Xena's Choice

After Gabrielle's plunge in "Sacrifice II", Xena is at a loss for what to do next... and seeks oblivion of her memories.

Xena's Choice
by LZClotho
(c) July 1998

CHAPTER ONE

The rocks of the edge bit into her flesh. Xena found it strange she could feel that when she felt almost nothing else. The image imprinted on her mind numbed everything. Even the tears coursed over her cheeks unnoticed. Gods! By the gods! Gabrielle! Oh, gods! No!

She never screamed. She couldn't find her voice to utter even the smallest sound. She sank to the edge of the rocky chasm, transfixed by the red hot lava glow below. Filling her vision was the frozen moment of only a breath before: Gabrielle's face framed in golden hair, both hers and her child's. Those green eyes shining with the knowledge, acceptance, responsibility, love, and pain of the decision she made. The numbness set in for Xena when she realized she saw no regret, no surprise, no doubt.

The ache that memory left in Xena's chest was the only other thing the warrior could feel she realized. The pain squeezed her chest so tight she felt she might stop breathing. Gabrielle didn't regret leaving her, wasn't surprised Xena had put her in this position. Was glad she was gone. The tears tracking down Xena's cheeks renewed.

Suddenly Xena reached out with a hand, closing it around the throat and squeezing the windpipe of the man who'd dared step too close. The gleam of a weapon had been the only thing to catch her eye, triggering the inborn reflex.

"Hey... hey! Let... go!" Xena looked up, noticing the struggling man. Her grip didn't loosen. He pushed and pulled against her grasp to no avail. The netted, homemade armor clanged raucously, irritating her enormously.

She studied his face, in fascination almost, watching the brown eyes frantically circling around in search of help. There is no help for anyone, she thought dully. Not you and certainly not me. She studied the man's adam's apple bobbing up and down, just above where her fist squeezed. She had an urge to punch it, bobbing there like that.

"C'mon... Gabrielle... was... my... friend... too." With a last frantic push and surprising Xena with the bard's name spoken aloud in the deafening silence, Joxer gained his release. The woman tossed him several feet away where he landed with an obscenely loud thump in the silence.

Xena shushed the noise with the abrupt wave of her hand. She looked around the room. Silence. So fitting, she thought. Finally my surroundings match me. Empty.

Her face creased in a frown, uncertainty wavered just behind her eyes. Someone was supposed to be near, grasping her hand, telling her she'd won. She'd done a wonderful job.

Dahak had been defeated. Hope was gone. Even Ares had left. Good had triumphed over evil. Xena had done what was expected of her. So where was the noise? Where were the cheers, the celebration?

After every battle she'd led with her army there had always been raucous celebrations. Screams and cheers of "Xena!" filled the air as her men indulged themselves in drink and women. She herself would stay up with the few men she considered friends rather than underlings, drinking long into the night.

She hung her head, suddenly consumed with bone deep exhaustion. Then too, she'd left her army because of a hunger to change her life, to lose the cheers of men applauding her vile deeds. Since meeting up with a certain green-eyed young woman outside Poteidaia, Xena's victories had been met with a different kind of noise. Sometimes it was only a quiet smile, or an exuberant "Wow," in a hushed, awed voice. But there was always that earth-
shattering hug. Then the evenings - those evenings, Xena sighed - Gabrielle would offer an unabashed retellling of every move Xena had made through the fight.

An image of Gabrielle, immersed in her storytelling, raised up in Xena's mind, choking off her breath with a painful sob. Just as she calmed, the bard's voice echoed in her head, shattering her control:

"Cecrops had the answer all along. That's what Poseidon meant when he said he didn't even have any idea where to look. It wasn't the love he could get that would save him. But his love for others." Her face had taken on a mesmerizing twinkle. "I should have guessed that."

The bard's soft face had taken on a serious look for just a moment, and Xena had put her arm around Gabrielle's shoulders. Now, moons later, Xena wondered why she'd done that. What had Gabrielle needed from her that Xena had felt compelled to give with that physical touch?

