Cover Art By Tango

By LadyKate

For these past several months, Ares had often wondered if the Abyss of Tartarus could be any worse.

In all this time, he hadn't seen her once; or, to be more exact, she hadn't seen him. He felt certain that now, he had lost her far more irrevocably than the other time. Throwing himself into his job hadn't worked, though he did take some pleasure in wars that could be a serious nuisance to the Romans. In Egypt, this vendetta had led to an attempt at another kind of distraction. Queen Cleopatra, thrilled to have the God of War on her side, had made it clear that she wouldn't mind having him in her bed as well. Her lithe, tanned body, sphinx-like almond-shaped eyes and slightly irregular features hinted at interesting possibilities -- a vast improvement, at least, on the stable of girlfriends kept by this timeline's earlier version of himself (among them, to his bitter amusement, that twit Mavican). The queen was smart, witty and charming, with an arsenal of expert caresses which might have exceeded that of Empress Xena; but in the four or five nights he spent with her, Cleopatra's company made him miss Xena all the more.

It didn't help that he knew his obsession was the subject of gossip and ridicule on Olympus, and apparently beyond. His lowest point, perhaps, had come when he finally locked horns with his bastard half-brother over some trifle of a local war. Hercules coolly remarked, "You know, Ares, just because your girlfriend kicked you out on your ass doesn't mean you have to take it out on innocent people," and in a surge of blinding rage that nearly made him flout the no-killing-Hercules rule, he yelled, "Yeah, like you don't have the hots for her yourself!" The slip having been made, there was nothing he could do to avoid seeing the hero's eyes roll all the way up into his forehead or hearing the inevitable rejoinder: "Excuse me? For Xena? The Bitch of Rome? No thanks ... she does seem much more your type." (Hercules had walked away from this encounter firmly convinced that the God of War had finally flipped.)

In all that time, there had been nothing to suggest that things with Xena might change. Until that evening -- when he succumbed, once again, to the urge to open up a viewing portal on the Empress, and saw something that gave him more of a shock than seeing her walk into that arena in Rome after being dead for twenty-five years.

There she was, at an imperial banquet, chatting with Gabrielle.

Within seconds, he was at the palace -- for once, grateful for her inability to feel his presence.

And now he stood in the garden, watching as Gabrielle burst into quiet sobs when the Empress had stalked off, and then finally got up and wandered slowly back to the palace.

If anyone could reach the real Xena, it was the blonde bard. He hated to admit it -- after all, the little pest had been instrumental in keeping Xena away from him in the other world, and she clearly had a special bond with Xena that he would never fully understand; he had seen the evidence of this just now. On the other hand ... if he could use her now to actually get through to Xena ... there would be a certain delicious irony in that. For the first time in months, Ares found himself grinning.

But tomorrow, she would be gone. No, that would never do.

A plan was forming in his mind. His relatives had warned him not to mess with Xena's buried memories of her other life; but no one had ever said anything about messing with Gabrielle.

By the time she got back to her bedroom, he was already there, waiting.

Gabrielle sank down on the velvet-covered seat in front of the dressing table. Her eyes were red and puffy, her lower lip a little swollen where she'd been biting it. Partly, it was reliving the events of her first months as a slave that had brought on the crying jag; she closed her eyes, her mind flashing to the moment when Cleone, her first mistress, had dragged her to a mirror to make her look at her pitiful pink head. Yet, those memories aside, the entire evening had left her shaken. She had come prepared to be polite and deferential to the Empress -- her manager had strongly warned her not to offend their hosts -- but nothing she'd heard about this woman made her sound remotely likable. And yet there had been times, at the banquet and later in the garden, when she felt she could have thrown her arms around Xena, held her in a tight embrace, and confided in her about anything.

Absent-mindedly, she began to remove the pins from her hair, thinking about the trip home. Then, she looked up at the mirror and felt as if she's been punched in the gut. There was a man standing behind her.

He was very tall and dressed in black leather, with a sword at his belt; he looked like a warrior, and one of high rank, yet he certainly didn't seem to be a Roman officer. He watched her with hooded eyes, his face still and unreadable.

