?"
She tried to speak, but words caught in her throat and blood sprayed my chest as she coughed. My fingers smoothed the smears on her cheeks, tangled in her ragged hair. Her blood, my sweat, our pain. "Xena..."
"Gabrielle...I shouldn't have...she wanted..."
"Xena, don't talk, don't try to-- Xena. Xena!"
"Xena!" I startled into consciousness, rolling onto my back in the thin moonlight, eyes wide to the half-hidden stars.
For a heartbeat I didn't know where I was, and I could smell the foggy dampness of the dream valley as sharply as the real remnants of our evening's campfire. The air was quiet, the night steely and chill, but my skin was sticky with sweat and all I could feel was Xena's blood on my skin, her muscles quivering beneath my fingers. I pushed at my blanket, rested a shaking hand on my midriff, stomach muscles trembling as I fought for breath. The sickening sense of the dream thickened and clouded my thoughts.
Xena...gone...blood... Where did...what did...
My fumbling thoughts caught the sound of Xena's breath, the warmth of her nearness, and I heard the sigh of desperate relief cross my own lips. Then before I could register the progression of events, she was just there, awake and wrapping strong arms around me, pulling my weight onto her chest. Her heartbeat was steady, leather-clad midriff smooth and unmarred. Her skin was wind-dried and soft to the touch, her voice a gentle rumble in my hair. "Hey, hey, whoa...Gabrielle..."
I could only cling to her skin, bury my face in her shoulder, breathe in the scent of her leathers, the grass in her river-clean hair. I had grown decades in our six years together, but in that moment I was once again the childish bard from Potedeia, hanging onto my warrior in the dark of the night.
As always, I was cocooned by open arms, welcomed without hesitation. Xena was real and safe and I was so grateful for this simple fact it hurt. "Oh, Gods. Xena...you're here..."
"I'm here. I'm right here, I didn't go anywhere. You were just dreaming. Hey..." Her fingers moved in my hair. A warrior's confident touch with a current of infinite tenderness. "A nasty one, too..." she added in a whisper, lips brushing my tousled hair.
"I'm sorry..." I whispered, hardly able to speak through my tears.
"No, no, no, hush...Gabrielle, it's all right. It's all right."
Her voice was hoarse from sleep, her skin soft and warmed by the fire. And I wanted to lose myself in it all.
She let me, for a while.
My breathing slowed. Sleep beckoned. The movements of Xena's fingers in my hair never slackened. She should have been exhausted, too. We'd been travelling all day, she'd had to hunt down our dinner, wrestle a drunk warlord. And though she wouldn't admit it, Xena tired a bit more easily than she had six (or thirty-one) years ago. But I knew she wouldn't sleep until I did.
"You want to tell me about it?" Xena asked softly.
I wanted to. And I didn't want to. I wanted to forget, never think about it again. "It's just a dream. I just...want to forget." We have known dreams to be more than dreams, she and I. The notion is ever-present.
Her heavy exhale ruffled my bangs, sent a wave of warmth down my spine. "All right," she said simply. Because Xena is the queen of nightmares. And she never talks. Never tells.
Once in a white moon...she lets me hold her.
"Get some sleep, Gabrielle," she whispered, "it won't seem so real in the morning." I nodded into her shoulder.
She pulled the blanket closer around us as an icy wind snaked over the forest ground.
We breathed together in silence, each knowing the other was still awake. At long last Xena began softly, "Once upon a time, there was this little squirrel, who could never get enough to eat..."
I frowned into the darkness, shifting to half glance toward Xena's face, as though I could see her in the deep black shadows. "What?"
"Sshhh, you want a story or not?"
"I..."
"Hmmm?"
"I...well, yes. Yes."
"Okay, then. Be quiet and let me be the bard." She cleared her throat and the sound echoed through her chest and into my ear. "As I said, there was this squirrel, and even though he wasn't much fatter than the other squirrels, all he could think about every day was where his next nut was coming from. And all the other squirrels, especially the ones he liked to travel with, were getting really bored with his constant whining--"
"Xena...is this about--"
"Ssshh. So one--"
"Xena, I am not--"
"So, one day, when the weather was starting to get colder..."
