Disclaimer & Author's Note: I don't own XWP, and I'm not profiting from this story-you know the drill. This story is rated M for "suggestive adult themes," mostly in Part III but also a bit in Part I, where there is also some reported violence and "coarse language" of the sort you'd expect around the warlord Xena. Alas, Part III has been slightly edited to fit within that M rating and meet 's guidelines. However, if you are an X/G fan over the age of 18, you will find it easy to read between the lines-I know you're good at that-and fill in what's left unwritten.

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Summary: What happens to the soul-mates theme if we assume that a soul chooses to live a specific mortal life in order to gain a particular life experience? What if one soul mate does not choose a mortal life but the two will not be parted?

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. . . the day came when her reputation preceded her and the men she sensed lying in wait stayed where they lay as she passed. . . . Soon enough, others sought to join her, to ally themselves to the certain sword, the unbeaten warrior (and to her rapidly filling purse) . . .
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. . . and no matter how many bodies piled up around her or how much blood she waded through, she always left the field victorious at the end of the day. . . . She no longer cared whom she fought, as long as she could fight, and the growing numbers of men riding under her banner required coin for their upkeep after all . . .
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. . . and as the days passed, she begin to think she would feel better on the sea . . .

She thought she would be safer. And I—I thought so too.
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Part I answers those questions and also provides the untold story, as experienced by Gabrielle, of Xena's life between Cortese's attack on Amphipolis and her fateful meeting with Caesar in the "Destiny" flashback: it tells of what she did when she fled her mother's scorn, of how she became a warlord, of her relationship with (and parting from) her fiance Petracles, of her eventual taking to the seas, and of an experience you never knew she had during her first journey, wounded and anguished, to Mt. Nestos.

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"It is my choice, and I have chosen."

"Yes. You have chosen. It is your destiny," he snarls, making the words sound like a threat. "So let it be."

"So let it be."
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Part II is set in S3, providing a glimpse of Xena and Gabrielle's developing relationship as Xena recounts a strange experience she had before she met Gabrielle, only to find that Gabrielle remembers it as if she were there, subtly connecting the daimon storyline of Part I to familiar canon.

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"Was this worth it, Gabrielle? Was it worth giving up heaven to touch me like this?"

It wasn't heaven I gave up. It was much better than heaven. Complete union with her.

"Was it worth it, just for this?"

"Oh yeah, it was worth it. Just for this, it was worth giving up more than heaven."

"Gabri," she whispers as her hand clenches on my forearm . . .

"It was worth it just to hear you say my name like that."
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Part III picks up at the end of S6's "When Fates Collide" and depicts Xena and Gabrielle reacting to the events of WFC-and to a new knowledge of exactly what I'll love you forever truly means for the two of them-as they acknowledge the truths their recent (and past) actions have embodied.

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"I destroyed the world for you, remember? It doesn't shock me that you'd crush it under your heel for me."
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Enjoy and please leave feedback.

How Long Is Eternity?

Part I: Daimon

"The term 'daimon' means 'divine power,' 'fate' or 'god.'
[ . . . ]Good daimons were considered to be guardian spirits,
giving guidance and protection to the ones they watched over."
– Encyclopedia Mythica

"A special being watches over each individual,
a daimon who has obtained the person at his birth by lot . . ."
– Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, Harvard UP

Daimôn
2. the power controlling the destiny of individuals: hence, one's lot or for[t]une
- A Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford UP

Though I have been with her always, she has no name for me, for she does not know that I am here. Nor have I a name for myself. I have never needed one. I know her names for the people of her world, both the ones she uses to address them or to speak of them to others and the ones she uses to herself, in the privacy of her own mind, in that world which we share. I know her every thought; I understand her heart, better sometimes than she herself does. I am of her and yet distinct and have been since she drew her first breath. I know now that I did not begin then, that there was existence before that, but I have forgotten it. It does not trouble me that I cannot remember, for I know that I chose and forgetting was part of the choice.

The others in her world call her Xena, and that is how she thinks of herself. I think of myself, now that I have come to think of myself at all, as Xena's. I am Xena's. If I must have a name, let it be that. Xena's.

And she is mine, mine to watch over, guide, and protect. Mine to love. That too was part of the choice.

She is mine and always has been. I amused her when she was alone and fretful in her cradle, and her tiny hands reached up to grasp my trailing hair, closed on nothing. I stroked her flushed cheeks when she was ill and fevered, and she was soothed as if she felt my touch. She grew, and I held her, for a given value of "held," as she took her first steps, kept her from stumbling when I could, and when I could not, eased the sting of scraped knees and bruised hands with comforting words and funny faces, teasing blue eyes dry and a smile back onto tremulous lips. She grew bigger, and a time came when she could no longer see me. It was enough, then, that she could hear my voice. Then, she learned to talk and when I whispered to her, she no longer heard. But she was there and I was with her, of her, and that was still enough.

