Cover Art By Tango

By LadyKate

Gabrielle shuffled into the cramped, stuffy room lit by a sputtering lamp; the innkeeper was obviously skimping on oil. She took off her boots and undressed, slipped on her nightshirt, put out the light and dove into the bed, trying to get comfortable on the coarse sheets and the lumpy stale-smelling pillow.

Once, she had wished so dearly that Xena would stay indoors more often instead of braving the weather and the bugs at yet another campsite. Maybe it's true, she thought; when the gods want to punish us, they grant us our wishes. She wasn't sure which gods were still around, but some higher powers had obviously played such a trick on her. What she wouldn't have given right now to curl up in a bedroll under the stars, by the still-shimmering remnants of a campfire ... with no one else around except her and Xena.

She thought of the first time they had camped with Ares, the night after leaving the farm. After a quick cold meal, Xena tossed him a couple of extra blankets, and they all turned in. It was a while before Gabrielle fell asleep. The next thing she knew, the sun was high and hot and the sky was a pitilessly bright blue, and Xena and Ares and their horses were gone. She opened her mouth to scream and jolted awake, sitting up in her bedroll with a gasp. It was still dark, and everyone was still there.

She felt a little better in the morning when they were briefly alone, and Xena hugged her and kissed her so very sweetly, and asked if she was okay; Gabrielle nodded, and Xena whispered in her ear, "I love you.”

They stopped at a lake in the afternoon, when daylight hadn't even begun to fade yet. After they set up camp, Xena said quite casually, "We're going for a swim..." and there was a moment of uncertainty before she added, "Gabrielle and I." It made sense, of course. They undressed behind a shrub and swam toward a tiny island with a cluster of trees; and when they were almost there, Xena dove down and slid between Gabrielle's thighs and nuzzled her, making her gasp and splutter. When Xena surfaced, there was a sparkle in her eyes but also just a hint of anxious yearning for approval; they looked at each other, and Gabrielle shook her head and laughed. Having reached the island, they rolled in the tall wiry grass, kissing the cool droplets of water off each other's faces and necks and shoulders, and it was wonderful -- until the moment when Gabrielle gently ran her teeth over Xena's nipple and heard the husky sound she was waiting for, and her mind filled instantly with the knowledge that Xena had made that sound for Ares; she felt sick at the thought that she might still be able to smell him on her, taste him on her. That was almost enough to make her stop; but Xena pulled her up for a kiss and stroked her wet back, and moaned louder, and Gabrielle knew that she would still do anything to hear those sounds and to feel Xena's body arch against hers.

When they returned to the campsite, Ares gave them a silent sideways look, got up and went to unsaddle and brush down his horse. Gabrielle felt sure that he knew what they had been up to. There was no reason he shouldn't know, she told herself; except that she couldn't quite chase away the thought that one of these days, she might be the one waiting for Xena and Ares, and wondering what they were doing.

Dinner was caught and cleaned and gutted, and Gabrielle went into the woods, less than fifty paces from the water's edge, to gather dry branches for the fire. As she was coming back, her view of the shore blocked by the dense foliage, she heard Ares' voice -- "Oh yeah... that feels good" -- and stopped in her tracks, nearly dropping the firewood. She wouldn't -- not so soon... Then, Ares said, "Ow -- ow" and Xena chuckled, "Don't be such a baby." With some trepidation, Gabrielle parted the branches and saw that he was lying on his stomach, his vest (but only his vest) off, Xena straddling him and kneading his back. Gabrielle took a deep breath; this, she could live with. She walked toward them, and Xena looked up and said, with a jocularity that had a slightly defensive edge, "Mortality hurts, you know.”

The next evening, as they sat by the campfire eating roasted partridge, Gabrielle glanced up to see Xena and Ares looking at each other. It was a look that told her too much, and it cut deep, making something dull and cold lodge inside her chest. Then Xena turned her head and their eyes met; and after a moment Gabrielle inclined her head slightly, biting her lip, and looked up again. It wasn't even a real nod, but she knew she was saying yes to a question Xena would never dare to ask. She reflected that she had, after all, given Xena the go-ahead; if she went back on it now, it would feel like an act of jealousy rather than love, like yanking at a leash. Ares would be gone, and it would be just her and Xena, and -- she couldn't have explained it, but something between them would be gone too.

Another night went by, and another day. On the night after that Gabrielle woke up to hear a faint noise, and two tall shadows, one after the other, separated themselves from the dark mass of the trees. She watched as they walked back to the campsite, as Xena wordlessly squeezed Ares' hand, as they both settled into their bedrolls. So this was how it was going to be.

Three days later they arrived in Elaea. As they stood in the dark, dank-smelling anteroom of the inn, Xena paused briefly, her face impassive, turning her head only for an instant in Ares' direction, and finally said, "Two rooms." In her mind's worried eye, Gabrielle saw Xena tiptoeing out in the middle of the night, and then heard her own voice say, "Make that three rooms." Xena turned abruptly and gave her a startled look, both guilty and relieved.

When she came to Gabrielle's room that night, she looked almost timid, as if half expecting to be kicked out. Then they lay together, just hugging, and suddenly Xena said, "Tell me a story." Gabrielle squinted warily; Xena had seldom reacted to her storytelling with anything more than bemused tolerance. "What kind of story?" she asked, and Xena muttered, "Any kind ... I like the way you tell them." She slid down and rested her head on Gabrielle's belly. A little hesitantly, Gabrielle launched into a tale about a poor fisherman who caught a fish of such beautiful colors that he felt sorry for it and let it go, and the fish turned out to be a sea nymph who promised to grant him three wishes for his kindness. (At that point, she realized that Xena was listening attentively and really began to put her heart in the story.) The fisherman, she continued, hurried home to tell his wife of his good fortune; and then, looking at the meager dinner on their table, he sighed for a big juicy steak. Lo and behold, one appeared before them that very instant, and the wife cursed him for wasting a wish on such foolishness; on and on she went until the poor man cried, May the gods strike you dumb, you harpy! -- and he had to use his third and final wish to restore her gift of speech.