I didn't remember the end of the story. I only remembered the sound of Xena's voice, and the warm nest of her arms.
When I woke, she was gone.
*****
He watches the man in the white robe and the golden laurels. He knows this moment is crucial, knows the fates of many run in the fine gold threads sliding over the skilled fingers of this man called Caesar. This man who once touched Xena with the tenderness of a lover and the cruelty of a demon. The god watches from the ether and wishes he had the power to stop the inevitable. But this is not his domain. And his brother is no more. Because of Xena. In the end, all things in the god's universe trail back to Xena.
"Stop. Back it up. Now. There. Let's take a look at that."
And in this, the God is not alone.
The man's arrogance remains even in death. The god had admired that arrogance once, the way it lead to power, served its own purpose. But he had hurt her. And even in those early days the god had noticed. He had watched her when he should have been doing something else.
"It's ironic, isn't it? How a single stick can change the entire path of one's destiny. Had I not betrayed Xena, I'd be ruling Rome today. Instead, I get stabbed in the back by my good friend, Brutus, while Xena gets to ride off into the sunset with her girlfriend. Hardly a fitting end for Julius Caesar."
Caesar. Julius Caesar. The god can still hear the words rolling off her tongue, her voice in his ears like ambrosia on his lips.
"You cannot change your fate," says the mother.
"--once it has been chosen."
"Unchain us now and accept your destiny."
The irony of the word choice is not lost on the god nor the man.
The god sees this in the glimmer of Caesar's eyes.
"Let me tell you...about my destiny. With Hades out of the picture, Underworld security's become rather, uh...lax. Which brings me to this defining Xena moment. Mysterious, romantic...good light."
The god tries to look away. But pale eyes hold him transfixed and again he feels the shifting of the universe, the quivering of paths not taken. It is coming.
"Tampering with the loom...will alter the very fabric of life--"
"--changing not only your destiny--"
"--but that of countless others."
The smile is one the god would have been proud of...in another life.
"Oh, I'm counting on it..."
A single snip, and the world implodes. The god feels the rip and shatter, and he clings to what he can with every power he has left.
*****
"Xena?" My own raspy cry rang back to me through the trees.
I sat up in the too bright sunlight. The sun had risen far above the tree line. I couldn't remember the last time I'd slept this late. I didn't understand. Xena had wanted to start out early, make it into Maedicea before dark...had she let me sleep after being awake in the night? Not her style.
"Xena?" Silence. The shuffle of a bird's wings, rustle of a rabbit in the underbrush.
I pushed back my blanket, my breath breaking rhythm at the shock of the chill air. The sun had done little to warm this valley, despite our shelter from the wind. This valley that...that we...this...
...valley...was all wrong.
All remnants of sleep swept from my head as my senses flared into high alert. I scanned every inch of my surroundings. The blanket now resting at my ankles wasn't the one Xena had pulled over us the night before. It was darker, thinner, a different texture of fur. I hadn't seen it before. The rolled up blanket Xena had used for a pillow was gone. Our horse, Tesla, wasn't grazing at the edge of the tree line. And the tree line...was closer than it had been the night before. The fruit tree Xena had climbed to snag our dessert now held no fruit, only sparse leaves and some variety of nut.
This was almost the valley I had fallen asleep in. Except it wasn't. *By the gods...*
"Xena?" The sharpness in my own voice carried to me on a dull echo.
The world around me was too quiet. No birds, no rabbits,
I held still for a long moment, crouched beside my crumpled bedroll, and forced myself to think through my options. I was clearly in a different place from the one in which I had fallen asleep. So what were the possibilities? Someone had moved me? Could Xena have moved me? Had we been attacked? Had she taken me somewhere safe? Lead the assailants away? Was she off dealing with them now? Or maybe hurt... Could I possibly have slept through being moved if I hadn't been drugged?
