TLFENH
By Lori Bush
Disclaimer: Xena, Eve, Joxer and Gabrielle do not belong to me – they are the property of Renaissance Pictures and Universal/USA Studios. Profit neither intended nor expected from this. Please – don't get the lawyers involved.
Rating: PG – just on the cautious side. I really think it might be G.
Violence: None
Sex: None
Notes: In another series I've written, I have been discussing with various people the "pairing" they feel Xena should have. I feel, more and more, as does my dear friend and beta-reader, Rebecca, that Xena and Joxer and Gabrielle are just fine together, without needing neatly matched sets made of them. Joxer will always love Gabby, and Gabby and Xena will always want to be together, but there is a three-way dynamic going on, even if Gabby never gives in to pairing off with either one. So I got thinking about it, what would take place if…
Oh, if you're a subtext fan and have never read any of my stuff, I warn you - I just don't subscribe to that magazine.
~**~
TLFENH
(The Last Four Episodes Never Happened)
Thanks to Rebecca Littlehales for the title and the beta reading!
Eight years after "Kindred Spirits" – the last episode of Season Five, trust me.
~**~
"It's not fair, Mom. All the other girls have their ears pierced, and you won't let me."
"Honey, I've told you – with the life we live, pierced ears would be too hard to take care of. When you get a little older and I can trust you to do what's needed, I'll consider it. But right now, we can't take the time out for an infection, and the life we have, you'd be likely to get one."
"But Rhea told me the last time we were at the Amazon village that she'd do it for me …"
"Eve, what part of 'no' don't you understand?"
The girl burst into tears, jumping up to run into the woods, almost knocking over a lanky man who was carrying an armload of wood as she went. "She's so mean," the man heard the child sob.
Dropping the kindling at the edge of the camp, he approached the warrior woman and plopped down to sit beside her. "The earring thing again?" he asked. She nodded, rolling her eyes. "Want me to talk to her?"
Ignoring his question, she stood up. "I don't know why I even try, sometimes. I should just send her away with you and Gabrielle to the Amazon Village or someplace, and let you two raise her while I wander around."
He stood too, taking her hand. "Don't be stupid Xena. We do raise her – with you. The three of us together can do a better job than any one, or even two, of us could do alone. Besides," he snickered, "I don't think Gabrielle would like the idea of people thinking she and I had produced a child together."
Xena turned to Joxer and took his other hand too, facing him. "You're too hard on yourself. She loves you, just like I do. She's told you that enough. And even though you've said you're content with things the way they are, I still think one day she's going to wake up and decide she loves you more than she thinks she does. And I bet you wouldn't turn down an offer like that."
"An offer like what?" The bard's voice caused them both to jump back, dropping each other's hands and blushing slightly.
"Nothing." Joxer waved it off. "I'm gonna go talk to her, Xena."
Gabrielle watched him stride into the woods, and setting down the filled water skins, looked at her other best friend. "Is there something going on between the two of you? I mean, you've always been closer to him in some ways than I am, but that looked pretty intimate when I came back." Her tone was unconcerned, but her arms were tightly crossed and her posture rigid, giving lie to her diffidence.
Xena smiled at her sadly. "No, not that I haven't considered it. But it's more curiosity than real interest, and besides, you know it's not me he wants."
Gabrielle snorted. "He's been over that for a long time, now. Besides," Xena mouthed the words silently right along with her, "what we have works too well for us to screw it up like that."
Xena sighed. You'd think after all these years the two of them would have learned to talk to each other about it. They could talk about almost anything else. They were raising a child together, for crying out loud. Her child, of course. Eve.
Joxer found the girl perched on a low-hanging tree branch, still sniffling. He held out his arms, and she crawled down and flung herself into his embrace. "Awww, Dad, they never let me have *anything* the other girls have. I hate this. I wanna go someplace and live like *normal* people, with you and Mom and Mom Gabby."
He snickered. "First off, most normal people don't have a dad and two moms." They had always intended for Eve to call him Uncle Joxer, but she had started calling him Daddy as soon as she could talk, and they never could break her of it. Long ago they had all finally accepted it. "Second of all, you have an extraordinary mom – both of them, actually. I can't believe the Eve I know would be that selfish, to ask the world to do without them so she could get her ears pierced." He sat down on a log, pulling her down with him.
"It's not just that," she sighed, settling her head on his shoulder. "I just get so tired of always moving around, of depending on other people to feed and house us half the time. Of not having a home."
He stroked her hair. "You have a home, baby – a home is more than stone walls and a roof. Your home is wherever the three of us are, 'cos no one could ever love you more, and that's what makes a home." His face grew serious. "I know Mom Gabby has told you lots of stories about how she grew up, and your Grandma has told you about your mom as a little girl, but I haven't talked much about my childhood. Can I tell you a story?"
She pulled back and studied his face. Dad was usually the most upbeat of her family – he would make them laugh as much as he could, and he was the one she went to when life was getting her down. But she had seen this look on his face before, when things were grim. He looked like that the time Mom Gabby got so sick they were afraid she'd die. He looked like that when Eve broke her leg. She knew that whatever he had to tell her, it had to be important. She nodded, and he pulled her back to him.
"You know that I grew up in Athens, and that I have two brothers – your Uncle Jace and Uncle Jett. You might not know too much more about my childhood, though. I try not to talk about it much." He sighed. "I had a house – a big, fancy house with servants and everything. I even had my own horse, but I really never liked horses much - till I met Argo, anyway. That made my dad mad, though, so I pretended it didn't scare me. I still didn't ride it often. We had our own tutor, and he taught us to read, but I had some trouble with that, too, although I never told anyone. Jace and Jett would help me out as much as they could. When we were born, my mother decided that Jett would be dad's heir, Jace would be the scholar, and I would be the artist. The only problem was, she never told dad about her plans for us – she just started making us into what she wanted."