Xena chuckled quietly; after a moment's pause, she said, "That's pretty sad, isn't it?" and Gabrielle replied, stroking her hair, "Well, I don't know ... it was a really good steak!" They both laughed, and then Xena shot her a mischievous look and said, "Let's hope it was better than the happy boot." That was a reference to a lighthearted moment at a tavern in Thessaly, a couple of months earlier: Gabrielle had complained that her steak tasted and felt exactly like a boot, and Xena, who liked to rib her about her sentimental concern for the animals on their menu, deadpanned, "Well, I hope the boot lived a happy life." The memory of it made them both laugh, and they laughed together until they were kissing; then they made love, and held each other in silence, and talked some more, and all was well. Or almost well, because hiding out in the back of her mind was the knowledge that they could no longer talk about everything.

Xena's scheme to deal with the two rapacious cults actually gave Ares more to do than Gabrielle; but it worked. Since this scheme also involved getting some of the locals to believe that Ares was still a god, for him to stay in Elaea was not an option, and so they moved on together -- just as they moved on from the quiet village they passed through a few days later. The question of finding a safe haven for Ares had yet to come up. Somehow, without ever talking about it, they began spending more nights at inns, and it was tacitly understood that on some of those nights Xena went to Ares; and somehow, this insane arrangement had started to seem almost normal, even if it was almost impossible at times to pretend that it didn't exist.

There had been the morning when, having slept late (and alone), Gabrielle came down into the inn's greasy-smelling dining room and found Xena and Ares sitting at a table half-turned toward each other, laughing at something, hand in hand, faces glowing. Seeing her, Xena froze in mid-laugh and awkwardly moved her hand away, the joy ebbing from her face and giving way to an apologetic look. There had been the night when Gabrielle was startled from her sleep by a loud crash; the next morning, Xena had stared into her oatmeal and muttered a quick explanation about rickety furniture. Before they left, she conferred in hushed tones with the smirking innkeeper, and then spent a long time hammering in Ares' room. As they were leaving the inn, Gabrielle felt like grabbing Xena by the shoulders and shouting in her face, What are you doing? How can you? That frightened her.

And there was more: the time when they had fought to free some children from a couple of slave traders and their guard of mercenaries; and when the fighting was done and Gabrielle went over to comfort the huddled children -- crying and frightened but unhurt -- she turned and saw the look that passed between Xena and Ares as they re-sheathed their swords. They were both slightly out of breath, their lips parted in a hint of a smile waiting to break through, the same glint in their eyes. They only looked at each other for an instant, but that was enough. It was as if, across a distance of at least ten paces, they had clasped hands. He was still bad for her (of course! ); this was exactly why. But before Gabrielle could focus on that, another thought filled her with a dull aching heaviness: the knowledge that their mutual joy in a good fight was a bond between them which she could never share.

Before, when they had traveled in the company of Eve or Virgil, Gabrielle had sometimes found that she missed having Xena all to herself, missed the ease of their chats and the comfort of their silences. This was different. The day after leaving Elaea, as they rode through a long stretch of the open plain, it finally got to her; she prodded Clio and took off at a gallop, slowing down nearly two hundred paces ahead. Xena caught up with her and said quietly, "Gabrielle?" - and Gabrielle replied, much more caustically than she'd meant to, "I think I need a little break from all this togetherness." They rode by side for a while, just the two of them, and Gabrielle relaxed enough to make small talk; then she noticed Xena stealing a look behind her shoulder to make sure Ares was behind them, and she sighed and tugged at the reins, stopping to wait for him.

The lack of privacy was bad enough; having something unspoken and unspeakable linger between them when they were alone was worse. They had swept things under the rug before -- but it had always been things they had managed, for better or worse, to put behind them. This was here and now, a part of their lives they couldn't possibly share.

Once, she had decided to talk about one of those buried things from the past -- what happened in Ch'in, her anger at Xena back then, her horror at her own betrayal -- with the small hope that it might lead to a talk about the here and now. They were camping out near a stream; Ares had fallen asleep, and Xena sat by the water watching the quivering pearly trail of moonlight and occasionally making it ripple with a long stick. Gabrielle crawled out of her bedroll and came to sit next to her. Xena wrapped a warm, comfortable arm around her shoulder, and Gabrielle leaned against her, catching the leathery scent of her sweat. After a long silence she said, "Xena... you know -- I've been thinking..." She felt Xena's body tense a bit, and in that instant she knew that if she started to talk about this, it would sound as if she were blaming Xena, or blaming Ares -- after all, he was implicated too, however hard it was to comprehend that the man she had just watched fumble with a fishing line was the same being as the god who had sent her half across the world with a flick of his hand.

Her words still hung in the cool air over the murmur of the stream and the clicking and whirring of insects, and Xena's arm was stiff around her. Gabrielle let out a slow breath and closed her eyes. After a moment she dropped her head on Xena's shoulder and whispered, "I love you.”

She and Ares avoided each other as much as they could, which wasn't much. Being Ares, he couldn't resist the occasional gibe about little things like Clio's name: "You named your horse after one of Apollo's floozies?" he asked, eyebrows raised in mock puzzlement, and when Gabrielle tersely replied that Clio was the Muse of History, he smirked, "Right, one of Apollo's floozies." Mostly, though, even Ares apparently knew better than to snipe at her now. And yet with every passing day, he got on her nerves more and more.

A part of her knew that in a different situation, some of the things that drove her crazy would have seemed innocuous or even endearing: his one-liners, his half-joking gripes about the lack of creature comforts, his efforts to maintain an immaculate appearance (which, she dimly realized, was less about vanity than about holding on to what he was); the fact that he named his horse Dragon; the fact that he bungled nearly every chore he tried to do, and that he wasn't trying much anymore. Once, after an exhausting day, she asked him to watch a pot of rabbit stew while she took a nap; she woke up to find the stew burned -- after all the time she'd spent preparing it -- and Ares engrossed in watching Xena brush down Argo on the other side of the clearing. She nearly lost it that time, especially when he gave her an innocent shrug and said, "We can always have fish...”