The man made a step forward. Gabrielle managed to take a breath and open her mouth -- but before she could make a sound, the man waved his hand lazily and her vocal chords were paralyzed. She lifted her hands to her throat.

"Hello, Gabrielle." His voice was low and smooth, and yet not at all reassuring. "I'll release you if you promise not to scream. I'm not here to hurt you. Promise you won't scream? Just nod."

Gabrielle nodded; he moved his hand again, and the hold on her throat was gone. She whirled around.

"How did you do that?"

He smiled. "All in good time."

"Who are you?"

"Why don't you let me ask the questions for now." The stranger pulled up a chair and sat down facing her. His deep brown eyes were extraordinary -- lusciously soft and searingly intense at the same time -- and she felt as if she had looked into those eyes before, even though she was certain she had never met him; she would have remembered him alright.

"Gabrielle, why did you turn down the job the Empress offered you?"

She felt dizzy. "Did she send you?"

"Oh no." He appeared to be amused by the suggestion.

"Then how did you know about this?"

"I was in the garden."

The thought that this man had overheard some of the things she'd said made the blood rush to the bard's face. "Eavesdropping?" she snapped, briefly forgetting her terror.

The man chuckled. "I do that a lot."

One of Caesar's spies? Her mind was reeling.

"You haven't answered my question."

"I don't have to answer any of your questions."

"No, you don't." He put his hands on the shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. She remembered the stories she'd heard of how the gaze of a snake could mesmerize its prey and leave it unable to move. "Why did you turn her down, Gabrielle?"

She sighed. "Because I can't ... some of the things she's done are so ... horrible."

"But you still like her, don't you? Isn't that what scares you, Gabrielle? You don't want to feel like you're connected to her -- but you are."

She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to free herself from the spell.

"Why are you saying these things?"

"Look at me, Gabrielle. Look at me."

His velvety voice was as compelling as his look, and she felt her eyelids lifting almost of their own accord.

"I can help you understand why you feel that way."

"What are you talking about?"

"Remember what you said at the banquet? About loving someone so much that they matter to you more than the world itself? And how you think you may have experienced that kind of love in a past life?"

Gabrielle thought she would faint. "You heard that too?"

"I can help you figure it all out."

"I can't make heads or tails of what you're saying."

Her mystery visitor leaned in closer, as if about to kiss her.

"Do you want to know who you really are, Gabrielle? Where you get your ideas, your passions, your dreams?"

As if from the outside, she heard herself whisper, "Yes."

"Good." The suave sensuality in his voice was replaced by a businesslike briskness. "Why don't we -- go someplace a little more private."

Before Gabrielle could ask where, everything seemed to disintegrate around her in a swirl of light and it felt as if she were being pulled into a tornado. When the blur cleared up, she was in a completely different room -- windowless, rich but sparsely furnished, mostly war-themed silver decorations supplying the only colors other than black and deep crimson.

So that was it. She was dreaming.

"Ready?"

Without waiting for an answer, the man pressed his palms to the sides of her head. This time, the sensation was entirely different. She was falling ... falling into a void -- and then the void began to fill with images.

Ares took a step back. Good thing he'd taken her to his temple; those shrieks would have brought half the palace running to her room.

He hadn't given much thought to how Gabrielle's mortal mind would react to being crammed full of memories from another timeline, another lifetime. Now, as she rolled on the floor clutching her head, her small body racked by piercing screams, he reflected that some of those memories had to be pretty intense; the Dahak and Hope business alone could drive a person mad. Damn -- she might die, or turn into a raving lunatic ... not that it should bother him, but in that case she'd be of no use to him at all.

The screaming stopped and Ares saw that she had passed out, a little blood trickling from her nose. He bent over her and made sure she was alive, then picked her up and carried her to a couch.

It was a few more minutes before her eyes opened. She stared at him and sat up brusquely.

"Ares."

The little blonde's voice was raspy from the screaming, but she sounded much like her old self.

"Oh, so now you remember me." He handed her a goblet of wine. "Here, this may help."

She drained the cup and dabbed the blood away from her nose. Then she looked up and asked, her voice hushed, "Am I crazy?"

The God of War chuckled. "Not any more than usual, I think." He was grudgingly impressed; underneath all the gooey drivel, the girl did have a lot of stamina.

