Title: Family Obligations
Summary: Things are almost back to normal after Callisto's second rampage and subsequent body swap. But there's one thing Gabrielle must go back to Potidaea to do, and this time Xena's coming along. Takes place after S2E08, "Ten Little Warlords."
Notes: As of now, I have only seen up to s3e02. So I can only predicate my harebrained ideas on that much canon/context. If something's really off from later canon… call it an AU! I only know Gabrielle's parents' names from glancing at the wiki through my fingers, trying to dodge spoilers.
Chapter One: The Road Home
After dispatching Sisyphus and his warlords and welcoming Xena back to her own body, she, Joxer, and Gabrielle made their way back to the coastal village where they'd started. Finding some extremely sheepish villagers at the dock, the trio reassured them that Ares' absence had incited the embarrassing violence around town and that it was now over. They were too grateful for the excuse to doubt it, and they ran off to spread the word after directing their saviors to what they insisted was the coziest tavern.
"OOuufgh." Joxer flopped onto a crooked stool, back to the room, as Xena and Gabrielle sat across the table from him. "I'm beat. Monster-slaying really takes it out of you!"
Gabrielle deadpanned at him. "You slew spinning wood. With another piece of wood."
"The hunting was the hard part! We rowed over there, tracked and hunted and fought our way through the castle in sheer ter- in a rush of heroic exertion, and then had to row back."
Gabrielle couldn't argue, for once. The night before Xena left to help Ares get his sword back, Gabrielle had barely slept through her fog of rage, and sustaining all that anger through their island adventure had really sapped her energy.
Joxer continued, "Dealing with you was no picnic, either, oh tiny Queen of Wrath."
"Hey! You lost your mind over a fly!"
"Ease up, you two. I'll buy you dinner, and you can sleep all this," Xena vaguely gestured between Gabrielle and Joxer, "off." She nodded to a serving girl that was looking their way and asked for three ales and three of whatever food was fresh. Then she smiled too-sweetly at her friends. "You only got so worked up because you're so innocent and peaceful at heart."
Gabrielle scowled, and Joxer loudly protested about his stout warrior heart. Xena just laughed at them, and after a moment, Gabrielle relaxed and smiled at her a little, too. Having her body back was the first thing she or any of them had to be happy about in a while. And even that was just fixing one of the many things Callisto had ruined. It was good to see Xena be a little giddy over it.
A rich stew did a great deal to improve Joxer's mood, and the complex flavor of the accompanying ale made Xena smile even more. But she kept glancing at Gabrielle, and halfway through the meal, she finally turned to her with concern.
"Are you all right? You're hardly eating." Xena pressed the back of her hands to Gabrielle's and her own forehead. "You've never been so tired you can't eat, and you're not feverish."
"I'm fine! Just not as hungry as I thought."
Xena gave her an extremely skeptical look, then grabbed her face and pushed her own cheek against Gabrielle's brow.
Gabrielle felt the blush bloom from her neck up and started squirming.
Xena hummed and mumbled, "You do feel warmer than a second ago," before finally letting Gabrielle go.
"That was adorable." A smarmy grin wafted over with Joxer's words, earning him a fresh glare. "Warlord or fretting fishwife? Which am I looking at?"
Xena's glare joined Gabrielle's for a moment before she turned back to the blonde and opened her mouth to speak.
Gabrielle cut her off, "I'm not sick! I just feel… guilty." The admission deflated her even further.
Xena frowned. "Gabrielle, I told you I'm proud of you for not hurting anyone after we realized what was happening to everyone's emotions."
Gabrielle was already shaking her head. "Nothing to do with that, Xena. I've been avoiding something I need to do. Can we go to Potidaea? Just for a few days? I haven't been since before…" My wedding. My widowing. By the light of her husband's funeral pyre, she'd written a stilted, shocked missive to her family and his, then sent it off while she went to avenge him. It wasn't nearly enough. Would that they could have brought his body home, at least, but even if they hadn't been so far away, the danger was too great and the need to track Callisto too urgent. If she had continued to hunt Gabrielle, a cart hauling a corpse was too easy a target. If she hadn't, Gabrielle could never have caught up to her, and at the time, that was unacceptable to even consider.
A pall came over the whole table.
"Oh." Xena's tone gentled. "Yes, of course. We can head that way tomorrow."
"And you'll come all the way to town with me?" Gabrielle hated how vulnerable she sounded. She wasn't this delicate all the time, truly, but she was tired, and her emotional control was all burnt out.
"Of course... if that's what you want." Xena laid a hand on her arm.
Suddenly feeling the need to lighten the mood, Gabrielle asked, "Are you in, Joxer?" She gave him a sad, teasing smile. "The people in my town will probably believe everything you tell them."
All brashness and smarm gone, he ruefully chuckled. "It's nice of you to ask. Really. But I've got business east of here. Give Perdicus' parents an extra hug for me, will you? I stood for him at your wedding, so we're nearly family."