She grew into a girl who ran across fields, shouting with laughter, and I ran with her, my laughter just as joyous, the delight in her heart my own. When I whispered caution or advice, sometimes she still listened even though she could no longer hear. Sometimes she didn't, and I knew that was only the way of things, so I was never frustrated, only sad if she got hurt or into trouble. And when she cried silently in the night, heart wounded by her brothers or parents or friends, I curled around her and whispered comfort, and even if she could not hear me, always my presence could ease her pain, and peace came, and with it, sleep.

She grew older and she and her younger brother, Lyceus, taught themselves to wield swords and staged mock battles with their friends in the fields where once they had chased each other. Her older brother, Toris, laughed at them and told her little girls had no business playing soldier, and the first time, it made her cry on the spot—then later, only once we were alone and no one could see—but eventually she stopped crying, and after that, Toris' taunts only made her grim-faced and determined, only made her practice harder.

She grew into a warrior, delighting in the feats her body could perform at her command, and I delighted too, for her joy was my joy. The day came when she always won when she fought Lyceus and their friends, and soon, only Lyceus didn't care. Lyceus thought she was amazing and only admired her more each time she trounced him.

She brushed it off when the other boys would no longer play with her, but I felt what she felt. It hurt, but she had Lyceus, and I was there to soothe and comfort, even if she didn't know, and I had her, so all was well.

Then Cortese came. Lyceus died. Her mother broke her broken heart again. Her pain was my pain. Her pain was too much my pain; for the first time, when she needed my guidance, I had none to give. How could I urge her to stay when her mother's accusing eyes sliced her into shreds with every glance? How could I urge her to go when everything and everyone we'd ever known was here?

I was silent. We went.

Those first months, she lived—just barely—off the land and off the money she took off bandits who had attacked her on the roads. There was never enough food to fill her but she didn't care. She hunted sometimes and occasionally bought bread and cheese when she found herself in a village, if she remembered the dinars in her pouch, but there were days when she didn't bother to hunt, didn't bother even with bread or dried meat if she had it in her pack. She hardly noticed the gnawing in her belly, cared not when she did feel it; it was nothing to the agony in her heart. In those first days, wandering aimlessly, heading nowhere except always farther from Amphipolis, she lived only out of habit. It went on that way for weeks. Months. Then the day came when the pain and anger inside began to find a focus, when she begin to emerge from the madness of grief and return to something like rational thought. Then, she lived only for finding Cortese, finding him and making him pay.

She ventured back toward Amphipolis for the first time, but never too close, never within two days' travel, and she finally found a lead, then another and another. We tracked down each one. Eventually, she pursued even the vaguest possibility, no matter how far it took her, no matter how remote the chance it would lead to Cortese. But she never found him, never got close to where he'd been or learned where he had gone. It was as if the army of iron-masked soldiers had vanished from the face of the earth, and still she searched, farther and farther now from the valley she'd once called home, though now without any conviction her search would yield fruit.

She grew into a woman, with no one but me to see the last vestiges of childhood fade, as we roamed the countryside, ceaselessly tracking the man who had taken everything. She looked now like the warrior she was; with the return of rational thought and the advent of the quest to find and punish Cortese, she had equipped herself accordingly: armored and armed, she even owned a horse for the first time in her life. She looked like a warrior, but men, especially thugs, can be dense, and the ones who fed themselves by preying on travelers saw a woman and still saw easy prey. Some of the ones who lived must have forgotten the embarrassment of being trounced by a woman when in the depths of their cups, enough so to tell the tale, because the day came when her reputation preceded her and the men she sensed lying in wait stayed where they lay as she passed. Then, when she would venture into a tavern, desultorily seeking information she no longer expected to obtain, the familiar leers were accompanied by more and more looks of wary respect.

Soon enough, others sought to join her, to ally themselves to the certain sword, the unbeaten warrior (and to her rapidly filling purse), or to have a little of the glory that was accumulating around her reflect on them—and in most cases, as she knew, to get her under them in bed . . . or in a pile of leaves or against a tavern wall; they weren't picky. Most of them, to a greater or lesser extent, wanted that. Some of them, as much as they admired her prowess in battle—because they admired it, they wanted to dominate her in the simplest way a man knows of dominating a woman. To prove they were men with one sword, if not with the other. Some of them did want her simply because she was beautiful, and I felt more kindly toward these—and more so toward the ones who were drawn to her because she was unique or charismatic or daring or clever or exciting. She didn't care either way. What did their motivations matter to her?