"Is that why you're always telling me not to worry yet about what I want to be when I grow up? 'Cos you were pushed into being something you didn't want to be?"
"Sort of. Actually, I wanted to be an artist – a musician. I had some talent, and I like to sing."
"You're good at it, too," Eve interrupted, smiling. "I love it when you sing for me."
He hugged her and smiled back. "I love singing for you. Anyway, Jace was the only one who really rebelled against Mom's choices. As you might have noticed, your Uncle Jace was never cut out for the life of a scholar." They both chuckled at the idea. The smile slid away from Joxer's face rather quickly, though. "Dad, however, thought that artists were sissies, and his boys should be tough." He turned his face so Eve couldn't see the tears brimming his eyes, and he was silent for a while. "When I was younger, he took it out on Mom, but she was as stubborn as he was. They'd scream back and forth, and I was nearly always the bone of contention." He swiped a hand across his face. "It wasn't till I was a little older he got mad enough to try hitting her. I guess it had been building up to it for a long time. I got between them, and he beat me up instead. From then on in, he would take it all out on me regularly." Joxer couldn't go on for a while, trying to figure out how to edit his family life for a young girl's ears. "Anyway, I'm not sure how it happened, but eventually my mom stopped yelling back at him, and joined him in yelling at me. And you know how mean other kids can be – soon it got around that I was the family disappointment, and most of the city took up the theme. Even Jett, being Jett and all, got a lot of distance out of it. Only Jace never gave me a hard time. It wasn't till years later that I found out he was struggling with his own issues."
They sat in silence for a while again. "So, what'd you do?" Eve finally asked.
"Huh?"
"What'd you do? You didn't end up here with Mom and Mom Gabby by magic, did'ja?"
"It was sort of a miracle, I guess. You've read Mom Gabby's scroll about it – how I ended up with them."
"Yeah, but how'd you end up there?"
"Well, as I grew older, I decided that the only way to stop Dad from killing me was to be just what he wanted. The only problem was that I had absolutely no talent as a warrior. So things weren't much better. But the artist in me tried to make up for it by embellishing everything I did, and before long, I'd started to believe my own stories. I was a legend in my own mind." She giggled a little at that. "Pretty soon, I was so convinced of my own strength and bravery that I set off to join Xena's army – but she had become good. You know the rest of the story."
Silently she climbed into his lap the way she used to when she was much smaller. He wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin lightly on the top of her head. "Everything in our lives really changed a few years later, though, thanks to one little girl."
"Daddy!" she protested, "I'm not a little girl anymore."
He smiled at the juxtaposition of the childish title for him with her statement of maturity. "You'll always be my little girl." He sighed sadly. "I wish I was your real father, Eve. You mean so much to me."
She turned and punched him lightly in the chest. "You ARE my real father. As real as it gets. Realer than yours was, I bet."
He rubbed the spot on his breastbone to ease the slight ache. "Well, there's no question who your real *mother* is, anyway. Both of them." She snuggled up against his chest as the memories flowed over him – the months of fighting with the gods, the uneasy but unbreakable truce they finally reached, the day he pitched his armor in the river after Eve cut her lip trying to use it for teething. The first time she called him Daddy, and how he snuck out into the woods and cried, and swore to every deity he could think of that he would be the best Daddy that ever lived, if she'd just call him that again. All the years he struggled for significance, and he found it in the trust of one little girl. He ruffled her hair. "C'mon, babe. Home is waiting. Besides, I bet dinner is ready, and if we don't get back soon, Mom Gabby will eat it all."
Eve laughed and jumped from his lap, pulling him up after her. He held onto her hand as they walked back to the camp. When they were almost there, he reminded her mildly, "I think you might owe your Mom an apology."
She rolled her eyes, but agreed. When they strode into camp, Xena just looked at them, eyebrow raised, until Joxer grinned and nodded. Eve stood still, looking at her feet, until he shoved her lightly. She glared at him for a moment, her heritage showing clearly on her face, but then she broke and shuffled over to where the Warrior Princess stood, waiting. "I'm sorry, Mom. Daddy helped me see how much more I already have than other kids. I'm really thankful for it." She finally raised her head and looked her mother in the eye. "Really."
Xena tried to stay stern, but she melted when Eve threw her arms around her waist, and hugged the little girl back. "It's okay, honey. I realize we hardly have the ideal family life, and some things are hard for you because of it."
The girl pulled away and frowned. "No, I have better than most. Daddy?" she motioned him over. Gabrielle was standing close enough for the girl to grab a bit of her skirt and pull her closer too.
With laughter in their voices, all three adults announced, "Group hug!"
After dinner, Xena and Eve went to the river together to do the dishes. Gabrielle found Joxer seated on the ground, tuning his lute and humming. "New song?" she asked, as she sat beside him.
"Hmmm? Oh, yeah. I was telling Eve a little about when I wanted to be a musician, and it made me think about getting this out and playing some more."
"You're a good dad, you know? I don't know what she'd do without you." The bard thought for a few minutes. "I don't know what any of us would do without you."
He grinned his lopsided grin at her. "I don't plan on ever letting you find out."
She snickered. "I know. You proved that back when we really *did* want to get rid of you." They were quiet and he strummed a few chords. "Joxer," Gabrielle said softly, "I love you."
He stopped playing and smiled with understanding. It didn't matter that the words were the same; he knew they meant something different than they did when he said it. He'd grown used to it over the years. "I know, Gabby. I love you too."
~**~