Days later, Xena and Gabrielle breezed along a well-used road, chatting, playing road games, and occasionally drawing Argo away from from especially enticing clumps of grass. She was still healing and had the appetite to show it, even though they didn't have her carrying anything but supplies for this journey.
The women also shared long stretches of comfortable silence, but when that went on too long, or when Xena otherwise noticed Gabrielle turning in on herself too much, she just reached out and touched her arm or patted her shoulder. They would share a smile, and Xena would ask her about something or other. Food, stories, anything to set the discussion off again.
Until recently, when Xena wore Callisto's body, she had never realized how much she touched Gabrielle. Then, suddenly, it was only when Gabrielle was specifically paying attention to her that Xena could casually lay a hand on her without a problem. There was no stiffness or antsiness Xena could sense after the first day; Gabrielle would just seek out her eyes and then act normally. But Xena could absolutely not sneak up on her or draw her attention with a touch without garnering a jump at the least. The variety of squeaks and yelps she'd heard before she'd stopped trying would have been funny if they hadn't hurt so much.
So now, back in her own skin, she indulged her craving for touch. Gabrielle's specifically. She'd almost lost it three ways over - to Perdicus and Potidaea, to Hades, and to the prison of Callisto's body. So why not use innocent, supportive gestures if it was helping to keep Gabrielle's gloom at bay? There would be plenty for her to worry over in town. No sense getting sick about it on the way.
In early afternoon, the wind shifted, and a sound actually worth worrying over met her ear.
"Gabrielle, something's going on up ahead. Come on."
They ran and crested a hill. At the bottom, five club-wielding men in threadbare clothing menaced another man and his donkey-drawn wagon.
"I said you can fill our bags, or we can take the donkey to eat tonight! Now choose!"
Xena and Gabrielle barely paused. Xena ululated and used the height of the hill to somersault atop the wagon. "That," she pointed at the donkey, "isn't the ass you should be worried about."
As all six men stared up at her, dumbfounded, Gabrielle reached them and started walloping the nearest bandits from behind with her staff. Two were down by the time Xena flipped off the back and went to work on the rearmost bandits. The women threw or herded all five into the ditch, with Xena kicking the last one in the rear end as she dodged his final attempt at a punch.
"Told you." She let them groan and all roll over to face her. Honestly, they were pitiful. Their clothes were too thin for the cooling weather, and clubs were a pretty sorry weapon even for country bandits. She saw most had a knife, but they were not much longer than what they might use for cooking and eating.
"I got more than you that time, Xena," Gabrielle teased.
"That'll teach me to show off."
The bandits whispered "Xena?!" and looked at one another, and she could almost see their stomachs dropping.
She took out her chakram and toyed with it, directing a too satisfied smile in the men's direction. A little extra white in her eyes completed the picture, and by their cowering, she knew they would be no trouble for the few minutes it would take to sort this out.
Meanwhile, behind her, she could hear Gabrielle checking on the wagon-owner.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes, thanks to you two." A pause. "Gabrielle?"
"Yeah. Hi. Aetius, right?"
"Yes. You look… different!"
Xena interrupted, "Do you know these men?"
"No. The next village over had their cartwright fall ill, so I was just minding my business, taking some parts and tools over to look for extra work, and those five came screaming out of the treeline. They wanted to steal my tools and eat my donkey!"
A bandit cried out, "One, not both! Please, don't kill us! We're just hungry!"
Xena put her chakram away. "We are surrounded by farming settlements, and it's the autumn harvest. Go ask for honest work, and you'll probably find it."
"We will! We promise!" All of them nodded. And they did look gaunt. Xena sighed. "Gabrielle, get them something to eat. We're just a few hours from town anyway."
"Already started." Argo had finally caught up to them, and Gabrielle was reaching into the saddle bags and pulling out the remains of their food to share. She and Xena helped the men out of the ditch while the cartwright sputtered.
Gabrielle finally turned to him. "Aetius, did they hit you?"
"Well, no…"
"We beat them up, and now they're all muddy out in this wind. Do you feel like marching them to the next town for a trial?"
The man sighed. "I suppose not. But if you boys had asked, I'd have shared what I have."
The bandits looked suitably miserable, so Xena clapped the nearest one on the shoulder and said, "Good. You boys get a second chance. But we'll be watching and listening."
Gabrielle added, "If we hear of any of you robbing anyone again, when we come back through here, we will find you. Get it?"
"Yeah… sorry."
"Then scram!" They did.
"Scram?" Xena was teasing Gabrielle over her tough routine with the bandits. "That one poor man ran away so fast, he fell back into the ditch. They're never getting all that mud out of their clothes."
"I guess I could have been nicer. Maybe we instead of giving them leftover fish, we should have taught them to fish bare-handed like you did for me?"