Yet, at odd moments, she felt almost sympathetic. There had been the time Xena went hunting on her own, leaving her and Ares to set up camp. After a while they heard a noise that might have signaled her return; they both turned their heads with nervous anticipation, and it occurred to Gabrielle that they were both caught up in something beyond their control, like fellow survivors of a natural disaster. Hurricane Xena.

She had stopped thinking about how it would all turn out.

She wasn't thinking much, either, about some of the things that had preoccupied her lately -- whether the warrior's path was right for her, and what it was doing to her soul. She could go for days now without remembering that boy she killed in the north African desert by mistake, when she thought he was about to attack Xena. What did it say about her, she wondered occasionally, if she was more terrified of losing Xena than of losing herself?

Gabrielle raised herself up and poked at the pillow in a futile attempt to make it softer. Just then, she became aware of light rustling and scratching in the corner. Mice. Well, at least it wasn't bedbugs. She sighed and lay down, pulling the threadbare blanket over her head. She had to try to get some sleep; they were planning to get an early start. She thought of how Xena had come to her the previous night, how greedily Xena had kissed her mouth -- she had never kissed so hard before and it made Gabrielle wonder fleetingly if that was the way she kissed men, the way she kissed him -- how gently they rocked against each other in a familiar rhythm that let the heat build up slowly until it was almost melting her skin from inside, how they snuggled afterwards with her head nestled between Xena's sweat-dampened breasts. Gabrielle sighed and hugged the pillow.

The floorboards in the hallway creaked wearily. She shivered a little and wrapped the blanket tighter around herself, wondering if that was Xena.

* ~ * ~ *

No, definitely not her -- just some dumb hick trampling past the door.

Ares turned on his side and tried to stretch his legs; you obviously had to be a midget to stay at this place. Village inns ... He didn't want to think of the spacious bed, with sheets of black silk and formidable ornate bedposts, where he once entertained his women at the Halls of War ... a lot of women who were not Xena.

He wondered if any of the gods were still alive, and whether they ever checked up on him. He hoped not; he especially hoped that Athena couldn't see him from wherever gods went when they died. He could just see her shake her head with the usual mix of slightly scornful superiority and genuine embarrassment on his behalf. After all those years of trying to win Xena as his Warrior Queen, he had become little more then her sidekick, following her -- and her girlfriend! -- all over Greece, playing his part in her humanitarian projects and sleeping in these ratholes ... and Athena would never understand what made it all worthwhile, at least most of the time.

For a couple of days after they left the farm, he wasn't sure what was going to happen. He and Xena barely spoke, even when alone for a few moments. On the second day, when they camped by the lake and the two women slipped off for a swim (oh yeah, right ... a swim), Ares felt apprehension and anger clutching at his throat. Did she expect him to put up with this? He remembered how, right after he'd given up his godhood, they were talking on a grassy beach and he kept hoping that she'd invite him to join her and Gabrielle and Eve -- thinking that even if she wasn't going to sleep with him, it was okay as long as they could travel together and fight together, as long as he could discover the mortal world by her side. He was thinking the same thing when Xena walked away from him a second time, after saving him from the Furies. But the last few days had changed everything. Damned if he was going to tag along like a eunuch while she and her girlfriend made out behind his back.

The backrub she gave him later in the evening cheered him up a little, besides easing the cramps that had plagued his mortal existence. It was good to feel her touch again, the warm, gentle strength of her hands. But it also made his yearning for her all the more acute, nearly unbearable as he lay just a few paces from Xena that night. There was an easy way out of his misery; but under the circumstances, it seemed like a final humiliation -- especially if Xena or, worse yet, Gabrielle woke up and caught him in the act. Somehow, eventually, he fell asleep and found relief in a dream.

The next morning, when Gabrielle went to wash up in a small cove shielded by lush shrubbery, he wanted to talk to Xena but couldn't work up the nerve, afraid he'd bungle it. As he was rolling up the blankets, he turned and saw her looking at him, and the tenderness in her eyes made him momentarily forget to breathe. He stood up straight and came up to her. After a brief, tense silence, he gave her a lopsided smile and said, hoping his voice would hold steady, "So ... what does a guy have to do to get a date around here?”

Xena almost smiled back but bit her lip; her eyes flickered as she turned away, obviously making an effort to keep a grip on herself. His heart pounding, he took her hands, and she murmured wistfully, "Ares..." There was a rustle behind the bushes -- Gabrielle was obviously back from her bath and getting dressed -- and he could have kicked himself for waiting so long. "Look," he said brusquely, "I just need to know..." She looked up at him, anxiously and a bit defensively, and lightly squeezed his hands, weaving her fingers through his. Ares stopped before he could utter something that would come out as bitter or whiny, or both. With a small smile, he let go of her hands and said, "Well, if you do decide to visit -- you know where to find me.”

That evening when they were sitting around the fire eating, he caught Xena looking at him, but he couldn't tell what she was thinking. Another day went by; the next night, Ares lay very still in his bedroll, wondering if it was going to happen, hoping that Xena was only pretending to be asleep and that Gabrielle really was. Then Xena stirred and sat up, and a moment later he raised himself on an elbow. The blue-tinted light of the nearly full moon gave her face an eerie look, chiseled and smooth as marble, but then she turned slightly, and her eyes were sparkling and alive as they met his. Without a word, she rose, walked to the edge of the clearing and vanished into the woods. He got up and followed her as quietly as he could; the tall grass was cool and dewy under his feet, the dampness seeping into the linen of his pants and making them cling heavily to his ankles. His eyes made out a narrow footpath between the trees. It occurred to him that he might lose track of Xena and end up stumbling around the woods looking for her, feeling completely ridiculous.

He caught up with her in a tiny patch of a clearing, where the thick weave of branches and leaves overhead opened up just enough to let in the moonlight. She stood still and rigid by an oddly twisted, moon-bleached fallen tree, watching him as he walked toward her. With no more than half a pace between them, they faced each other, probably for not nearly as long as it seemed. Then they were locked in each other's arms, feeding on each other's mouths, and he willed himself not to rub against her through the thin fabric that was the only thing separating them now. He drew back and actually managed a grin -- "This is what you had in mind, right?" - and she shushed him, pressing into him, biting his lips, breaking the kiss to brush her cheek against his and breathe his name.

