Title:Subconscious and subtext
Summary: Any skilled bard listening to her could at the least find the source of her storytelling greatness was passion. So then why did she always choose to tell stories about Xena? X/G, mainly fluff.
A/N: I own none of these characters, and most of the lines they actually say aren't mine either. I mean, if I did own any of it, Xena would have lasted longer and X/G would have been even more explicit. Like in the obvious way, not the sexitimes way. ANYWAY
"Gustaceous said he'd like to see the girl perform. When you're ready"
Gabrielle slowly made her way to the front of the room, unsure how to perform in such a formal atmosphere for the first time. "I'm kind of on the spot here. I wasn't expecting to do this. Then again, I wasn't expecting to find a baby in a stream. But there it was. We knew we had to find a home for this innocent child…But returning the baby to its home wasn't going to be that easy. The child was quite courageous in the face of danger…" She continued her tale of Pandora, and how in reality each person shouldered the burden she had tried to take for herself—some more than others: keeping hope alive in a land in turmoil. "In the end, goodness won out, and the child landed in safe hands. And as her only request, Xena had the child named Gabrielle."
"What you have done here is madness!" To her relief, Gustaceous was addressing the people who banned her from competing, and not Gabrielle herself. "It's madness that this young woman was left out of this competition. She must be allowed in. Art will never take second place to rules and regulations."
Gabrielle had been so excited to move on that she congratulated everyone in their storytelling, not really paying attention to them. Imagine if Xena could see her now! Making her way into a competition on skill and subterfuge alone! She would, of course, warn her to be careful (even though there was no danger to be had!) But that was her way of showing she cared, trying to keep Gabrielle from having a life outside walking alongside her horse, completely protected.
She vaguely remembered telling that Orion fellow to stand up to his father. What she did remember was his father judging him unfairly behind the stage, completely focused on the details of his performance rather than the emotions it conveyed.
Shortly after, she was in the servants quarters again, still giving her fellow competitors advice on their storytelling. This time, it was about a boy falling off a bed. He would do well to have the balance of the heroes in his stories, or maybe tell them with less zeal. Then Orion's father came in, completely blindsided by the possibility of his son's success, and scorned Gabrielle for the ideas she had put in Orion's head. Again, she took to imagining the presence of her favorite female warrior. She would have this man hanging by the ties on his orange shirt by now. But fantasizing would be no help to her now.
So, of course, she set off to do the other thing Xena might do in this situation. One that she was physically capable of. She ran after the bard making his way home.
"Orion!"
"Leave me alone"
"Orion! You can't give up." And with that, the blonde launched into a schpeel: one that Xena might have been capable of, but certainly wouldn't like to admit she was, seeing how sensitive a person it takes, in order to get Orion back in the competition. And, of course, she had to bring up some of her travels with Xena to make a point. In her mind, they were the only pieces of evidence worth citing in an argument.
And, for the finals, she told a story of their meeting. A story a bit less impressive than fighting off thousands of enemies, but what it lacked in heroism, she easily made up for in passion. "This is the story of two friends." Each summary of a sentence was followed by the most poignant example from their travels. "They met each other in the hardest of times." Their eyes meeting across a small battleground, both distracted by the bravery of the other. "They learned to care for eachother." Gabrielle promising Xena that she was not alone. "They became a great team." The love in her voice alone. "They had adventures." Gabrielle jumping into a speeding chariot, outrunning people after their lives, and Xena defending her… "Some adventures ended better than others" … till they were thrown from the chariot (themselves and their victims). "And together, they learned life's mysteries." Ponds and stones as a metaphor for the profound effect any one person has on another by being, and doing so near one another.
And as she finished her story, a look of realization covered her face. She would be missing a world of stories by straying from the warrior's side, and a world of the friendship she just described.
Everyone in the room clapped wildly, and she retreated behind the curtains. Her fellow bards congratulated her.
"G-good job."
"That was fantastic!"