"I feel like I've had -- two different lives... in two different worlds... but I'm not sure which one is real."

He rolled his eyes. "Gabrielle, I'm not especially interested in talking metaphysics."

"But ... how could this be true? I know that Xena is the Empress now, and yet in that other life she was a warrior who fought for common people -- and she was" -- her eyes flickered and brimmed with tears -- "my friend ... my -- soulmate..."

He grunted. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Look -- “

"And Caesar..." She gasped. "Caesar was her mortal enemy... he had us -- " she shivered and hunched over, grasping her shoulders.

"Gabrielle, I know what the son of a bitch did. I'm something of an expert on all things Xena, remember?"

"I just don't get it. How could all this have happened? I mean -- where did it happen? When?"

He realized he'd have to tell her or she really would go mad. The bard listened rapt, taking it all in. Obviously, after all the extraordinary things she'd encountered in her life -- her other life -- it didn't strike her as completely insane that a dead Roman emperor would escape from the underworld, chain up the Fates, and alter the thread of his own destiny and the world with it.

"So you're a god again," she said thoughtfully when he was done.

"Yup."

"And Zeus and all the other gods -- “

"The whole gang's here. And if they ever find out that you and I have had this little chat, it's going to end most unpleasantly."

"For you or for me?"

"Well, I was thinking about me, of course," he retorted with a crooked grin; oh, she was so much more fun to torment than Strife, with that look of outraged virtue on her face. "But I can't imagine that it would end very pleasantly for you, either."

Gabrielle seemed to digest this for a few moments.

"So why did you do it? Bring back my memories?"

"I'm surprised you have to ask, Gabrielle. I just want Xena to have her best friend back."

"Oh please," she snorted. "You expect me to fall for that? What have you got up your sleeve?" He mockingly raised his bare arms and she gave an exasperated sigh. "Ares, come on. What's the scheme?"

"You're going to take that job at the palace now, aren't you?"

"You haven't answered me. What's your game, Ares?"

He looked down, fidgeting a little. "I want her the way she was."

"Oh really." Ares glanced at the bard and saw her smirk bitterly. "I would have thought that Empress Xena would be much more to your taste."

"Gabrielle." He fixed her with a glare, and her frightened expression told him that his impulse to blast her to bits had registered fully in his face. "We are not going to discuss my taste in women. Got that?"

The young woman nodded. He turned away and began pacing slowly as her eyes followed him, a little nervously.

"You don't think that the way Xena is now is what she's meant to be, do you? No, I'm sure you don't. So go on, take the job and just -- do your thing."

"If you want the real Xena back, why didn't you just bring her memories back the way you did mine?"

Ares shrugged. "It's complicated."

After a pause, she said, "Is it because she won't have anything to do with you? And to do this trick, you need to have the person's mind open to you?"

"Not quite." He wondered if that was true, though -- if he did defy his family and try to bring Xena back directly, would he able to? "I told you, I have my reasons."

"You always do. Well, what if I refuse to play my part in your little game?"

"You mean, if you walk away from your friend."

He heard her sigh and knew that he had won.

Gabrielle mulled it over. "I assume Caesar knows everything about -- the other time?"

"Clever girl."

"So he knows who I am. I wouldn't imagine he was very happy to see me around his wife." She darted her eyes toward Ares. "You want me to go into the lion's den and stick my neck out for your plan ... because you're afraid to stick out yours."

Generally, whatever slurs she cast on his character could only amuse him, but this time her words stung. "I won't let you come to any harm, okay?" he said, his voice edgy. "I promise."

She rose from the couch and looked up at the War God. With her hair a mess and her dress rumpled, she looked more like a little girl than ever, but her stare was defiant.

"I would have done it anyway," she said. "Because I love her."

When Ares transported himself back to Olympus after dropping Gabrielle off in her room the palace, he was still scowling. His plan was working, but, godsdammit -- in this round, the irritating blonde had actually had the last word.