They sank down into the grass; Ares slid down to taste her and didn't stop until after the second time she came, and then it was his turn to find out to what exquisite madness she could drive him with her mouth. "Are you okay?" she said afterwards, stroking his forehead, and he knew that she didn't mean just his ragged gasps for breath. He took her hand, kissed her knuckles and whispered, "Never better" and then, after the briefest pause, asked, "Are you?" Her mouth tightening a little, she turned away for a moment, then looked at him again and nodded. "Yeah." She settled into his arms and nestled her head on his shoulder. "Yeah.”

That moment was enough for him to wonder if she was thinking about Gabrielle, or about one of the many things she had reason to hold against him. But none of it mattered as they lay together on the warm crushed grass, her lips roaming over his neck and shoulder while her hands stroked his back. He joked with her about giving him backrubs every day, and she laughed softly and held him close, running her fingers through his hair. She asked him if he knew how to fish, and when he said no, she promised to teach him. "I guess you'll have to teach me everything now," he said, half-facetiously but with a touch of real embarrassment at his helplessness; and she gave him a long kiss and said teasingly, "Not everything." This time, when they made love, he knew that she was accepting him not only into her body but into her life.

In Elaea -- where, at Xena's insistence, he grudgingly changed into less conspicuous clothes -- he got to help her on the job. Personally, Ares was of the opinion that the people of this town were smug morons who deserved to be fleeced by cults, warlords, or anyone else who would bother; but he knew better than to voice his views on the subject. He was amused to find out that one of the cult leaders, Ixidor, had formerly served as a very junior priest at one of his temples. This gave Xena an idea -- one that made him rather nervous at first, since she wanted him to do nothing less than pose as a god. He told her she was crazy; she told him he was scared. It worked.

She did an amazing job of rigging up the effects at the temple so that, when he stepped out from behind a statue, it really looked like he had arrived through the ether with the usual light show. He was quite convincing as he glared at the cult leaders and their followers -- whom Xena had managed to gather at the temple on some made-up pretext -- and told them they were toast unless they cleared out of town by sundown. If anyone doubted Ares' identity, it helped that Ixidor, who had seen him before, crumpled to his knees, his ruddy face turning greenish and dripping with sweat, and squawked, "My lord Ares!" (It also helped that, moments before, Xena had coaxed the fool into making some disparaging remarks about his former god.) A glass ball filled with some kind of glowing concoction supplied the finishing touch. Raising the ball in his hand, he growled, "Do not make me zap you!" and the cult members began to move nervously toward the doors while Ares laughed gleefully at the sight of Ixidor trying to back away on his knees. Then, at Xena's discreet signal, he lobbed the ball into a corner where Gabrielle set off a small explosive device, and the stampede that followed was a lot of fun to watch.

It felt good to be feared again, though there was also a quick tug of sadness at the thought that it was all faked, that his powers were gone; holding the glowing ball, he had had a vivid, aching memory, not so much in his mind as in his flesh and bone, of what it was like to have a real fireball form in his palm, born effortlessly from the power coursing under his skin. But then Xena came up to him, smiling warmly, and held his hands and said, "You did great." She looked like she wanted to kiss him -- in fact, she looked like she wanted to pull him into a back room and have her way with him, except that the annoying blonde was already trudging up behind them. They made up for it, though, that night at the inn.

Their next task turned up unexpectedly while they were passing through a village where half a dozen kids had been stupid enough to get themselves abducted by some slave traders (who were smart enough to have the protection of a corrupt magistrate). This time there was real fighting involved. Apart from the thrill of fighting at her side, doing anything at her side, there was a curious moment when they brought the kids back to the village and watched the parents sweep them up in tearful hugs, and Ares caught himself getting an embarrassingly pleasant feeling at the thought that he'd had a hand in making this possible. It occurred to him that Xena must have felt like this too, and he was sharing in her life just like he had wanted. Once, when he was still a god, he had told her that he was willing to fight beside her, to champion the common folk he had never really seen as much more than fodder for his wars. He wasn't even sure he had truly meant it then, but maybe there was something to be said for all this up-with-people stuff.

He was sure of one thing: however he had imagined his life with Xena back then, he hadn't expected Gabrielle to be in the picture -- at least not quite so much, and not in that way. Having to put up with her was bad enough; he actually had to play nice and make sure she was willing to put up with him. When they rode together, he would hang back once in a while to let her have her quality time with Xena -- though, truthfully, that was far better than being subjected to the bard's deep thoughts about the colors of the sky or the inner lives of flowers. (Unfortunately, if Xena hadn't gotten tired of this crap in six years, it was unlikely that she would now.) He had to reconcile himself to never waking up next to Xena, to acting as if they were no more than traveling companions when the blonde was around. Despite the need to keep Gabrielle reasonably happy, he hoped she had a vivid imagination; he certainly got a kick out of the look on her face the morning after he and Xena broke the bed at one of those dingy inns.

The problem was, he had a vivid imagination, too. Given the amount of time he had spent around the Amazons in the old days, sleeping with women who also had female lovers was nothing new, and could make for a nice diversion. But being jealous of a woman ... that was different, and damn disconcerting. Not that he had any reason to doubt his ability to please Xena -- but obviously, being in bed with Gabrielle gave her something that he couldn't, and that knowledge gnawed at him far too often for his comfort. Once, he had a dream in which the two women made love to each other in complete abandon as he lay watching them, mysteriously unable to move, horrified and aroused in equal measure; it was even worse than the recurring nightmare which had him waking up at a campsite or an inn to find that they had dumped him, vanished without a trace. A few times, too, his brooding about what Xena felt in her girlfriend's arms led him to imagine what it was like to caress Gabrielle's small lithe form, and his body's reaction to these thoughts left him annoyed at himself and at her; surely, he wouldn't touch the blonde harpy if he were stranded with her on a desert island.