"The cadence of your words played havoc with the fallen visage of my yearning spirit." Trust Euripedes to confuse a girl. It must have shown, as he explained. "I liked it a lot."
"Thanks." Gabrielle was still glowing from all the attention, but she still managed a less than sincere thanks.
Orion was up next, so he hurried his compliments as much as he could. "You did great. I, uh-Xena's a lucky warrior, to have a bard who cares so much for her at her side."
"Huh?"
"I mean the crowd loves the subtext between you two. When your eyes glaze over with love of the time you spend together, it just brings passion into the story. I think that's what my father had missing from his idea of storytelling."
"Oh.. uhm. Hey, you'll do great too. Remember what you told me? How you used to close your eyes and see the story come to life. See it again Orion."
"I intend to."
Gabrielle tried to pay attention to Orion's story, but she just couldn't stop thinking about what she would do next. Subtext? How can there be any subtext? It's a factual representation of the amazing things that happen when I'm around Xena. This is ridiculous. But I do need to be at her side. Crap. They can't be right. Still, if they were, it would make a better excuse for why NONE of my relationships every work out…
-
After the competition, Gabrielle came running up to Xena and Argo from a deer path on the side.
"Hi." Xena had noticed her before this, but she still felt a 'hello' was nessicary.
"So who won?"
"I did."
"Then what are you doing here?"
"I know this is going to sound stupid, but I realized that while they're telling adventures, you and I can be living them!"
"Well it's good to have you back." Of course, Xena would never admit that the reason she was so close when Gabrielle found her was that she was watching the competitions from just outside the room, and she knew who won already.
Just after Xena didn't admit this, they ran into a band of what appeared to be bloodthirsty bandits.
"This is gonna make a great story. By the way, do you think subtext can be fit into purely violent tales of saving innocents?"
"Sure, there's always a little going on between the hero and the damsel in distress…at least in the stories I've heard."
Of course, most of the time Gabrielle got into things that only polite folk would call 'distress,' and ever since they met, Xena had more than a healthy inclination to be heroic.
And Gabrielle decided that Xena had a lot of romantic entanglements in her tales if being in distress was really what caused subtext…and that battles could be very suggestive, especially when the fighters did too much running and dodging for armor (which would block them from cooling off or twisting) to actually be efficient.
As they set up camp that night, Xena struck up a conversation about the bards school in Athens again. "So you're really that adventurous, huh?"
"What are you saying? You know I make a mean concussion with my staff!"
"First, just because you're cooking doesn't mean you have to use cooking phrases. Second, I meant do you really want to travel the world without setting up any meaningful relationships because you can't stay in one place for long enough?"
"That seems to be a very loaded question, especially coming from you. But I find it my duty to remind you I became princess and got an adoptive sister in one adventure, you reunited with people you thought you'd never see again in another—but hey, maybe you didn't want to—and I guess we didn't know any of them long enough for it to become really meaningful… "
"That's true. I hadn't been thinking about the Amazons. More of everyone dying around us. I'm sorry Gabrielle. For the doubting relationships and the dying."
"Hold on warrior princess, I'm not done yet. I do have a meaningful relationship with you."
"Yes, but your suitors keep dying or leaving or we leave them. That's more what I meant by relationship."
Gabrielle walked over to Xena, who was rolling out their bedrolls. She got to the same face level as Xena, which required kneeling but quite a bit of back straightening, and tilted Xena's eyes up at hers. "They don't change that I have a meaningful relationship with you." Gabrielle wasn't sure whether this was more or less suggestive than she intended. The moment Xena's eyes actually met hers, it felt more suggestive, but until then, it had seemed completely mundane.
"We should really eat and get to bed." Xena stood up at this.
"Hold on. So you get to ask these questions then just end the conversation. That's hardly fair, especially when you have more to say in a conversation." Gabrielle followed.
"What, I thought that conversation ended on an excellent note. Knowing that I'm important in your life is important to me, so when a conversation turns out that way I hardly see a reason to press further."