I didn't feel as though I'd been drugged. My vision was clear, muscles quick to respond.
So my other options were... I was at a loss.
Feeling increasingly disoriented in the silent stillness, I turned to my only known defense -- action. If years with Xena had taught me nothing else, I had learned never to hold still. Xena can't stay, she can't wait, she can't let life happen, she grasps its essence by the throat and forces it to bend to her will. For years, I wanted to be like her, while I wished she would just...hold still. Somewhere along the way, I learned to move with her. Perhaps we found our own kind of stillness in the motion. Together.
So to restore the balance? Keep moving. Find Xena.
I loaded what little supplies remained in the clearing into my pouch. My mind registered that the small bit of leather was more weathered than it had been the night before, the shape more square where it had been round. But I couldn't deal with this absurdity, couldn't process the ramifications. My mind stored the information into its relevant compartment, leaving these facts to be retrieved and sorted later.
Even as I searched the ground and underbrush for signs of Xena's trail I knew I would find nothing. The words crept beneath my skin, prickled at my tongue and refused to stay buried in shadows. Xena was never here.
There was no trail. No clue for me to follow. I chose North, because the sun would light my way without glaring or casting my own shadow in my path. I started into the trees.
*****
"Xena?" The call had begun to sound hollow on my own lips. I had ceased calling out with any force or belief, yet the sound of my voice kept me grounded and sharp.
The unnatural stillness of the forest remained, and I hadn't caught the trail of so much as a deer, let alone a person. I was unreasonably grateful when a single bird darted past, fluttered into the thick leaves of a tree and assured me I was not utterly alone.
The voice from the tree line scared the Tartarus out of me.
"She's not here."
I whirled on my boot heel, sais up with blades turned out.
"Ares?" Crap.
He leaned casually against a tree trunk, arms folded across his thick chest and shoulders glistening in the late morning light. His expression was unreadable, impassive and characteristically dark.
I had never been so infuriated and so grateful to see the God of War.
"You were looking for Xena, yes?" he drawled.
I stared at him, shook my head a bit in disbelief, weapons still at the ready.
He didn't let my silence faze him, nor my battle stance. "Yeah, you were. Well, she's not here. Nowhere near here, in fact. She's on a ship off the coast. Won't make port until tomorrow morning."
"What are you talking about? What ship? Xena was here last night."
"Here?" he asked. He pushed away from the tree, took a step to the side and dropped his weight onto a large boulder, leg strewn across the smooth stone, hands resting on his thighs. His eyebrow cocked in mock question as a single bird's cry rang overhead, and I wondered if it were the same solitary creature. "Here? Oh, I don't think so. You see, I don't even think you know where 'here' is."
I swallowed hard, knowing the truth in his words and thinking of the oddly square pouch at my hip. Everything wrong. This wasn't the quiet glade where we'd curled up together the night before. This wasn't the air that Xena had breathed onto my temple or exhaled to whisper me to sleep. And he knew... "So...where am I?" I cursed the tremor in my voice. The confidence that had come with movement, with the definitive steps of my boots in the grass, was slipping in the face of confrontation.
"Ah, but that's not the most important question for you right now. You might want to start with 'when am I'?"
"Ares, what in Tartarus are you talking about!"
He pushed away from the stone and took a few easy steps in my direction. "Well, first of all, the world you went to bed in last night doesn't exist this morning. Even if I had left you in it."
What the...left me...I didn't want to hear this. I wanted to go back to sleep and wake up next to Xena and Tesla and know everything was okay and this was just another torturous dream. Surely this was just another dream? Ares' words spun like mist in my head, mist from the unnamed valley. "Excuse me?" I managed to protest. "Left me in it?"
He nodded, too casually.
I wanted to scream and shake him, make him flash his god-light and fix it all. But he was still talking and I knew I should listen.