When Gabrielle requested an audience the next morning, she was told that the Empress was busy. She had no choice than to wait interminably, with a throng of other hopeful petitioners, outside the hall where the ambassadors from Ch'in were being received. (Caesar, luckily, was away from the palace.) Finally the doors swung open; the emissaries left first, walking stiffly in their exotic embroidered robes. A few minutes later, the Empress, in her formal purple gown and tiara, came out followed by her attendants. The crowd of petitioners stirred, and the bard cursed her short stature. Somehow she managed to elbow her way to the front; miraculously, Xena looked straight at her -- and right past her. The clear blue eyes that Gabrielle now knew so well held no touch of warmth or personal connection.

"My lady!"

People were pushing her aside; another few seconds and there would be no chance of catching the Empress's attention again.

"My lady, please!" she shouted, desperately wishing she could just call out, Xena! "I -- I was wrong -- I would like to accept your offer."

She got some strange looks. Clearly, people were wondering if she was deranged or if she had actually rejected some kind of offer from the Empress; in their view, it would undoubtedly amount to the same thing. However, Xena stopped and slowly turned. Her eyes were still icy, but what she said -- instantly turning the suspicious stares to envious ones -- was, "Come and see me in two hours."

That afternoon, the actors from Athens and their manager returned home without the playwright. Gabrielle, the Bard of Potedaia, had taken up residence at the imperial palace of Rome.

"What's wrong, Gabrielle? Do you know Ares?"

They were alone in a small room in the imperial library where Gabrielle worked on her first official task of collecting and cataloguing scrolls, and where the Empress would stop by to visit her protegee. In their conversations, Xena generally said little about her own life, letting Gabrielle do much of the talking. But today, about a month after their initial meeting, the discussion had drifted from Gabrielle's play to the general issue of love and then to something unusually personal. Xena had disclosed, albeit in a studied tone of droll nonchalance, that her husband had gone along with her taking a lover because the connection had worked to his advantage. And then, the unspoken puzzlement in the little bard's eyes -- whose good graces could the Emperor of Rome have possibly wanted to buy with his wife's favors? -- had led the Empress to mention a name.

Helplessly, Gabrielle knew that her reaction was written all over her face -- and was reflected in Xena's face, suddenly full of wariness.

She'd never get away with trying to lie, and yet she couldn't tell Xena what was actually going on. The only way out, however she felt about it, was to go with a half-truth.

"My lady..." She felt herself blushing fiercely. "I should have told you... shortly after I first met you ... he came to my room..."

Xena grabbed her wrist. "What did the bastard do?"

"No, no, my lady -- it was nothing like that... he wanted me to -- give you a message of some sort..."

"Of what sort?"

It took a supreme effort not to avert her eyes from Xena's piercing stare. "I have no idea, my lady -- I told him that I wasn't going to serve as his intermediary."

"Good for you. But yes, you should have told me sooner." Xena let go of her wrist and exhaled. "Watch out for Ares, Gabrielle. I think he may have had a plan for some time to somehow use you to manipulate me."

The bard felt a little stab of fear, wondering what she'd gotten herself into. "What do you mean?"

Xena shivered slightly, with an absent look in her eyes. "A while ago ... in the last weeks that we were -- together ... he gave me some very strange dreams and for some reason he planted you in them. At least I think he did."

"Me?" she whispered.

"Well, you looked quite a bit different in those dreams -- dressed like some kind of an Amazon, and with short hair -- but it was definitely you. Your face, your name..."

"What kinds of dreams were they?" Gabrielle tried not to sound probing.

"Weird, sick ones -- about fighting against gods and him becoming mortal ... I'm not sure why, but I think he wanted to persuade me that all the other gods hated me and that he -- " She stopped, her face tightening. "I shouldn't talk to you about that nonsense, Gabrielle. Just be careful. Somebody as innocent as you..."

"My lady." Painfully aware of crossing a line, Gabrielle put her hand on Xena's. "You know that I would never do anything to harm you."

Almost a full minute later, Xena's fingers closed around her hand.

"Gabrielle? I thought those dreams were completely evil ... but now -- " Her voice trailed off and she shook her head. Then she said, "In those dreams, you were my friend."

Gabrielle was glad she was sitting down; her temples were throbbing, and all of a sudden there seemed to be too little air in the room.

Xena moved her hand away and added quite casually, "By the way, when we're by ourselves -- you can just call me Xena."