Comfort?

Gabrielle's face again rose in her mind. The face from the pit. There had been, for the briefest of moments, the same expression on Gabrielle's face as she cradled her daughter's body in the air over the chasm. Finally Xena felt the tears on her face. The cocoon of silence shattered around the warrior. The outside sounds and scents cascaded upon her. Her chest hurt terribly and though no sound came from her crying, she felt her mind fill with cacophony.

She wanted me to accept her. The pain of that realization filled the warrior with agony the likes she could only compare to her anguish at Solan's death. Xena struggled to her feet for the first time since falling to her knees at the edge of the sacrificial chasm.

The warrior looked around, dimly aware that the followers of Dahak had departed. She glanced over to the far wall. Ares, too, had vanished. Looking down, Xena noted Callisto's body remained where she'd dropped dead from the strike with the Hind's blood dagger.

Her hands tingled, and Xena realized she had a problem. Where was the dagger? She looked down at her empty right hand, reliving the moment she'd driven it into Callisto's stomach, ending the goddess' existence.

Xena realized now how pained Callisto's existence had been. She'd learned to live with the taunts, even had come to find them comforting in her many encounters with Callisto. But the blonde warrior-turned-goddess had lived, changed and died by Xena's hand. She had tormented those Xena protected, and challenged the deepest held truisms of Xena's warrior life.

Gabrielle's presence had made Xena forget for a time exactly what she'd given up, indeed buried, in order to complete the tasks the Fates had decreed for her life. For a warrior where would exist the need for compassion, or mercy? Nowhere. Where was need for a woman who "stopped and smelled the flowers"? Until Dahak had targeted her and Gabrielle, even Xena had begun acknowledging what she'd buried. Every day she'd come closer to the moment she had been prepared to share with her son. A return to motherhood. A try at a life with family, peace, and contentment. Dahak had drawn out the warrior, the heartless, focused, and cruel Warrior Princess. The warrior who could kill without thought, without remorse. Xena felt the feralness of a growl bite at her throat, as she tasted a moment of triumph.

Dahak was defeated, at last.

Her shoulders sagged and the tears slowly returned. The peace Xena had fought for was going to be empty. No Solan, no Gabrielle. No future, and no past. What kind of a peace was that?

Joxer came to stand next to Xena, offering the warrior the dagger he'd picked up from the floor near Callisto's fallen form. Brushing her hand over the blade, she took it absently.

She turned to the chasm, the image of mother and daughter tumbling toward the lava flashing in her mind's eye again. Gabrielle had been stronger than all of them. She had been tortured by Dahak, then tormented by the hidden knowledge of having kept Hope from Xena's hand. In the middle of all that she'd been guided into an insane deal by the thought that Xena left her to do Lao Ma's bidding. Solan's death, too, she'd felt guilty for.

In atonement and in sacrifice, Gabrielle had taken the final act into her own hands. Surrendering herself in order to save the world.

The bard had done it against the Persians too. Convincing Xena to stay and fight when all the warrior wanted to do was run away despite her brave words to the traitorous Persian. Xena suddenly felt small and insignificant. The grievances Xena held against her fate stacked up to nothing next to the things Gabrielle had tackled. And beaten.

Gabrielle had learned all the lessons Xena espoused so well. The truth hit the warrior only now. Xena had learned nothing. The Greater Good. Just words she'd heard once, and repeated like a mantra when she was low. But Gabrielle had done what was needed to save Salmoneus from that army and save a village of workers. Too, despite her anger at the idea of freeing Callisto, the bard had committed to the larger goal when she had allowed Xena to give the immortal ambrosia in exchange for a very chancy bet that Callisto would rid them of Velasca. Xena shook her head. At the time, when Gabrielle had offered the thought that maybe Callisto was sorry that she'd done the things she had, Xena had laughed.

Now Xena realized that had been Gabrielle's way of reminding herself the greater good had been served, no matter the pain to herself.