"..hmm. You see, I was reaching for Xena, but I just caught you. Because you're the key, unfortunately. Always have been, it seems. That sticky little thread that won't dislodge, no matter who interferes."
The anger was good, it was clearing my head. "Ares, just cut the cryptic crap and tell me what in Tartarus is going on?"
"I'm afraid this isn't Tartarus, Blondie. It's just plain old Greece. Except it's all different, now. Everything's different."
"Why?"
"Because Caesar is an idiot. He always was an idiot. All that talent gone to waste... If only Xena had figured that out a little sooner..."
"Caesar." I shook my head, lost. "Caesar is dead. What are you talking about?"
"Yeah, Caesar's dead. But your favorite warrior did her part to eliminate the underworld security system. And things have gotten a bit...unorthodox. In all the time Caesar's had to sit down there in Tartarus and contemplate his navel, it seems he decided where it all went wrong for him during his run in this mortal coil. He decided it was all about Xena. That if he hadn't betrayed her, if he'd joined her in their quest like she wanted...maybe things would have worked out for the best. So, he decided to take fate into his own hands. Rearrange things."
I drew a long breath. I had lowered my sais to my sides, but held eye contact with a narrow gaze and unwavering intensity. After all, wasn't that how Xena always got him to talk? "What are you saying?" I asked.
"I'm saying...the idiot clipped the wrong thread. Or at least he altered things in ways he never intended. You see, what Caesar wanted, was to erase the moment when he betrayed Xena. To go back and accept her offer of a joint army, conquer the world together, blah, blah, blah... But what he did was snip the connection between Xena and himself. He fixed it so he and Xena never met."
"Caesar clipped one of the threads of fate?" My incredulity was clear to my own ears.
But his reply was casual, snarky. "Indeed."
I bristled. "So Xena and Caesar never met. Isn't that...a good thing?"
"You'd think, wouldn't you? Funny thing, fate... No, here's the thing." He took a few steps closer, spread his fingers, curled them like he was holding an invisible ball of the world. He was still snarking, but there was an undercurrent of sincerity that kept me listening. "Fate is all tangled up, in ways so complex even the gods can't always comprehend. Break one thing, you change another, and so on and so on until the world just isn't the world you know, anymore. Turns out...Caesar and Xena kind of kept things on an even keel."
"What things? Where is Xena now?"
"Okay, let me make it a little clearer for you. Here's Greece right now."
So fast I didn't have a moment to breathe, Ares whipped his arms to one side, throwing a great flash of blue light that temporarily blinded. When the world settled into existence again, I was standing just where I had been. But an expanse of at least 10 paces across the forest path had become a kind of window, through which we were watching another place entirely.
"What is..." I breathed.
"That would be Potedeia."
*****
I was running. Running from Ares, from his words, his plans, his glimpses of a future I couldn't understand. Running so hard my breath drug through my chest like fire. A few short years ago I could never have covered this terrain like I did. Flying over rough ground, dodging branches, leaping over half hidden trenches, rushing through the greenery like a soaring hawk. The trees seemed to stretch into eternity and I couldn't shake the memories of the dream, nor the echoes of Ares voice in my head. The speed was numbing and I wanted to needed to wash the unthinkable images from my mind.
But as fast as I ran, boots slamming the ground with the beat of my heart, I couldn't shake the flashes.
Blackness. Burned grass, burned houses, burned trees, burned flesh. Screams. Lila. Sara.
"What are you showing me? I don't want to see this!"
"Reality, Gabrielle. Or the coming one."
Fire.
The sun was strong overhead, hot on my skin as though I could feel the burns I had witnessed, feel the heated whips.
"What about Amphipolis?"
"Do you really want to see?"
A flicker of movement off to my right. I scanned the trees, never slowing my pace. The foliage was thinning. On the air I caught the vaguest scent of water. Maybe a whisper of cooking fire. Something...someone...was near.
"You see, you kill one dictator, another grows in his place, sometimes far worse than the one you intended to stop."
Blood in the dirt, slashes on his skin, flesh like rags. Joxer?