Later, when she was alone, Gabrielle thought of the God of War. She was dimly beginning to understand what he had tried to do, and why. She still resented the way he was manipulating her; yet on some level, she couldn't help sympathizing.

While Ares had not heard that conversation, he had heard many others, and he was almost in equal measure irritated and pleased by how things were working out. He was painfully jealous, much as he had been before, of all the hours when Gabrielle was with Xena and he was not, of the affection and closeness between them -- and now, of her ability to get through to the real Xena. But of course, it was on this very ability of hers that he was now pinning his hopes.

Xena was coming back, he could feel it. He had to hand it to the bard, she was no dummy. She had come up with the idea of writing stories, for her friend's eyes only, about some of their adventures from their other life; she'd even had the nerve to keep "Xena" as the name of her Warrior Princess heroine, and to tell the Empress with a straight face that she had chosen the name in her honor.

None of his relatives on Olympus had a clue; why would they? Unlike him, they knew nothing about Gabrielle's place in Xena's life or the unique bond between the two women.

All he had to do was bide his time, and eventually he might well have the best of both worlds. Xena would recover her old self, and now, after everything that had passed between them, she would come back to him. And if the bard had a problem with that -- well, she'd owe him far too much to dare stand in his way.

Ares distracted himself from these thoughts to check up on his girl through a viewing portal. There she was, in her military outfit -- a short black leather dress not unlike his Xena's, only with arm-length sleeves and a golden Roman eagle on the breastplate -- inspecting the twenty newest members of her own elite fighting corps. They included two women, a sight that still piqued Ares' interest no matter how preoccupied he was with one and only one woman warrior. His appreciative eyes traveled over the female figures in sleek uniforms, and rested on a familiar face. It wouldn't be familiar to Xena, of course -- not in this destiny.

He sat up, frowning. It might be a coincidence ... or not.

In the next moment, the God of War was at Xena's side, remaining invisible.

When the short sword sliced through the air, aimed straight for the Empress's throat, Ares was there to block it with his hand -- slowing it down just long enough for Xena to lurch backward, and for the other soldiers to disarm the dark-eyed blonde and wrestle her to the ground as she screamed, "Butcher of Cirra!"

The dank, stale air of the Roman dungeon made Gabrielle slightly ill, bringing back memories of the other time she had smelled it. She'd rather be almost anywhere but here. Still, she had to come down and see the would-be assassin for herself. She had heard a description of the woman, and knew about the mention of Cirra. Could it be -- ?

The bard handed her pass from the Empress to a soldier of the Praetorian guard. When she looked up at the lanky man, she blinked hard, her mind reeling at the twists the threads of Fate had taken in this altered world: standing before her was Joxer, in a Roman helmet instead of that ridiculous contraption on his head. So he had, in a way, fulfilled his ambitions for a warrior's career -- only to be stuck guarding prisoners of state. No matter; he didn't know her, and that wasn't going to change.

Acknowledging her credentials with a nod, he opened the door with a clang and let her into the cell.

The young woman sat in the corner, chained and clad only in a grey shirt of rough cotton. She looked up. Her hair was matted and caked with blood, and there was a cut on her cheek and a bruise under her right eye -- but there was no doubt at all.

"Callisto."

"What do you want?" the prisoner hissed, sounding so much like -- well, like herself that Gabrielle shrank back. She had to remind herself that this Callisto had not murdered Perdicus, had not, as far as she knew, butchered innocents, directing her vengeance only at Xena.

"I'm just here to talk."

"Who are you?" Callisto sounded wary and a little puzzled.

"My name is Gabrielle. I'm -- “

"Oh, I know who you are now." Her eyes glistened. "That playwright from Athens. The new lapdog of the Bitch of Rome. Why on earth would you want to talk to me?"

"Callisto, why did you want to kill Xe- -- the Empress?"

She smiled sweetly. "Why not?"

Gabrielle sat down on the moldy floor, forcing herself to look into the woman's face.

"Tell me, Callisto -- was your family killed at Cirra?"

