This story takes place after the stories 'Healing' and 'Growing' and 'Aphrodite's Gift.' Somewhere around season 5 or 6.
Gabrielle sat back, propped up on her hands, as the sun settled behind the trees, lighting their camp with its tree-filtered rays. The air had not begun to lose its heat yet, but she felt the cool coming like the imprint of a figure behind a fabric veil.
Xena felt it, too, and she had cut a stack of wood. She sat now on one of the logs, flattened and stable. Gabrielle watched Xena prop the tip of her sword on the inside edge of her boot and prepare to start running the stone down the edge of the blade.
Gabrielle stood up to retrieve her parchment from the saddle bags. Suddenly, she changed her mind and left the quill and parchment in the bag. She walked right up against Xena, who put the sword aside, as Gabrielle stepped over Xena's legs. As Xena leaned back, Gabrielle sat in her lap.
Xena's face held the faintness smile. Gabrielle put her arms around Xena's neck, met with the familiar feel of Xena's long arms as they came around her and hearing the sword drop. Xena's hands were hot from the recent work. The heat seemed to sink into Gabrielle's body. She felt it gather in her lower stomach.
Gabrielle's sudden turn of events had brought out an edge of shyness in them both. It was funny and pleasant to find themselves coy in the midst of such confidence.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey," Xena said with a flicker of a grin.
She watched Xena's eyes glance to her lips, revealing her thoughts, giving away her next move, as she never would have in a fight. It was something Gabrielle loved and felt sure Xena never noticed herself. She never mentioned it for worry it might disappear.
She touched Xena's face with the tips of her fingers, watching how her eyes became heavy and her lips parted. Xena moved her face slowly against Gabrielle's hands. All these years, and the slightest touch still had such an affect on Xena. You touch my soul, Xena had said once, beneath Gabrielle's hands. The words stayed with Gabrielle as a gift she treasured. She always loved words.
Gabrielle felt herself burn with love and with passion. She tightened her legs around Xena, feeling Xena's body tense with rising energy. The heat in the pit of her stomach emanating from Xena' hands seemed to lick up and spread its warmth through her.
She kissed Xena, whose lips met hers already slightly open – a practiced and graceful kiss. Their bodies knew one another so well, they rarely had to think about coming together in passion, unless they were going someplace new.
Gabrielle's thoughts danced around something that had been there a while, and she found she had tonight the boldness to share it. She broke their kisses. Xena could feel she was about to speak and drew back slightly to see her face.
"Xena, I want something," she said. One of Xena's eyebrows came up. She was eager to hear it. She watched Gabrielle's face, seemingly undecided whether to look at her eyes or mouth as she waited. Gabrielle grew anxious, bringing Xena's other eyebrow up. Her arms around Gabrielle drew her close, bolstering her confidence. Gabrielle shifted slightly. "Sometime, I want you to use Aphrodite's gift on me."
She saw a change like a rush of heat running up Xena's expression. Instead of speaking, Xena's mouth smiled on only one side. Gabrielle gave one small, soft laugh, and Xena smiled and turned away, embarrassed for just a moment at her own transparency. She looked up again.
"Is that a yes?" Gabrielle asked. Xena nodded.
"Yes," she said, in a low sort of rumble, as she drew Gabrielle closer and kissed her a deep kiss.
Gabrielle grew lost in the kiss. Xena tipped her head back and kissed her throat, running her hands up along her spine, as Gabrielle ran her hands through Xena's hair. She drew back to speak again, putting their foreheads together a moment. She felt for the first time how her heart was beating hard. Xena watched her face a moment, glancing at the pulse in her throat, waiting for the words to come. Gabrielle could feel her nervousness sharpen Xena's attention.
"Will you make it like… it was the first time?" she said. She shifted a bit, nervously, in Xena's lap, and touched her own lips. "Like it was with Perdicus?" Gabrielle asked and let her fingertips rest on Xena's lips.
Xena's eyebrows drew together, and she studied Gabrielle's face a moment, trying to understand her full meaning. Then Xena smiled again, and her eyes softened.
Instead of answering yes in words, she held Gabrielle more fully, gently taking over full control, and slowly brought their mouths together in a kiss so soft, Gabrielle stopped her breath instinctively.