No matter how fast I ran, Ares' voice wouldn't silence in my head.
"Lila works for a man who sees her as no more human than a sheep. She is his bitch to be used."
"Stop it."
I could hear the water, now. Moving. A river. The river would lead me to a town, to people. But none of them would be...
"And Xena...where's Xena..?"
My legs were aching, muscles straining and throbbing as I pushed my strength to its limits. I had left the god of war in my dust, tried to outrun his unfathomable truths.
Breathless and shaking. "This is the world we're in now? This suffering..."
"Well, yes and no. It's the world we're headed for. But when I snatched you and brought you here, I also pulled you back in time. We're in that reality, yes, but about fifteen summers back from what I showed you, give or take. Time travel can be a little imprecise between realities."
No, no, no. I hated him, hated Caesar, felt the rush of emotion through my own veins as I had felt it wafting off Xena all these years. I could almost feel her presence tangled up in the hatred.
"Fifteen summers back?" Scrambled mind snatching at a misplaced fragment. "You said Xena was on a ship? What--"
"She is indeed, on a ship. A lovely vessel, though I've seen her on better in days past. Or future, as the reality may be. But this one is all hers, and I do believe she's quite proud of it."
I could catch sparkling glimpses of the river coming to run by my side, moving parallel to my flight. The scent was thicker now, and it wasn't just water, it was salt water. The sea. The river was running into the sea. Where Xena sailed....
"Ares, what is it you want from me? Why bring me here, what do you want me to do?"
I slowed my pace at the first sign of human life. A young man in a distant field, watching over a straggly flock of sheep. The trees were breaking open into a meadow now, and as I reached the crest of a hill, I was afforded a sudden and expansive view of the valley below; the comfortable little town, and the cliffs and seashore in the distance.
"I want you to fix this. Restore the timeline we know and love."
"And how am I supposed to do that?"
"The key event, Gabrielle. When Caesar betrayed Xena, she turned against the world, turned all her anger and hatred and fury on an unsuspecting countryside. And everything that happened from there, good and bad, came out of that time."
"So you want me to force Caesar to meet up with Xena? Make sure he betrays her again? You have to be kidding me."
"No, Gabrielle. That's not it. The thread has been severed. Xena and Caesar don't cross paths in this reality. Even I can't change that, now, let alone you."
I could see the town. I kept running through the smaller, well-tilled fields, right up to the first of the houses. I brushed past horses and pedestrians, townsfolk who turned to stare at the flushed and racing Amazon tearing blindly through their streets. I slowed my pace only as I approached the massive well in the center of the square. My feet carried me to a place beside the well, first at a walk and then a rhythmic stagger. I dropped one hand to the rough stone edge of the well, and the texture connected with a random memory; dragging my thighs across such stone, climbing up Xena's armor and clumsily over her head. Drugged and young and painfully naïve. My hero to my rescue.
"If she can't meet Caesar, what in Hades do you want me to do?"
"Caesar isn't the catalyst event. Not the man, at least. It's the response in Xena. The change in her. I know she's told you the story."
"I know the basics."
I leaned my hip against the cool stone and turned the stubborn crank to raise the water bucket. I was still breathing so hard I drew wary glances from all who passed. The streets were unusually busy for such a small town. No doubt I had stumbled into the makings of a market day. I raised the water ladle to my lips, clumsily slopping the cool liquid across the stone and onto my skirt. A young girl giggled at my fumbling, pointed, and then hurried along behind her father. The water flowed down through my chest and caressed my stomach. Every part of me was hot and overtaxed.
"Then you know how that betrayal changed her, darkened her. The destruction Xena wrought in her quest to become the Destroyer of Nations was the greatest of her career. Caesar awoke an anger, a drive, a passion in her as yet unseen."
The subtle whispers of admiration in his voice made me sick to my stomach. He spoke of Xena like a goddess, as though her darkness were something beautiful. He was talking about the massacre of innocent lives.
"She was in pain," I whispered.