Occasionally, it occurred to Ares that he, the God of War, should have had more pride than to accept this ridiculous setup -- that he should tell Xena to choose between him and Gabrielle, that if she chose as he glumly suspected she would, he should leave, start a new life overseas ... maybe even try to get his godhood back. He didn't think about Olympus nearly as often as he had in the early days, but he did think about it, and he knew that a part of him still believed he would return there, someday. Then, before this thought could solidify into anything like resolve, his mind would fill with memories: Xena smiling at him when he brought her blackberries one morning, and kissing the scratches he'd gotten on his hands picking them from the thorny bushes; Xena shuddering in his arms with her eyes closed and her mouth open; Xena looking at him when he fought Gascar; Xena tugging playfully at his ear and telling him to sit still while she cut his hair. It was all worth it; he couldn't walk away from her, from them, from the fact that there was a them.

It wasn't easy; even without Gabrielle, there was plenty to haunt them. One evening when they were having dinner at a nearly empty inn, a young woman entered with a pretty child in tow, a girl no more than six summers old with shoulder-length brown locks and huge hazel eyes with long dark eyelashes; as they came up to the grey-haired innkeeper, the young woman said, "Hi, Mom" and the girl squealed, "Grandma!", and the innkeeper hugged them with exclamations of joy. Xena's spoon clanked on the table. Ares glanced at her and saw the quiet heartbreak in her face before it turned distant and blank; she looked, as mortals said, as if she'd just seen a ghost. In the next instant, he knew that she had: the ghost of the daughter whose childhood she had missed, the ghost of the mother she had lost while sleeping in an ice cave for twenty-five years ... the cave where he had buried her after she'd faked her death to fool the gods. Their eyes met; her lips tightened and twisted slightly, and he thought he saw a mute reproach in her stare.

Perhaps it was a good thing that Gabrielle came back to the table just then and he had to hold his tongue, because otherwise he might have blurted out, "Dammit, you made me watch you die! If you had only trusted me enough to let me in on your plan..." And Xena would have told him -- as he reflected moments later, when the hot rush of anger had worn off -- that she had little cause to trust him back then, and plenty of cause to think that if she took him into her confidence, he'd just use it to manipulate her. She could have reminded him of other things, too; for instance, that once he had tried to make her kill her mother in a scheme to force her into his service. The ghosts were there to stay.

A couple of nights later, at a different inn in a different village, in the drowsy warmth of their embrace after making love, he thought of that moment -- of the doe-eyed little girl, of the grief and loss in Xena's face. "Xena," he whispered into her soft hair, and when she responded with a contented "Hmm?" he said, "Let's have a child.”

In an instant, her body went rigid; disentangling herself from his arms, she moved away to the edge of the bed. "You're crazy," she said, her voice crisp and flat. Ares wondered if she meant "You're crazy to think that I would bring a child into this mess," or "You're crazy to think that I would do this to Gabrielle," or "You're crazy to think that I would have a baby with a man who once threatened my daughter's life if I didn't bear him a child," or all of the above. At least she didn't say that the thought of it sickened her, the way she did once. They lay silently for a while, and he felt cold and miserable between the damp sheets. Then Xena muttered, "I'd better get going," and slipped out of bed.

When the door closed behind her, Ares slammed his fist into the wall, wincing in pain. He tossed and turned for at least an hour, and finally, when the patch of sky in the tiny window was turning from black to grey, he did something that was absolutely forbidden by their unspoken agreement: he went to her room. Luckily there were no locks on the doors. Xena sat up abruptly. "It's me," he muttered before any sharp objects could fly in his direction, and she hissed, "Ares, you fool -- what are you doing?" He came up and knelt by the bed. "What?" she asked, less harshly, and he swallowed and said, "I love you.”

She sighed -- "Ares..." -- and put her arms around him, rocking back and forth a little as he rested his head in her lap. "I know you do," she whispered, "I know. I..." He held his breath, wondering if she was going to say it. She took his face in her hands, lifted his mouth up to hers and kissed him, and said, "It's okay.”

In a few moments she gently told him to go; he slunk back to his room and managed to sleep briefly. The next morning when he came down for breakfast, Xena was alone at the table. Ares stopped and looked at her, anxiety surging again, tightening into a coil in his chest. Then she reached out to take his hand, and her smile made him dizzy with happiness. He sat next to her, breathing in the light tangy scent of the herbs she used in her bath; she picked up a piece of honey-dipped flat bread from her plate and slipped it in his mouth, and he licked her fingers and they both shivered. They talked about nothing in particular. She told him they were heading to a nearby village to help resolve a dispute with a landowner over water rights; "I bet you'll put me to work digging ditches," he said, and she teased him about how great he would look digging a ditch -- and then her laugh broke off as if she'd been slapped, and she let go of his hand. He didn't have to turn and look to know what was wrong. Blondie's timing was still impeccable.

He tried not to think about how long this setup could go on, or how it would end. For the time being he was sharing Xena's life, and sometimes her bed. It would have to do.

Maybe she would come tonight.

It had started raining outside, the water dripping, pounding on the roof, sloshing in the trees. There was a noise in the hallway -- a soft thump, a creak... something that could be footsteps. Ares lifted his head, straining to make out the sounds over the patter of the rain.

* ~ * ~ *

The footsteps came closer; not one but two people, one stomping heavily, the other shuffling. "This way, Sir," said the innkeeper's wheedling voice. A door opened with a fretful squeak. Apparently a late arrival, some tired traveler coming in from the rain. The innkeeper said something else and a male voice replied to her, muffled by the distance. Something thudded on the floor, then the door slammed shut, and the innkeeper trudged back down the hallway.

Xena took her hand off the door handle, went back to her bed and sat down with a sigh.

She had been about to walk out of the room when she heard the steps. She didn't really care if the innkeeper or the new guest had seen her tiptoeing through the hallway in her shift, or if she got lewd stares and winks in the morning; a steely glare was usually enough to fix that. It was just that she felt too much like a teenage girl sneaking out at night to meet her boyfriend. And that was strange, because she didn't feel very young ... she felt worn out.