The familiar hatred flashed in her deep eyes. "You know what your Empress did at Cirra, don't you? One out of every ten picked for execution? Well, here's how it sometimes works with a random pick ... see, my father and my uncle both won that lottery." Her lips parted in a smile. "My mother lost her mind that day. I'm not sure if the fire was an accident, or she started it deliberately because she wanted to die."

Fire... Gabrielle shuddered.

"Oh, does that make you uncomfortable? Poor little Gabrielle." Callisto's laughter rang in her ears. Then she added, her voice turning grave, "This isn't just for my revenge, you understand. I have another family now, all my brothers and sisters who are fighting for the freedom of Greece from Roman tyranny. But to you, I'm sure, these are empty words."

"Killing Xena would not have won freedom for Greece."

"No." Callisto's nostrils flared a little. "But it would have been such a nice first step."

The bard sighed. "Callisto -- I respect your ideals. But you mustn't allow yourself to be consumed by hate ... even if you think you have worthy reasons for it ... or it will poison your soul. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about."

Having a cause beyond personal payback, and comrades in that cause, may have saved Callisto from becoming a psycho killer; but she still had the same laugh, bright with slightly mad glee, and the same mocking, girlish pout.

"My darling Gabrielle. I am so touched by your concern... but you needn't worry. There won't be time for anything nasty to happen to my soul. Oh, didn't you know? In two days, I'm to be crucified. Do you know how it's done? First, they take your hands -- “

Gabrielle sprang up, fighting back a violent fit of nausea, and banged on the door of the cell. "Guard! Guard!"

Joxer let her out and she fled, away from those words, that voice, that laugh.

"You want me to spare an assassin." Xena shook her head, her mouth curled in disgust.

"Xena, I want you to be the kind of ruler you can be ... strong but also merciful."

"You don't know what you're talking about, Gabrielle. It would only encourage more assassins."

"Or maybe it would win you some friends."

Xena chuckled. "I'm not looking for friends." She glanced at Gabrielle, with a flicker of warmth in her eyes, and added, her voice dropping low, "Already got one."

The words brought a lump to Gabrielle's throat, but right now she had another priority.

"Xena, it may be an opportunity sent by the gods to..." -- she searched desperately for a phrase that wouldn't be too offensive, and then took a deep breath -- "make amends for what happened at Cirra."

In the next instant, the Empress was back. "You're forgetting yourself, Gabrielle."

Gabrielle held her gaze and said, softly and earnestly, "But I could never forget our friendship."

Xena sighed. "You can be such a child sometimes. You still think that what we -- what I did at Cirra was terrible."

"I know you thought it was the lesser of two evils. But, Xena, that doesn't make it good. Look at what it did to that girl. You -- you made her what she is." Inwardly, Gabrielle winced at her own words.

Xena leaned back in her chair, running her fingers pensively over her medallion with the imperial eagle. After a while, she asked, "So, what would your Warrior Princess have done?"

This made Gabrielle cringe even more: there wasn't exactly a simple answer to the question. Still, she forced herself to speak.

"I think she would have let Callisto live ... and made sure she'd never hurt anyone." Or at least tried to make sure.

The pause was even longer this time. Finally, Xena got up and gave Gabrielle a light pat on the shoulder.

"Banishment to an island. How does that sound?"

The flash of joy on Gabrielle's face quickly faded; what would life on some piece of rock in the middle of nowhere, with a few weather-worn fishermen for company, do to Callisto's already unstable mind? Still, there was nothing else to be done, and she had to be grateful -- whether to herself or to Xena -- for how this had turned out. She looked up at her friend with a slightly strained smile and nodded, her eyes tearing up.

In his halls on Olympus, Ares ran a fingertip over the surface of the viewing portal, shook his head and laughed. Amazing, just amazing. Even having Callisto back in the picture, a little less unhinged and with no divine powers, could turn out to be a source of entertainment ... some sort of good twisted fun ... somewhere down the line. Things were looking good again.

The trip to the army camp had taken longer than Xena had expected. The sun had already set when she was returning to the palace, looking forward to a hot bath, dinner, and -- oh yes, Gabrielle.