On the boat returning from Rome, Gabrielle's pain at her decision to withhold the ring from Crassus had briefly coaxed Xena to ask: "How many more times will you follow me into battle?"

Now, Xena had the answer, though Gabrielle had given her a gentle one she'd not taken seriously then: "I'm here because I want to be here, Xena. I love you."

Gabrielle had been the poetess, the eloquent one, talking constantly. Xena realized now that the bard had kept one thing very well hidden.

Her strength. Xena had always served as the decisive one, silently insisting on leading their partnership. Gabrielle had learned to hide her opinions. Even as Xena led them across the Grecian lands in search of her peace, Gabrielle had carried hers along with her.

In the last year, the gentle bard had it ripped from her, only to gain it back in an act so startling it had ripped the sound from life, the smells from the air, and the thoughts from Xena's mind.

As Xena had pushed against Hope's powers being used against her, there'd always been this small part of her confident enough, cocky enough to believe that she'd survive the fight. Gabrielle's last moments flashed through her mind again:

Ares called out to the bard from the corner Xena had backed him into. "It's in your hands now, Gabrielle. Will you let her do this?"

Gabrielle yelled Hope's name, momentarily drawing the demi-goddess's attention away from Xena. The warrior was about to strike when Gabrielle's body flew between the Hind's blood tainted dagger and Hope's body.

Mother enveloped child in a grasp meant to throw them both off balance. Just as Xena had taught her, Gabrielle used her own weight to bring Hope down. The two toppled into the chasm, Xena compelled magnetically to watch the sight.

"Are you ready to go?" Joxer asked her.

Shaken from her numbingly vivid recollection, Xena looked from the chasm to Joxer's face, said nothing and only nodded. He took her arm. She allowed, for the first time in her life, someone else to lead the way.

The warrior's shoulders sagged. Gabrielle hadn't given up on Xena. But Xena, in thinking even for the briefest moment that Gabrielle had, had lost the centering force in her life. Gabrielle had been the compass by which she guided her steps every morning until she put her head down to sleep at night.

Now silence reigned at the death of the bard of Poteidaia. Xena doubted she'd ever be strong enough to break it.

I will always be with you, Gabrielle. Even beyond death. Thinking those words, Xena bid her friend, and her own soul, farewell. After telling Gabrielle those same words in the border town against the Persians, Xena had gone on, with Gabrielle's help to beat the odds and win the day. But Gabrielle was not around to assist. She would not be around ever again.

Unlike Thessaly there was no body to yell at, no way for the warrior to beg the slight blonde to come home. Xena's control of the situation had fled. Numbness settled in instead. Suddenly she had a torturous moment where she desperately wanted death. She looked at the magically tainted dagger in her hand.

A firm hand wrapped around her own before she could lift it.

Joxer's eyes met her and the usually affable man looked angry. His brown eyes had gone tan, his brows furrowed and his jaw squared more firmly than Xena had ever seen. There was pain in his eyes, which she knew mirrored her own, and shame filled her.

He pulled the dagger from her grasp and pointed down. Sit? She couldn't feel her body, how could she sit? "No."

"Do it."

Xena's eyes closed and she fell backward, knowing her reflexes would catch her. It never failed. With a sigh, she cushioned her fall with her hands, and lowered herself to the ground. She did not bother to dust the scraps of decaying leaves, the small chips of branches and wood, or the dirt from her palms, instead squeezing it painfully into her palms, feeling the pain like a penance in her dazed state.

Everyone dead. Everyone dead. She looked up at Joxer. No, not everyone. She looked around the small campsite where Joxer had brought her. The canopy rustled overhead, blown by a soft wind, which she felt pull through her hair as well. She glanced up into the setting sun. Everything felt peaceful, but Xena frowned. It was all a lie. The evil still lay out there somewhere. Evil never died.

Without a word, she accepted the jerky strip Joxer passed her, but she did not eat. She stared into the fire the warrior had built, watching the flickering flames wishing some of their warmth could touch her soul. She was so cold.

Suddenly she had a clear vision of conversing with Hades upon her death.