She hadn't planned for it to happen this way. The first night they camped out, lying in her bedroll under the chilly white moon, she told herself that she had to do right by Gabrielle. Whatever Gabrielle had in mind when she told her to go to Ares, it certainly wasn't "Let's have Ares join us so you can take turns sleeping with both of us." Even to think about it was absurd.

Gabrielle lay about four paces to her left, and Ares on her right a little further away, and she might as well have been stuck on some deserted rock in the middle of an ocean. She needed Gabrielle so badly, needed to fold herself around Gabrielle, to caress her until they both forgot the hurt, to see her eyes smile. She tried not to think of anything else, but the memories came anyway -- the tender, eager, almost disbelieving look in Ares' face when they first made love, the quiver in his voice when he whispered her name, how it had felt to rest her head on his chest and rub her cheek on the fuzzy hair that covered it.

She wondered if it would ever happen again -- knowing that the answer should have been a firm no.

The memories returned when she and Gabrielle lay on the grassy island in the lake after making love. She drew a fingertip across Gabrielle's skin, glittery with water and sweat, tracing the outline of Gabrielle's breast and the curve of her hip, and found herself thinking about how Ares would look with his hair wet and tiny droplets of water sparkling on his body. Xena squeezed her eyes shut, nearly gritting her teeth in frustration. Gabrielle reached up to plant small kisses on her jaw, trailing toward her mouth and finally brushing against it; the soft flutter of Gabrielle's tongue between her lips brought Xena back to the present, to how good it was to hold Gabrielle in her arms. Gently, she kissed her back and slid a hand down her body, listening to her trembling sighs. She couldn't bear the thought of losing Gabrielle, yet again. So much of their life together had been haunted by loss: their first night, when they were sure they were saying good-bye forever; their bittersweet reunion after Gabrielle came back from seemingly certain death, when the pure joy of their love was tainted by Xena's conviction that the only way to save Gabrielle was to separate from her forever -- or else her vision of being crucified together would come true.

Xena shook her head slightly; she didn't want to dwell on doom and loss. A happier memory came to her, from just a few days before they heard about the bounty on Ares: how Gabrielle had made a new kind of dumplings and she'd tasted one and pretended to wince, only to laugh at Gabrielle's crestfallen look; and how Gabrielle's face had lit up in a still-girlish smile when Xena popped another dumpling in her mouth and grinned to show her appreciation.

She cupped Gabrielle's face and looked in her eyes, and kissed her deeper. It wasn't fair that she should want anyone else.

The sun was golden in the bright grass, and the breeze was mild, and for a brief time she was happy -- until they left the little island and swam toward the shore, and it occurred to Xena that Ares knew exactly why they had left him behind. Back at the campsite, he avoided her eyes and grunted in response to her soft-spoken "Hey." She watched him walk away sullenly to take care of his horse; and in that instant she knew that she couldn't possibly expect Ares to ride with her, fight with her, sleep five paces away from her, and never touch her -- not after what had happened between them -- not when they were traveling in the company of her lover. Even if he went along with it, which was doubtful, she couldn't do it to him... couldn't leave him with so little dignity. Worse, she wasn't sure she could do it to herself.

Ares came back to the camp some time later, when Gabrielle was off gathering firewood and Xena had just finished cleaning the carp she had caught. She threw a furtive glance at him, long enough to notice the grimace on his face as he sat down. "Are you all right?" she asked, and when he didn't answer she came closer and said, "What's wrong?" He looked up at her, his mouth twitching, and spat out, "My back hurts from riding. And from walking. I haven't exactly got the hang of this whole mortal gig, okay?”

He turned away. Shaking her head, Xena quickly rinsed and wiped her hands, then knelt next to him and said, "Lie down." She almost smiled at the startled look he gave her. "On your stomach," she said. "Take your vest off." As Ares complied, she reminded herself that she wouldn't be touching him for pleasure, hers or his; it was only for pain relief, she had the skill and it would be cruel not to use it. Wiping her still-damp hands on the grass, she straddled him and felt him shudder slightly. She kneaded his back slowly, easing the tension in the muscles, pressing her fingertips into his spine and shoulder blades. He groaned and Xena bit down on her lip, getting an all-too-vivid picture in her mind of Ares turning over so that her hands were on his chest and his eyes were on her, wide and cloudy with desire. She pressed harder, and couldn't help laughing and teasing him a bit when he let out an indignant "Ow!" -- and then she heard a noise and raised her head to see Gabrielle coming toward them with a bundle of sticks in her arms. She reminded herself that she wasn't doing anything ... wasn't doing anything wrong. Not yet.

Lying in her bedroll that night, Xena wondered if she had half believed that spending a night with Ares would get him out of her system -- and if Gabrielle had believed it, too. What a stupid expression, she thought; what a stupid thing for people to say. After the other night, he was in her blood more than ever; it was as if they had truly merged with each other and being away from him felt like being torn from a part of oneself, like missing a lost limb and still feeling it all the time.

She knew that Ares wasn't asleep, and that he was as desperate for her as she was for him; just as she knew that he was going to talk to her when Gabrielle went to bathe the next morning. He did it his way, falling back on clever one-liners, getting clumsy and tongue-tied when his emotions got the better of him for a moment -- but it wasn't difficult to figure out what he was trying to tell her: I'll wait for you, but I can't take it much longer.

Xena thought about it that day as they rode on toward Elaea. It wasn't just that she wanted him; it wasn't just that she didn't want him to leave -- she cringed at the thought of using sex as bait to make him stay. She loved him. Trying to hold on to him and to Gabrielle was greedy and unfair; losing either one of them was unbearable.

It was meant to be, Xena told herself. She had always prided herself on making her own fate; but perhaps no one did, man or god, where love was involved. She hadn't chosen to love Gabrielle, she certainly hadn't chosen to love Ares -- she just did.