The change quickly brought out the feelings Gabrielle had been hoping to entice to surface. She leaned into Xena, her heart beating so hard it ached, and felt how she was held in a strong embrace. The kiss built slowly, until they had reached the kisses they were used to, with Xena leading Gabrielle slowly to a greater pitch of passion.
Soon they were back in their usual dynamic. But the request had been spoken, to return to another day. Gabrielle knew Xena would not forget.
Gabrielle's opinions had changed over the years. Knowing now more of desire and love, she wondered what might have happened between them had she and Perdicus been left to make a life of their marriage. She tried not to let the thought plague her, tried not to be harsh towards either of them. But she knew now what she wanted from Perdicus and what he wanted from her. And these were things they only imagined they could get from marriage – answers to questions that could only be found in themselves. Eventually, they would have been left with the truth. She wondered if they might have blamed one another, or had the grace not to fall into that trap and wondered what they would have decided. Would they have had children by then?
She'd gone through such illusions about love with Xena and found that she wanted her only more, with a desire more simple, more pure, like a flame burning the finest of fuel. She could see now how it had confused Xena – who was still unpracticed and uncertain in love and could not name such things – to feel that she was wanted as an idea, a hero who could show Gabrielle the way to live and feel whole in this world. Gabrielle, in a great paradox, wanted to save her, to be the force that made her someone else. It was the only way they could be equals.
She was left to face it all in Mnemosyne's temple, to uncover the truth she had buried, that she had betrayed her friend and lover to almost certain death. She had imagined herself scorned and rejected, tossed aside by one too hard of heart to love her in return. Even as she reacted to this, shocking even herself with her betrayal, she saw the truth of Xena's frailty, the earnestness of her heart. She awoke to find herself in the midst of such genuine love from Xena, it had changed her.
The paradox was striking to Gabrielle, for they meant more to one another now and had been greater forces of change in one another's lives than she had ever imagined as a younger woman. Once the illusions were out of the way, love, being made free, became stronger.
It had taken over a year for them to talk about Perdicus. When they had come to Gabrielle's home in Potedia, Xena had asked if Gabrielle would go to see his family. She intended to ask whether or not Gabrielle wanted her to come. It felt different now that they were lovers. There was a strange tension left unaddressed, as if Xena and Perdicus were rivals in some way. And it was left unclear who had lost.
"I'm sorry," Gabrielle had said, suddenly, running the back of her hand over Xena's arm.
"For what?" Xena said, surprised and curt.
"For marrying Perdicus," Gabrielle said. Xena seemed slightly shocked and upset.
"Don't say that," she said, "I was happy for you. You should have what you want." She seemed inclined to touch Gabrielle, but grew awkward. It was complicated, and she felt unsure how to engage her friend.
"No, I'm just, sorry it happened," Gabrielle said.
"I didn't know you felt that way," Xena said. She held Gabrielle's shoulder lightly with the tips of her fingers, as if her friend had lost something held dear.
"For a long time, I felt like I had killed him. I wished I could blame Callisto, but it wouldn't stay," Gabrielle said. Xena was quiet at this.
"Do you think that now?" she asked.
"No," Gabrielle said, looking out the window. "But I shouldn't have married him."
"You were in love," Xena said. Gabrielle said nothing at this, but continued looking out the window.
"I thought he was more loving, more sensitive than other men," she said.
"What do you think now?" Xena asked. Gabrielle sighed and seemed to consider the question with gravity.
"I think now, he always grew desperate with his own feelings. It crowded out his ability respect the feelings of others. Or maybe just to see them. How he felt overshadowed everything. I can't imagine pursuing someone who left me so many times, said no so many times. He believed if he wanted me badly enough, it would make me want him, as a natural outcome. I think he lost sight of whatever genuine desire he'd had in that pursuit." she said.
"I took his relentlessness as a sign of how great his love was. And I let his feelings take over mine, write them into being.
"It's like a sickness. What happens to us women?" she said.
"I don't know," Xena answered.
"Maybe I wanted someone to feel the same way about me as I did about you then," Gabrielle said. Xena didn't know what to answer.
"What would I say to him now?" Gabrielle said. Then, "I wish he had had more time. He was never a bad man. There was real love there."
She let the matter drop then, sitting on her old bed, opening her palms into the sun, with Xena's hand now resting on her shoulder.
She went alone to Perdicus' parents' house the next day and didn't speak of it after.