For the first time since I'd known him, he truly sounded human when he said, "Exactly."
An old woman was the only villager to approach me. She walked up to the well, a bucket in her hand. No doubt fetching water for her family, something she'd done a thousand times before. Except this time I was here. She hoisted her bucket onto the side of the well, then reached out a wrinkled and disjointed hand to pat my knee. "You need any help, little one?" The woman was a good head and shoulders shorter than I.
I took a moment to find my voice to speak. I continued to struggle to even out my breath, focused irrationally on the pattern of mud splattered on the sides of my boots. Xena had only just mended these boots. The night before last. "I don't, uhh..." I swallowed hard, tried another sip of the water. "Could you...could you tell me the way to the docks...near the cliffs?"
"What cliffs?"
"Beyond the town. Her boat should dock there by first light tomorrow."
"Ares, this is...I'll find Xena if I can, but..."
"Gabrielle."
"The docks? Are you expecting someone, little one? Haven't been any boats in today."
"No, I...well...I'm meeting someone. Tomorrow."
The old woman held my gaze for a long time, studying my expression with wizened eyes. Her hair was thin and straggly, caught in an almost absurd little ribbon at the side of her head. For a moment I wished I had the time to stay, to get to know her. I imagined she had a wealth of stories to tell. I was almost startled by the sound when she replied, "Take that path down beyond the smithy's. Follow it past the apple grove; take the right-hand trail when it veers off. You'll see the docks from the cliffs. Watch your step, the brush up there hides some nasty drop-offs."
I cleared my throat and returned the ladle to the well bucket. "Thank you," I said, my voice hoarse, but my breath a bit steadier.
The woman nodded and patted my knee once more. "You come on back if you need anything, dear. My place is just north of the square. Red door, you can't miss it."
Somewhere in me I found the strength to smile.
Then I turned and walked through the town.
I found the orchard. The path. The cliffs. I still wanted to keep moving.
The view was breathtaking.
Lush greenery above, deep brown rocks below. White foamy waves crashed against the shore. The sun was blindingly bright, slicing off the water like a polished blade. In the distance, at the foot of a long and winding path, lay a makeshift dock of ragged and aging boards. Xena was set to arrive here tomorrow.
"You're the only one here, Gabrielle. The only one who knows the future doesn't have to be this way."
"No."
"You have to do this."
"No!"
The air of the water was cooler, first drying the sweat on my skin, then chilling my midriff and arms. I wrapped my arms across my body, shielding from the cold, from the...
"You have to break her. Win her trust, and then betray her. Do for her what Caesar did. Make her--"
"I won't. I can't."
"Gabrielle, Xena would never let this world happen. Not like this. You know that."
"There has to be another way."
"There is no other way. Xena is the key, Gabrielle, whether you like it or not. She has to become what she is meant to become. Her destiny can't be rewritten."
A lost whisper. "I can't...I ca--"
"You have to, Gabrielle. You have to--"
"I have to awaken the monster." I whispered into the trees. I could almost feel my voice floating away on the wind, bouncing off the cliffs, and dancing on the soft waves sloughing over sand.
My body, at last, had fallen inhumanly still, the desire to run drained from me with the exertion and pain. I stood, skin cooling in the wind, thirst quenched and muscles slackening. I tried to feel nothing.
Xena was on a ship, somewhere in the invisible distance, a sparkling jewel on the too-bright sea, making her way to the shore. The woman I knew better than any other on this earth. The woman I could break at her very soul, turn into everything she had ever wished she could rise above. To save our world.
I doubted very much this was something I could do. But I didn't know where else to go, what other path to take. All I knew was that Xena would hit shore here tomorrow, and this was where I had to be.
I stood in the sunlight and breathed.
"Sshhh, you want a story or not?"
"I...well, yes. Yes."
"Okay, then. Be quiet and let me be the bard."
"So, one day, when the weather was starting to get colder..."
****
(End Chapter 1. Continued in Chapter 2...)