"Too tortured for Elysia," he declared. "But you're not deserving of Tartarus."

"It's over. I can't go on living."

"Then find a way to throw the balance in one direction or the other," Hades murmured.

Throw the balance one way or the other? Throw the balance one way or the other. I deserve the guilt of every moment of my crimes; the pain of every death I've ever caused inflicted again upon me. She deserved an eternity of pain for failing her friends, her family, her Greece.

"You have chosen."

The voice came from behind her. Xena looked up. The campsite, fire and Joxer were gone. She sat, not on a log, but on a small gilt cushioned stool in a small chamber.

"I'm going to tilt the scales," was all she said. Her voice was quiet, almost non-existent.

Ares simply nodded and smiled, slow, almost sensuously. Xena's skin itched. "I know." His voice, smooth as silk, washed over her, humiliating her with a taunting edge. "I did say win-win, didn't I?"

Slowly, the warrior nodded. "I've lost everything."

Dispassionately, she watched his eyes flash. He smiled and grasped her arm. "Except your ability to fight." He pulled her face to his, willing her to deny it.

Xena hung her head and let Ares lead her deeper into his dominion, swept up. She had no illusions this time. There were no dreams of a life of power, riches, wealth. There weren't going to be any battles for noble causes, the underdog or the helpless. Her life would be nothing but the fight. She was no more than a puppet.

Xena thought to pray, but didn't know to whom. So she just asked that someone's blade could put her out of her misery. Send her to Tartarus as she deserved. Ares' hand on her arm was the only thing she felt, and it made her skin crawl. She forced everything from her mind, hopes, dreams, memories... feelings. It was easier to feel nothing. Otherwise, the warrior feared, she would die from suffocation.

Gabrielle landed on the ground, rolling away from the impact of her feet. She still had her arms wrapped around her daughter. Disgusted, she pulled her hands away from the other woman's body. She looked up at the sky above, seeing a whirlwind, fires at the center, beginning to close overhead. The barrenness of the land around her startled her senses.

Her clothes smelled of smoke, the soft tan leather skirt singed from the fires through which they had tumbled. She rubbed her face, trying in that brief moment to find calm. She pulled her hands away finding them covered in soot. Dismayed she rubbed her hands on her skirt, trying to get them clean.

Hope moved beneath her chest. Gabrielle sat up, studying the woman as she also pushed herself to a sitting position. For a long moment the two just sat there, looking at each other and around at their surroundings, wondering what the other was thinking.

Fingering her robes, looking a little dazed, Hope noticed the blood-stain on her robes. She was rubbing her hand over it, when a cramp seized her stomach. She bent double, gripping her middle. She groaned and tried to stand up, falling to her knees again when another pain ripped through her middle.

Gabrielle stood to study their surroundings and identify anything familiar. She rubbed her hands through her hair trying to ignore Hope, but the woman's agonizing screams echoed in her head. Tears pricked at her eyes as she argued with herself. This woman was no concern of hers. I just tried to kill her because the world needed her gone.

But the harder Gabrielle tried to push the issue from her mind, it seemed the louder Hope screamed. Until finally, there was nothing left but the insistent crying and screaming, and the bard couldn't think clearly any more.

She finally moved toward the other woman. Tentatively, she touched her daughter's shoulder just as another pain seared through the slight woman's body.

"What is it?" Even as she spoke, Gabrielle hated herself for caring. But Hope's anguished face as she returned to lying on the ground drew Gabrielle close despite her attempts to remain unmoved.

"My stomach hurts!" There was no imperiousness in the tone, only the anguished cry of a girl for her mother. Gabrielle hearkened to it and knelt closer. Hope pulled away from her, pain from her suffering glossing her green eyes, warring with a child's look of sorrow. "Go 'way."

Gabrielle looked into those eyes and saw the sorrow, and the pain. "I don't know where to go," she answered. "So I might as well stay here and help you."