That evening, they sat at a campsite eating in near-silence, and there was a moment when she found herself staring straight into Ares' eyes, dark in the deepening twilight, filled with a longing so intense that she couldn't look away -- a longing for so much more than her body. She wasn't sure how long they stared at each other like that, but when she shifted her eyes she caught Gabrielle looking at her, and it made her cheeks burn. Gabrielle tilted her head down in an almost imperceptible movement, her face lit up by the campfire's faint crimson glow; when she raised her eyes toward Xena again, it was in a look of quiet agreement. Xena's heart sank. So Gabrielle knew what she was thinking, and accepted it. To her dismay, she wasn't sure if that was a bad or a good thing. She couldn't do this to Gabrielle, she couldn't ... but what would it do to Ares if she pushed him away now, and what would it do to her and Gabrielle? There was no good way out of this.

The night after that, some part of her still wanted to believe that she wasn't doing this on purpose, just letting it happen -- that she was just going for a walk in the woods and Ares just happened to follow her. It was maddening, to be thinking that way. As a kid, Xena had sometimes overheard older girls talk about their boyfriends, in the neighborhood and at Cyrene's tavern; they had a way of making it sound like it was never their fault if they went too far, like they'd gotten carried away, swept off their feet. She had scoffed at that, even then: when she made love with someone, she had decided, it would be because she wanted to, and she would never lie to herself about it. This was no time to start.

In a small clearing, Xena stopped and stood still, her hands clasped on her stomach, her bare foot kicking away at the pine cones and sticks scattered in the grass. The moon peered through the murmuring leaves overhead, and everything was mottled with bluish white: the grass, the darkness of the trees, her own skin. Then the branches rustled at the edge of the clearing, and Ares came out into the moonlight. He walked toward her as she watched and waited. After all this time, she had stopped running.

Then there was no more distance between them, and she lost herself in the heat of his kiss, until Ares pulled back and joked, "This is what you had in mind, right?" -- and it jolted her back into reality, a reality in which everything had consequences and in which there was still time to turn back. Instead, she silenced him with another kiss and pulled him down with her into the dewy grass. But the thought of Gabrielle still nudged its way into her mind a few times -- even when Ares was kissing her stomach and she was trembling and raising her hips toward him in anticipation of more; even when she caressed him with her mouth, thrilling to the taste and feel of his hard yet so tender flesh, to his gasps and groans, Oh Xena oh you make it so good; and again when they lay together afterwards and Xena found herself thinking that Gabrielle might have woken up and noticed them gone.

She ran her fingers down his spine and he sighed. "Hey," he said, his breath soft on her neck, his beard tickling her skin, "you know what you can do for me?" "What?" she drawled in a mock-sultry voice, and he said, "Rub my back every day." She chuckled, but part of her wondered if he was asking her to say that they'd be together for good; she couldn't promise him that. "Is that all you want from me?" she teased, sounding more light-hearted than she felt. He nuzzled her and whispered, "Well -- since I have to put up with all this walking and riding -- getting used to it might as well be fun.”

Her eyes tingled. Oh, Ares knew how to get to her, even if he wasn't doing it on purpose. By his side, she could help him learn to live as a mortal, help him stay human. She had made him her own; he was her responsibility now. I won't ever let you go. She couldn't say it to him, but she did think it, her lips moving soundlessly, as she hugged him tightly and stroked his hair. This was their real first night, their beginning. She knew that it was also the end of something -- of any chance that things between her and Gabrielle would go back to the way they were before.

Xena couldn't be sure whether Gabrielle was awake when she and Ares returned quietly to the camp; but instinct told her that she was.

As they rode up to the inn in Elaea three nights later, Xena realized that she had been trying not to think about the sleeping arrangements. If she and Gabrielle stayed in the same room, as they always had, she might not get a chance to be with Ares at all; asking for separate rooms felt like slapping Gabrielle in the face. She didn't fully make up her mind until she stood before the counter at the inn. "Two rooms," she said, keeping her eyes on the dour-faced, bored innkeeper. Then Gabrielle spoke; her voice had a strange sound, as if she hadn't talked in a long time and was out of practice: "Make that three rooms.”

In her room that night, as she was removing her armor, it occurred to her that this might have been Gabrielle's way of saying that it was the end for them. She was in a near-panic when she went to Gabrielle's room barefoot, wearing only her leather tunic. Gabrielle opened the door, her face slightly drawn and careworn, her eyes grave; then she gave Xena a plucky little smile as if to say, We'll get through this, and stepped back to let her in. Xena reached out and stroked her cheek, and for the next several hours there was nothing and no one between them.

She waited another night before she went to Ares.

After a while, it seemed almost normal. As far as anyone was concerned, the three of them were friends, companions, comrades-in-arms traveling together, helping those in need and fighting evildoers. Ares adapted to their life and their work surprisingly well. Xena knew, of course, that he had about as much interest in serving the Greater Good as she did in shopping for jewelry and perfume -- that he cared only about fighting at her side, and that if she said one evening, "Hey, let's go out and raid a village just for kicks," he'd cheerfully join her. Still, whatever his reasons, he was doing good things. Xena didn't expect him ever to shed his cynicism, and wasn't even sure she wanted him to; but she still hoped that goodness and nobility might grow on him, that she was giving him a chance to change the way she had. And besides --she quickly brushed past this thought whenever it occurred to her, but there it was -- fighting next to someone who enjoyed fighting felt … good.

Except that nothing was normal. The simplest things that lovers or even friends did -- a hug, a squeeze of a hand, resting one's head on the other's shoulder -- were now off-limits much of the time. Even the privacy of a room at an inn was only so private: she had to wonder how much could be heard through those walls, especially if the rooms were close by. One night, she and Ares tussled playfully on his bed, and she teased him into such a state that he finally flipped her on her hands and knees and rode her in a near-frenzy, and she, for once, let him take charge completely, urging him on with short husky cries, until they collapsed in a heap. Then he moved off her, gently turned her over and hugged her to his sweat-drenched chest while she nestled her head in the crook of his neck -- and at that moment there was a loud peevish creak, and the bed wobbled and sagged and crashed under them as its wooden frame fell apart. Clutching each other, they burst out laughing; Ares whispered, "Did the earth move for you too?" and they laughed again, until it occurred to Xena that the next day she'd have to make some arrangement with the innkeeper to cover the damage -- and that Gabrielle, who must have heard the crash anyway, would inevitably know about it.