Xena was silent so long, Gabrielle turned to look back at her - and was immediately pounced-upon and wrestled into a headlock.
Xena patted Gabrielle's head. "Your joke privileges are withheld until I say so, bard."
"You can talk, with your donkey puns!" When wriggling around did Gabrielle no good, she attempted to tickle around Xena's armor, failed to get through the leather, and went for the back of her knee instead.
The pair fell out laughing and eventually got back to walking. It would take a few hours yet to get to her family's farm on the edge of Potidaea. Xena kept up her transparent efforts to keep Gabrielle distracted, which she appreciated, but it was fruitless. Thinking about Perdicus and their families was inevitable, considering her plans for this trip.
Her guilt over him, besides being heavy in general, had more than one facet. Besides the obvious - marrying him away from their families and failing to protect him or even bring him home whole - her reaction to it all compounded everything.
The day-to-day struggle was not as difficult as she had expected or seen from other widows. Perdicus was her childhood friend, her husband, her lover… but they'd had so little time together as a couple. In the months before she'd left Potidaea over a year ago, she spent as much time avoiding him as courting him. Her claustrophobia, born of staring down a straight, narrow life-path in the village where she'd been born, walking beside the first boy she'd ever liked - it honestly made her callous and short with him.
"Did you see the guy they want me to marry?"
It hurt their lifelong friendship, and her shame at that was no small part of what kept her from visiting home for so long that first time. Then she'd spent about one dramatic day with him in Troy, only for him to wander off with Helen - not that she'd protested, confused as she was.
Still, later, she thought the rest of the time they both spent traveling separately had prepared them to finally settle down. She had found other flirtations, incredible adventures, new skills, steadfast new friends, and even some scars. His scars were even deeper, his mien more mature than ever, and yet he seemed to need her so badly! She gave him what peace and love she could and was still grateful for the opportunity.
But while he had remained on her mind during her preceding travels, he wasn't part of them. He was the disruption, not the habit. Now, just over two weeks later, he already wasn't what she thought of when she got up in the morning. The first thing she saw each day was still the remains of a fire or a canopy of trees or Xena's smirking face, after all. She didn't miss the feel of his arms at night, because how well did she even know them? Traveling just felt so much more like her real life than her marriage or even her life of farming had.
Thoughts of Perdicus were gut punches - random and incapacitating, but not constant. Just something else to feel guilty about, along with putting down her staff when she knew Callisto was on the loose and then being caught unawares. If she had been holding her own, even for a minute, maybe he would have been behind her, or maybe Xena could have protected them both... Some Amazon she was. Gabrielle sighed, and this time, Xena silently laid a hand on Gabrielle's head, tugged so they were walking closer together, and put her arm around her shoulders. Gabrielle reflexively wrapped an arm around Xena's waist to better feel her gait, and they walked in step for a minute. It was slower, but the warm weight of Xena's arm left Gabrielle feeling calm and safe.
"I want you to know I really respect you doing this."
"Really? I feel like I should have done this weeks ago."
"And yet there's nothing making you do it at all. You just know it's the right thing, and you're doing it. At your age, I was not so responsible with family obligations."
Gabrielle finally smiled. "Yeah, I guess you weren't. Thank you." She squeezed Xena's waist and got a squeeze in return, Xena's cheek briefly pressing into her head. They finally let go and finished walking to a wooded section of road outside of town.
"There's a shortcut to the house through here," Gabrielle said, pointing into the woods.
"But the town inn and stables are straight ahead, right? When would you like to meet?"
Gabrielle blinked, nonplussed. "Inn and stables? Xena, did you forget my family has a farm? We have plenty of space for you both."
Xena looked uncomfortable. "I didn't want to assume I should intrude on your reunion and your house."
"...There have been half a dozen times where you pointed me at a random family's hut and told me to stay with them while you went off and did something dangerous. Total strangers. And you're being weird about coming to my family's house?"
Xena smiled ruefully. "That's different. You're cute and persuasive. I know when you smile and offer to help with chores, the biggest danger from a village family is that they try to adopt you before I get back. Families are as likely to offer me a warlord's tribute as let me in the door - and that's when I haven't kidnapped one of their daughters first." Was she nervous? Xena? Nervous?
"They know you didn't kidnap me! Probably."
Xena stared at her.
Gabrielle smiled and held out a hand. "Come on, please. My parents may not know it yet, but you - and Argo - are family. You'll stay with us."
At those words, Xena's tension melted away, relaxing her shoulders and revealing a warm, rakish smile. "All right, fine. But I'll let you tell them that, if it's all the same." She walked forward and let Gabrielle pull her by the elbow toward the farmhouse.
Light and warmth emanated from it through the twilight, but as they reached the door, Gabrielle paused. It took a few deep breaths to get herself to actually open it.
The clatter of plates and chatter went still as Gabrielle's parents and sister looked up.
"...Hey. It's been a while!"