Hope sat up, surprised by that. Suspiciously, but unable to hide her curiosity, she asked, "Why?" Another pain gripped her stomach and she screamed. Startled by her own outburst, Hope clapped a hand over her mouth and shoved again at Gabrielle's hands.

Gabrielle looked at Hope, looked up at the sky, and then out over the land. Not even a desert palm broke the sameness of the landscape. She turned back to Hope, a crazy thought passing through her mind: This must be what it's like inside Xena. She had no idea why she said that. "I can't let Hope..." Drawing back to the present she shook her head and looked at the younger woman on the ground. "You... die."

Hope gritted her teeth and pointed up at the sky. "You dragged me into that hole with you. What did you expect to happen?"

"Do you know where we are?"

"This is Dahak's realm. I was supposed to bring him up through the hole. Not us down through it."

"What's happening to you now?" Gabrielle stood up.

Hope's face changed from the certainty with which she'd just spoken to worry. "I don't know. It hurts." She pressed her palm against the lower portion of her black and red robe, raising her hand covered in red. "And I seem to have been cut somehow."

Gabrielle studied the blood on Hope's hands. It was very, very red, almost black. Only a really bad wound, a fatal wound, turned that color of red. "Xena didn't strike you with the dagger, so where is all the blood coming from?" The bard pulled at the robe to look more closely at the blood stain.

Another pain hit Hope then and the woman grasped Gabrielle's arm. There was a moment when Gabrielle flashed back to the barn where she'd labored to birth Hope. Xena had been with her. She'd grabbed Xena's arm in a similar way on a contraction.

There was a sympathetic lurch deep in the bard's stomach as she realized that Hope must be about to deliver. "But it's too early... You can't be."

Hope's face showed confusion as Gabrielle helped her lay down. "What?"

Gabrielle laid a hand over Hope's distended belly. More calmly, she explained, "I think you're in labor."

Hope bit her lower lip but tried for a smile even as a contraction rippled across her frame. Abandoning her attempt at a smile, Hope let worry cross her face. "But it's not ready."

Gabrielle started to pull aside Hope's robes. "I don't know how I can - but I'll try to help."

"No!" Her voice was high-pitched, strained. Hope shivered and pulled back from Gabrielle's touch. She pushed at Gabrielle's hands. "All you want to do is kill him! Get away from me."

The blonde demi-goddess forced herself to her hands and knees, trying to drag her less than cooperative body away from Gabrielle.

The bard remained kneeling on the sand, hands resting on her knees, watching Hope struggle away from her. "You need help."

"I won't get it from you, Mother," Hope shot back, biting her lip against the contracting muscles in her stomach. She gripped her lower belly, her hand coming away coated in more blood. "I'll find my father to help me." The sky rumbled overhead. "Ah," she smirked, "There he is."

Hope pushed to her feet, straining, and Gabrielle rolled back onto her heels and stood. Her daughter started to walk away then again fell again to her knees.

Gabrielle bit her lip and then frowned. Shaking her head and sighing she dropped to her knees again beside her daughter. "Shhh, Hope. You're not going to be able to go anywhere." Hope closed her eyes and shook her head, as tears coursed unchecked down her cheeks. Gabrielle pushed aside hands that no longer fought her intervention, and pulled aside the robe. She swallowed. "You're covered in blood."

"Make the pain stop!" Revealing her inexperience and actual youth, Hope wailed in pain.

Gabrielle shivered. "I don't know that I can." Her hands came away from Hope's thighs covered in blood. "I can't find any wounds. I think you're miscarrying."

Hope didn't hear. Her body had taken over. Grunting and straining, Hope's condition progressed into hard labor, and the young woman was unprepared. Her breathing became irregular and she panted ineffectively to progress the delivery.

"Focus."

Hope, wild-eyed with panic and pain, barely registered the commanding tone.

"Slow your breathing, Hope. You have to concentrate. Work with the contractions. Not against them."

Gabrielle pulled off her leather belt to give her daughter something to bite down on as the pains came constantly. She ripped off a long strip of the robe and used it to brush away the sweat from Hope's brow. Giving the rag over, Gabrielle ripped another strip from the robe and used it to wipe away the blood from her legs and thighs.