As she rode through the dimly lit and nearly unpeopled streets with her escort of a few guards, barely noticing the bows from the occasional passerby, she thought about taking a trip to Greece together ... maybe even visiting Amphipolis and trying to work things out with Cyrene. If Gabrielle could disapprove of some things she'd done in her career and still look past them, surely her mother could too. Was she starting to look at some of those things Gabrielle's way? That possibility really should have been bothering her more.

Not for the first time, the Empress reflected that Caesar disliked the playwright. When he looked at her, it was with a rather strange expression, as if she reminded him of someone he couldn't quite place, or as if he kept expecting something. He occasionally asked about his wife's "pet bard" in a tone of polite amusement, but Xena knew her husband well enough to sense the hostility underneath the banter. He had certainly been quite displeased, even disturbed, when she told him she'd pardoned Callisto, that girl from Cirra who had tried to kill her. In an ironic yet edgy voice, he had inquired if this was Gabrielle's doing (this time using her actual name), and had undoubtedly seen through her cagey reply. Maybe he felt that Gabrielle was turning her into less of a Roman... Maybe he was right.

She wondered, yet again, what drew her to the bard. Some kind of nostalgia for her own innocence -- if she could even remember it? A fantasy about a different life ... those inexplicably compelling fairy tales about the Warrior Princess ... ? Surely it couldn't be the girl's odd notions about love.

For no apparent reason, her thoughts drifted to Ares and to those times when he tried to get her to believe he loved her. How she would have felt if he did? She winced; come on, snap out of it. Was she getting that soft in the head? Ares was always out for himself, that's why they used to suit each other perfectly. Did she wish they were still together? Well, it was annoying to have him meddling in the Egyptian war and upsetting her and Caesar's plans, and ... alright, she missed the great sex ... that was all. Suddenly, she got a vivid memory of the moment -- that morning after he snatched her from the banquet and went at her like he hadn't seen a woman in years -- when they lay together and she heard him whisper, his breath warm and soft in her ear, "I love you, Xena." Damn. She jerked her head. Next thing, she'd be remembering those dreams again.

Fortunately, she was already at the palace gate. She rode into the courtyard, brought her mare to a halt and began to dismount when she noticed her maid Thais running toward her, and knew something was badly wrong.

"My lady! Oh, my lady!"

"What is it?" She could feel herself turning pale.

"Oh, my lady..." Thais began to sob. "They've arrested Gabrielle..."

"What in Tartarus is going on?"

Xena stood before Caesar, still in her military outfit, holding her ornate helmet in her hands; she was slightly out of breath, her eyes blazing. The Emperor, seated at his desk, took nearly a half-minute before he looked up from the papyri in front of him and stared at his wife. The wry little smile on his thin lips was oddly triumphant.

"My Empress. Do sit down."

She glared at him. "Why is Gabrielle under arrest?"

"You don't know? I am sorry to tell you this, dear wife, but there is evidence that she was involved in the plot against you."

She snorted in disbelief. "What plot?"

"Why, that girl who tried to kill you the other day -- Callisto, I believe her name was."

"That's ridiculous."

"Is it, now?" The malice in his smile was now barely concealed. "And why do you say that? Because she has such a sweet, innocent-looking face? But then again, so does Callisto, doesn't she? Or is it because sweet innocent Gabrielle writes plays and poems so she couldn't possibly be in league with assassins?"

"Do you have evidence?"

"Of course we do, my dear wife. We are, after all, a civilized society. All of the evidence will be fully examined before the court pronounces on her guilt -- or her innocence," he added. "And I am sure she will have the best lawyer you can hire in all of Rome." He leaned back in his chair. "In the meantime, I do wish to ask that you do not grant your young friend any hasty pardons. The evidence, I am told, indicates that I was also a target of the plot. So I think you will agree that I should have some say in the matter."

Caesar rose, approached Xena and kissed her hand in a suave gesture, glancing up at her. "You look quite tired, dear wife. You should go and get some rest."

"Caesar." She gripped his shoulder, her eyes probing his face. "What have you got against Gabrielle?"

"Me?" The innocent look he gave her was a bit too sardonic to be truly convincing. "You must be joking. Come now, dear wife, you should not allow your -- emotions to cloud your judgment. The Empress of Rome should be governed by her head, not her heart. Which is not to suggest, of course, that there's any reason for your heart to be implicated in the matter."