"What do you mean press further? You're not the only one who can ask questions you know."
"I'm sorry. Was there something you wanted to ask me Gabrielle?"
"Why?"
"Excuse me?"
"Why are you so afraid I'm going to stop wanting to go on adventures with you? I mean you try to keep me out of them as much as possible, but you're really scared I won't want to walk the next 20 miles next to you and Argo."
"Because you're pure and young, and you have a lot of changing to do. I'm not always sure I'm the best thing for you to grow up with, and the rest of the time I think you'll do too much growing up to want the same things."
"Okay… Okay. So you're saying I'm going to change and stop liking you because I'm a child. Well, if you didn't notice the last 15 times I told you, I'm an adult." Her age was always a touchy subject, even with people other than Xena. She had a young face, and was emotionally mature, so she got treated about 4 years younger than she felt constantly.
"I don't want to start an argument," Xena said quietly and somewhat resigned to the younger girl's will.
"This whole thing was kind of an argument. I mean what else are you going to call a battle of logic?"
"Why do you want me to see you so much as an adult? It's not like you enjoy fighting that much, and I know children and teens are very capable. There's not really much of a difference for me between the two. You know I try to keep everyone away from violence, not just babies. That may be how it started, but this is now."
"Yes, but…" Gabrielle failed to interject and Xena continued on her rant about equal treatment.
"In fact I think I can safely say the only things I do differently for adults are buying larger clothes and having romantic relationships with them."
"Fair enough. But I would still appreciate being treated like an adult."
Xena's heart was pounding. Gabrielle had probably made a mistake, but it sounded like she just said she wanted a relationship. Beyond what they had. But Gabrielle was great at talking, she didn't really make mistakes, right? "You want me to buy you bigger clothes?"
"No! I mean yes, if it would make you treat me older. But I meant treat like an adult by other standards. Let me fight my own battles." With that slip Gabrielle was getting more sure that Orion was right, at least as far as her subconscious went.
"Your own battles? All the battles we enter are mine!"
"That's not true, at least half of them are ours! And what kind of person would I be if I didn't try to keep people out of danger too?"
"Fair point. But it's not just keeping people out of danger. It's keeping you out of danger. I care about you, so you not fighting is on a much higher level of priority than a stranger not fighting."
"Still not fair, I care about you too. And besides, with your argument, if I can prove I care about you more than you care about me, in order to promote overall happiness, I should be able to fight, and not get left behind every time you enter an evil lair."
"Fine. I care more, case closed."
"This still isn't fair Xena. You can't help but accept my logic. Besides, how do you know how much I care about you?"
Xena paused for a moment, dropped down her volume and insisted, "I care more."
"Well there's no way to prove it, so logically you'll have to let me fight at least half the time, as a compromise." Gabrielle was just about as satisfied with this line of logic as she was when she tricked the Cyclops into releasing her.
"I think you forget that powerful warriors aren't generally slaves to logic. And besides that, from my point of view, I undeniably care more for you than you do for me. And since you can't prove it—"
"You're wrong Xena. You can prove love." She meant to say she could prove that she cared. Maybe by listing characteristics of Xena that made her an admirable person and a good friend. She was just hoping Xena had a more platonic notion of what she just said.
"Love?"
Two options ran through Gabrielle's mind. Call it romantic, or lie. Wait, lie? Her subconscious must have merged more with her conscious than she thought. Well, it would be better for this to come out as soon as possible to ruin less years of their friendship, considering it would probably come out eventually.
"Yeah. You can prove it…like announcing it, for one—kissing, sonnets, setting up dates, and the one that actually incorporates the proof of love into the name, making love."
Xena was positively shocked. Very positively. When she actually started thinking about it, most of the reasons she tried to think of Gabrielle as a child were to prevent certain thoughts and feelings from complicating things. "So prove it."
"You know Xena, a sonnet might take a while, especially with the rigid struc—"
She was cut off by Xena's lips on hers, proving they would have to rework their whole adventuring system.