"Oh, help me!" The blonde young woman nearly doubled over as a contraction enveloped her entire middle. She became unbalanced on her elbows and fell backward.

Hope struggled to sit up again, Gabrielle felt the rippling muscles beneath her palms on Hope's stomach. "You're going to have to do this."

Biting her lip, Hope retorted, exhaustion and pain edged her voice. "I can't!"

"Pay attention." The bard saw a small head push from Hope. Quickly Gabrielle moved around between Hope's knees. With curt orders to the reluctant, exhausted woman to push, or pause, or bear down, Gabrielle guided the baby's body from Hope. She held the child in her palms covered in blood and fluid. Gabrielle noticed it was a male... In the same moment she realized its chest did not move. He was dead.

Hope struggled to her elbows, seeing her unmoving baby. "You killed him!" Crying tears the new mother grabbed for her stillborn child's body. Gabrielle reluctantly released the boy's frail body into her hands. "You killed him!" Hope's green eyes pinned her mother accusingly in place.

Tears spilled over the bard's cheeks. "The fall... I didn't... He was killed by the fall." Hope shook her head and wiped at the anger on her face, now crying over her baby's body.

Suddenly Gabrielle's mind saw not Hope, but Xena crying over Solan's body. Gabrielle fell back stunned and anguished. If I'd killed you, Hope, I'd have spared you - and Xena this pain.

The bard pulled her own knees to her chest and hugged herself. Her eyes never left Hope's profile, as the woman cradled her dead child in shaking arms. Both women cried tears that wracked their bodies in shaking sobs.

Hiccoughing, Hope wiped her eyes and looked up once at Gabrielle. The pain in the green eyes of both women created a bond in that moment. They were truly mother and daughter, knowledge of each other's entire history of emotions passed between them. The demi-goddess' voice was dead, emotionless when she spoke. "Go home, Gabrielle. Dahak has lost." Lifting her hand from her son's pale, bloody body, Hope raised it toward the bard.

Gabrielle, tears streaming down her cheeks, closed her eyes against the vision of a soft blonde head nestled against his mother's cheek. She could say nothing.

Taking a deep breath, Gabrielle opened her eyes. She found herself in a dark room, seated on a small chair apparently in the corner. There were large hulking objects shadowed around her. There was no movement, no sound, and Gabrielle sniffed, strangely, no smell in the air.

"You aren't going to find anything here." The voice startled her, coming out of the darkness behind her.

Gabrielle turned and tried to peer through the darkness. "Who's there?"

A small figure walked from the darkness, taking more definite shape, but still there was no light to illuminate a face, providing identity. Despite her exhaustion, Gabrielle felt a touch of fear at the unknown. "Isn't there a torch around here or something?"

"No. This is the darkest place on earth."

"Do you know where we are?"

"I do."

"You seem to know me."

"I do. You taught me how to use a staff."

Gabrielle gasped. No light was needed to confirm the identity of the other person. "Solan?" Her voice was filled with barely contained pleasure. She reached out into the darkness toward the boy.

Youthful arms grasped Gabrielle around the shoulders. "Um, hello."

Questions clamored in Gabrielle's head each demanding to be asked first. Finally one waded its way to her tongue. "What are you doing here? I'm dead?"

She could barely make out the soft shake of his head. "No. But here, you might as well be."

Gabrielle grasped his shoulders, proving for herself that they were both here together, real. "But you're dead. My... Hope killed you."

"It's all right. I knew Hope was your daughter. And yes, I'm dead, but honestly, you're not."

"So how is it you're here?"

"This is where everyone went, Gabrielle."

"Everyone, who? What is going on, and where are we?"

"Xena's mind. We've been forgotten."

Gabrielle shivered. Forgotten? "That's not possible." She shook her head. "I was just with Hope in Dahak's world."

"Yes, and when she released you, admitting Dahak's defeat, you came back to our world. But there's no place for you out there, and you're not dead. So you've been put in here with us."