She let some of those who approached her ride with her, if they showed some bit of cleverness or amused or flattered her in a way that soothed her broken heart for a moment or were simply pleasing to look upon and not too annoying to travel with, and a smaller number, she rode in passion, sometimes for a night before she rode away, sometimes for a season, until inevitably she lost interest—or got what she'd wanted from them. She took even some of the ones who wanted her only because it was the one way they thought they could best her; their motivations didn't matter to her, after all—but she still made damn sure none of her partners ever walked away from her bed feeling smug about having their way with her, even the ones who had less ignoble intentions and wouldn't have been smug at all. She couldn't afford any weakness and allowing that would have been one.

Those who rode with her then were not good men, for the most part, but they were a distraction from the pain clawing at her heart, and for that, I appreciated them. And a few—well, I think a few of them actually loved her. Loved her because she was fierce and beautiful and proud and cocky and unwaveringly loyal to those who rode and fought beside her. For those, I felt something more than mere appreciation. Though she never let anyone close and so none of them ever had the chance to know her in any of the ways I did, they could still see enough of her to love her, and that made them, no matter how distasteful their influence on Xena, lovable to me.

While it was still desire for revenge that kept her going, as time passed, her search for Cortese faded into the background. The men around her gave her the more immediate purpose of filling their bellies and filling their purses with the coin that would let them satisfy less basic needs, and instead of merely fighting off those who attacked her, she and her companions now started the fights. At first, she targeted only ruffians and that ilk—small groups, too—but battle was anesthetizing. She could lose herself in it and cease to feel anything for those glorious moments when the only things that existed were her body and her opponents' and their blades, when her blood sang in her veins, and her heart thrilled at her own strength and skill.

Out of her grief, a deeply simmering rage had emerged, and battle slaked that rage even as it fed it. Because it did, she sought out stronger opponents in greater numbers, and no matter how many bodies piled up around her or how much blood she waded through, she always left the field victorious at the end of the day.

As her reputation grew, more and more men petitioned to ride with her until soon she had a small army around her. She no longer cared whom she fought, as long as she could fight, and the growing numbers of men riding under her banner required coin for their upkeep after all, so now her targets included traveling merchants and the occasional wealthy village.

In those days, I found my voice again, resumed the duty in which I had failed, but now she no longer heeded my guidance, so I contented myself with comforting her when I could, which was not often. Nothing could soothe her heart for long.

No matter how many coins she had in her purse—or in the great chests that trundled along on carts in the rear—or how many men swore their swords to her or fell to her sword, it was never enough. She still felt that the world had spiraled out of control and she couldn't regain her grip. She never felt safe. She feared no man or god because she wouldn't really mind dying, but there were things worse than dying, as she had learned in her last days in Amphipolis, and the only hope of safety from such wounds was to live life like the battle it was, to fight off everyone and everything, until you were the victor simply because you were the last one standing.

Then one of the men she amused herself with became more than a distraction. Sex became more than a way of losing herself, more than a physical outlet. She stopped being so careful to stay in control. Petracles had become her lover.

He said he loved her, and eventually she even began to believe it. For the first time in over a year, her heart hurt a little less. She smiled more often. Sometimes, for a moment, when he rode up beside her bearing freshly picked flowers or held out both hands closed in fists for her to pick, playing a game she had once played with Lyceus, to surprise her with a sweet or a bauble the color of her eyes, she even felt lighthearted. Oh, how I loved Petracles for giving that back to her, even for a moment. She, on the other hand, tried to resist loving him, but in the end, she couldn't help herself, and when he asked her to marry him, she agreed. I begin to imagine a day when she might leave this pointless life, when she could have a home again, have a family again.

For a couple of weeks, she was happier than I had believed she could ever be again. And then Petracles stopped coming to her tent at night, stopped surprising her during the day with little gifts. When she went to him, he was cold, aloof, and finally cruel. He'd changed his mind about marrying her, he said. He didn't love her, and he didn't want to be tied to any one piece of ass for the rest of his life, no matter how good a lay she was. Already, he said, he was getting bored with even her best tricks.

For a moment, I thought Xena was going to kill him. Not since she first saw Lyceus' body had I felt such rage in her heart as rose in her then. Instead, she strode out of his tent, tearing from her arm the bracelet he'd given her to seal their betrothal, and threw the bracelet into the bonfire that most of the men were sitting around.

They were an army now, and by this time, Petracles had been pretty much leading at her side, in her name, but she knew not one man would hesitate if she called for the gauntlet. I agreed; not one of them would dare defy her. My rage was as great as hers—greater in a way—and for a moment, I was disappointed when she reigned hers in. In that moment, as she found composure, she had realized that Petracles had only ever been out to take the army for his own, that all his pretty words and soft touches had been deliberate, that she had let herself be manipulated. Later, I would come to think that it wasn't that simple, that it was not a matter of deliberate manipulation from the start, that Petracles was just himself too battered by the world to be capable of loving her as she deserved, but at the time, I was too awash in her feelings to think my own thoughts. And neither of us was ever sure why she didn't demand the gauntlet.