They hadn't spoken again about Gabrielle's request, but both women remembered it and could feel it was there, at the edge of things. The nights were growing cooler, and they had drawn down out of the mountains and into a wooded region. Evergreens grew there taller than Gabrielle had ever seen. It reminded her of the Amazon forests of the North.
The area was not much populated, and they had many nights and slow days alone together. They'd learned to appreciate such times, not knowing who or what would find them next or how long it would keep them. And like always, their passion for each other grew each day they spent alone and in freedom, until it was consuming their thoughts and time. They used to joke about it.
"What'll we do when there's no one else to fight?" Gabrielle would say.
"Die of exhaustion," Xena would joke, or else, "We'll think of something."
Xena knew Gabrielle terribly well, though she remained at once a great mystery, after all their time together. She had learned better how to love her over the years. She thought a long time about her request, what longing was hidden in it, and how to make it happen in the best way.
She realized a blue moon was coming – a second full moon within one month's span – and planned to try for that night. She thought of some gift, some ritual that might mark the occasion, like a wedding, she thought. And, as always, she struggled with her own self-consciousness. An idea came to her when they drew down into remarkable evergreen glades peppered with balsam and white fir. She gathered their fragrant leaves when off alone.
When Gabrielle came back to camp that evening, she found Xena had already put their bedrolls out together, which seemed strange. Coming closer, she saw that she had dug a shallow bed beneath them filled with layers of evergreen leaves and fringed with small clusters of white flowers. She knew at once what it was for. At the head of Gabrielle's blanket was a small pillow Xena had sewn using layers of fabric kept from India. She lifted it, smelling the sweet spice of the leaves it was stuffed with and touching the perfect ornament of the stitches, as Xena approached. She gave Gabrielle the odd, self-conscious smile and posture she only saw when Xena revealed a gift she'd been planning.
Gabrielle came and embraced her a long time. They ate dinner, a sort of softness between them that made them speak quieter than usual. The full moon came over the trees, large and seeming the clearest silver-white, spilling light over everything as if in great earnest to touch the darkened earth. They sat a long time in silence before Gabrielle placed her hand over Xena's.
Gabrielle went and let Argo free. She took Aphrodite's gift from her own pack. She felt Xena's eyes on her as she moved. She wondered a moment at her own lack of boldness. When she felt her fingers tremble against the leather straps she worked to unclasp, she realized how desire and anxiety had built to such a pitch she no longer knew how to mange them. She noticed that her breath was shallow and drew it deeper as a start.
She looked to Xena across the fire. Their eyes met, and Gabrielle turned without a word, knowing Xena would follow her. She went to where Xena had made things ready and swallowed looking down at their familiar bedding, now made into a sacred place, and the pillow Xena had made. She could feel her heart beating under her own fingertips.
Xena came behind her. When Xena put her hands on her shoulders and drew her back against her own body, soft without her armor, she reached up to put her hands over Xena's and felt them weak.
Somehow, Gabrielle had not imagined this would feel so real. She felt the same as she had then, her body filled with mingled excitement and fear, so unique to being young and inexperienced. It made her stand rigid, unable to move with ease, as if she had to shift a heavy weight in her limbs. Her feelings had the strangest quality of familiarity, being drawn up from so long ago and yet being so immediate, as if the two moments were touching.
But she could feel also that this was different. There was no question, no confusion in her body as to what she wanted. Her entire being was afire with consent. Only her mind struggled to decipher how to get her where she wanted to go.
Xena's breath touched her neck, and Gabrielle let her head tip to the side. Xena kissed there, very soft, letting her lips linger. She kissed her shoulders, letting her arms come across Gabrielle's chest, Gabrielle felt the nearness of Xena's hands to her breasts send a blush across her face and neck.
"Gods," she said, with a nervous huff of laughter, "This feels so real." She turned to look at Xena, feeling self-conscious how much in the grip of her idea she had become now that it was happening.
But it dropped away. She could see that Xena was taking her idea entirely seriously. She caught at once the unique signs of Xena's nervousness; the heightened edge showed in her calm, in the willfulness of the deep, even breaths she took. She had Gabrielle fixed in a gaze of intent that might have caused her to melt, all about which the great tenderness between them could be felt.
Xena drew her close and kissed her lips.
(This story has been cut off in compliance with rules, but you can read the rest at /works/1046386.)