"Who's us? We're not the only ones here?"

Gabrielle could just make out that Solan raised his hand, pointing behind her. A small light began to shine in the room. Very small, it broke through the darkness in only a few key locations. Gabrielle turned, taking in all the faces. Solan. Kaleipus. Callisto. Talmadeus. Telemachus. And many more she did not recognize. It seemed everyone killed since Xena and Gabrielle had started traveling together was in the small room. She noticed a small figure further back in the space, half hidden by another warlord killed by Xena.

"Cyrene?" She looked over her shoulder at Solan, then back at the slight older woman. "But you're not dead." She grasped Xena's mother's hands and squeezed.

"To Xena I am. Like you, Gabrielle."

Gabrielle and Cyrene sank together to the stool. Solan stood guard over both women. The rest of the apparitions, Gabrielle noticed, faded away into the darkness.

The bard, holding Cyrene's hands, looked up into Solan's face. "Can you explain?"

"We're inside Xena's mind. The part of her mind she's shut off from her consciousness." He braced his tall, lanky form on a chair back. "Everything you see are things Xena has forced herself to forget. A painful memory comes up, she locks it in here. She's adding new things to it every day. Every moment she comes across something too painful to face, she shuts it off and shoves it here."

"It's a place to hide all her baggage," Cyrene supplied.

Gabrielle nodded. "I guess I can understand that. But what I don't get is how or why?"

"Why is easier." Cyrene put a hand out to Solan, who grasped it and came close behind the older woman. "She's gone back to Ares. Maybe he had something to do with her ability to just lock away her memories." Xena's mother shook her head. "I don't know."

Xena's mother and Solan escorted Gabrielle around. While the various emanations of people had disappeared, all sorts of things from Xena's life cluttered the space around them.

Cyrene was in the middle of relating to her the story of the chair Gabrielle had found herself sitting in upon her arrival. Gabrielle could barely keep her eyes open.

"It was her favorite chair. She was so mad." Cyrene's face took on such a wistful look. "So very mad at her younger brother for breaking it during one of their after dinner fights. She did not speak to him for a full moon."

Gabrielle's eyes popped open. "She fought with her brother Lyceus? I thought she loved him."

Cyrene smiled. "Xena loved Lyceus as if she was his mother. Constantly priming him, teaching him everything. Xena was his mother. I was not." The older woman shook her head. "I was so mad at her when Lyceus died defending Amphipolis. It wasn't what you think. I knew it had been right. They were right to do what they had. But she took him from me - and then killed a child I had not even had a chance to know."

Gabrielle nodded. "The example of you allowed the other villagers to attack her for their losses as well." She rubbed her temples tiredly. "I'm sorry, Cyrene. But, um, is there any place I can lie down?"

Cyrene nodded. "There is a smaller room off this one. It should be very quiet." She helped Gabrielle to her feet and put her arm around the bard's shoulders. "We might as well get comfortable."

Gabrielle paused and looked at Cyrene. "We will get out of here. We will figure out a way to get Xena to hear us again, to feel us. To let us back into her life." Gabrielle laid down on a small cot Cyrene led her to in the small room filled with toys.

Cyrene shook her head. "We're locked in here. She's on a reign of terror... again. Out there." Xena's mother sat briefly on the edge of the cot while tucking a small blanket up over the bard, pulling it snugly up to her chin. "I doubt there's much we can do."

"We'll have to find a way to wake up her conscience." Gabrielle grasped Cyrene's hand and gave it a squeeze. And I will. I can't stand to be in here, locked away from the world. Away from Xena. Gods, that hurts! Gabrielle resolutely closed her eyes and tried to keep the pain from her features. Xena, what happened to you?

Cyrene soothingly rubbed her back. "Now you get some sleep." Cyrene stood and left the bard to her slumber.

Gabrielle focused on the shadowed figures in the room, and the concentration nudged her mind from frantic activity to peaceful sleep. She rested her temple against a small, stuffed horse, the tan fabric soon was coated with tears.