One morning, Xena woke up at the campsite, slowly opened her eyes, squinting at the searing sunlight, and realized that Ares and Gabrielle were gone. Fear jabbed into her chest, snatching her breath away: They had both gotten fed up and left her. She sat up abruptly and whirled around. Ares' horse, Dragon, was still there, but there was no sign of Clio. As Xena took a deep breath, trying to steady her lurching heart, the shrubbery at the edge of the clearing rustled and Ares came out. "Where's Gabrielle?" she blurted out, her voice a little hoarse. He shrugged, "Off by the brook, watering the horse with the fancy name," and then came up to her and added with a grin, "Here, your breakfast in bed." Only then, she noticed the clay pot in his hands; it was filled with blackberries. She didn't know whether she wanted to laugh, or to cry, or to kiss him, especially when she noticed the cuts and scratches on his berry-stained hands. The former God of War, battling the brambles to pick berries for her. She smiled and took the pot from his hands, and brought his hand to her mouth, pressing her lips to the hot scraped skin. A minute later Gabrielle came back with Clio and muttered a flat "Good morning." Life went on.

That first awful stab of fear stayed with her, and gave her a couple of troubling dreams. Another time, Xena dreamed that Gabrielle and Ares were caressing her at the same time, kissing her neck, stroking her breasts and legs, making her weak with pleasure -- until she woke up and sat in her bedroll gasping for breath, glancing about her wildly in harsh gray light of dawn. They were both asleep.

Often, she missed the old times when it was just her and Gabrielle. What was unnerving was that once in a while, she also caught herself wondering what life with Ares might have been like if ... no, not if Gabrielle hadn't been there at all, but if she and Gabrielle had remained only friends. She never allowed herself to dwell on this long enough to actually picture it -- not only because to do so would have felt like a final betrayal of Gabrielle but also because she didn't like to ponder the what-ifs; there were too many of those in her life.

Over dinner at an inn one evening, Xena watched as the grey-haired innkeeper, still beautiful despite the fine wrinkles on her face, greeted her daughter and granddaughter, and it struck her that it should have been her and young Eve, coming to see her mother at the inn in Amphipolis. She didn't even know what her daughter had looked like at that age. She sensed Ares' eyes on her and looked at him. It occurred to her that if she'd only let him in on her and Gabrielle's plan to convince the gods they were dead, everything would have been different: no ice cave, no twenty-five year gap in her life. With a twinge of guilt, she remembered the horrified look on Ares' face as she slumped in his arms after drinking the fake poison. What a twisted joke it all was: She had missed her daughter's childhood and her mother's old age, Eve had grown up to be the murderous Livia and now carried a burden of guilt too much like her own, Joxer was dead, Gabrielle had lost her parents -- all because she had been determined not to give in to Ares ... and now, here they were.

Xena saw Ares' face twitch a little, and wondered if he was thinking the same thing. But there was no point in questioning her choices, really. She could have never given in to that Ares, the arrogant, seductive War God who had loved her in his own way, to be sure -- far more truly and deeply than she had suspected -- but who had wanted to bend her to his will, to win her love as one would win a battle, through force and manipulation. She must have gone mad, she thought, to ask herself if she had been wrong to resist him; if anything, she had far better reasons to ask if she'd been too quick to forget the past, to believe that Ares had really changed, even now that he was mortal and humbled.

She turned again. The woman was now talking to her mother now while the child was prancing around, twirling and tapping her feet. Then, as if sensing Xena's stare, she stopped for a moment and gazed at her gravely with those huge eyes before resuming her little dance. It occurred to Xena suddenly that it wasn't too late to get it right; now, she had another chance. She closed her eyes and saw Ares cradling a baby in his arms, its tiny hand wrapped around his finger, and herself standing next to him stroking the soft fuzz on its head, and Gabrielle... In the same instant, she pushed it out of her mind; she didn't even want to start thinking about all the reasons it was -- impossible.

A couple of nights later in bed with Ares, she wasn't thinking about anything as she lay half-slumbering in the gentle heat of his body, her breasts tingling from the touch of the hair on his chest, when his whisper brushed her skin and she heard him say, "Let's have a child..." Instantly alert, Xena felt ice-cold with terror, as if he somehow had the power to give her these thoughts the way he had given her passionate dreams about him once, as a god; but the chill melted away in a surge of aching tenderness -- toward him, toward this child that could never be. Before it could flood her completely, she moved away from him and said, "You're crazy." They lay like two strangers forced to share a bed and trying to keep as much distance between them as possible, and she was glad that it was too dark for them to see each other's faces. The memory came to her of a day long ago, when she was being hunted by three temple armies intent on killing her baby; Ares told her he'd make it stop if she accepted his bargain, and his deep smooth voice in her ear was captivating and insistent: Give me a child. She wondered how she could have put it all behind her -- why, even now, she longed to hold him again.

After a while she got up and said she had to go. Later, when it was almost dawn, Ares came to her room; "I love you," he said, kneeling by her bedside, and that hopeless tenderness washed over her again. She held him and kissed him, and told him it was okay, knowing that nothing was really okay and probably wouldn't be.

She didn't like to think about the way it was likely to end: she would have to do right by Gabrielle and leave Ares behind somewhere and break his heart one more time. Just like he said to her in the tavern that night: Chewed it up and spat it out. Maybe she could still come back and see him after that. If he'd have her.

Or else he'd regain his godhood. And then -- what? Would he go back to being his old self, the way he had after his first brief experience of being mortal, losing his humanity in the intoxicating rush of power? Would he use her own emotions against her, use the vulnerabilities she had let him see in his next scheme or game? Would there be anything left of --

Xena took a deep breath and rubbed her forehead. Just a few hours left until daybreak, and she had yet to get any sleep.

She could go to bed, or --

She got up, went to the small window and pushed the shutters open, resting her hands on the wet windowsill. The night smelled of grass and damp wood; in the darkness, her eyes could just make out the clumps of the trees, the outlines of the houses and the stables. A gust of wind sprayed her face and arms with a thin mist of cold droplets, but the rain was already tapering off. She wiped her face and looked up at the pitch-black sky.

There was still time.