Even without her order, having seen her cast the bracelet into the fire, knowing Petracles was out of favor and eager as always to please her, some of those most fiercely loyal to her had risen, drawing their swords, and were taking the first step toward Petracles' tent. She stopped them with a raised palm and I saw one shiver as he met her eyes. I knew they must be ice.

"Petracles is leaving us tonight," she said, her voice easily carrying around the camp. "We've both recovered our senses and remembered that even the best fuck is no cause for a life of bondage." She rubbed her now bare wrist with the fingers of the other hand and the men laughed heartily, some of them calling out remarks along the lines that it was good she'd come to her senses in time, all of them thinking she meant herself when she said we and was allowing Petracles to save face, though of course, she was saving her own.

"Especially—" she added, teasingly, her eyes lighting for a moment on a handsome young one she'd been thinking of bedding before Petracles had become the only guest in her bed, "when there are so many pretty stallions to ride." More guffaws. I knew that even her eyes told her lie now. They would be warm and merry and twinkling with bawdy good humor.

She began to thread her way among them, toward the one who'd caught her eye, as she continued. "But while I may be in need of a new mount—" She paused to let the laughter and whoops die down. "Petracles is still our friend, so he will go in peace, and if any of you are so inclined, you may go with him with my blessing." She reached her target and circled him, purring, flattering them all, "After all, there are now too many stallions in this stable for even me to ride." Over catcalls and lewd denials, she called out, "And Greece is big enough for our force to become two forces and still live richly, so I release from his oath any man who would seek his fortune with our friend Petracles, and I give you my vow that those I ride—" More whoops. She smiled, leered really, as she waited for the noise to subside. "—and those who ride with me—will only ever greet those who ride with Petracles as friends."

The men cheered, gathering around her, drawn to her as always, and Xena turned her smile on all of them before shouting them down. "Enough! You'll have to go back to entertaining yourselves now because I've a very full stable to break, don't I, and dawn is mere hours away!" She hooked her fingers in the belt of the goofily grinning young man at her side and started for her tent. Halfway through the mass of her men, she paused and turned back.

"I think I can get through more than one before sunup." The men roared their approval and her eyes settled on another comely face. "You come too." She began to turn and then turned back and pointed to another of them. "You too." With the roar of her troops ringing in her ears, she led her new toys back to her tent and lost herself for the rest of the night in her second favorite kind of conquest. And if her heart was newly bloodied and raw and being walled off as quickly as she could manage it, her body, as always, did not fail her.

In the morning, Petracles was gone—glad to have escaped with his life, she thought, and if he'd seen in her eyes the rage I felt in her, he was indeed glad of that—and a dozen or so of the men with him. Xena went back to warring and raiding and tried not to feel anything at all, except the thrill of the fight and whatever fleeting pleasure the parade of men she took to her bed could give her.

In those days, they had come near to the shore, and as the days passed, she begin to think she would feel better on the sea, with only a few companions around her, a crew who could be trusted, at least so far as to take orders, none of whom she was in danger of loving.

She thought she would be safer. And I—I thought so too.

By then, she had made it so that no one in the region would dare to attack Amphipolis because everyone knew it had been an attack on the village of Amphipolis that had unleashed the infamous Xena on the land. She knew she would be just as much a deterrent on the sea because no warlord or greedy city leader who might consider targeting Amphipolis would doubt that she'd be on land with an entire army at her back ready to meet him in battle before he could get his army within a day's ride of the village, and she would be careful to make sure no one forgot it by occasionally sending small raiding parties to loot those who had once been—or who had the potential to become—enemies of Amphipolis.

Eventually, there was enough money to provide a sizable final pay-out to every man in her army and still have enough left over for such a change. She bought a ship. She raised a crew. She became a pirate. A few of those who'd ridden with her for the past year and had a taste for something new—or as I suspected was the case with some of them, who weren't willing to see the most wondrous thing they've ever known stride out of their lives—came with her.

She liked the sea. The ship was her world, and she could control the ship. We thought it safer. And then there was M'Lila and Caesar, and she loved them both. Again, there was blood and betrayal. There was the cross.

Now there is agony.

M'Lila drags her, has been dragging her for hours—days—away from that beach where Caesar left her to die. Her heart is broken. Her legs are broken. When she is awake, every fiber of her being, physical and spiritual, is one unending scream of anguish, even when she is silent. I can barely separate myself from that anguish enough to wish she would find some escape in unconsciousness again. When she does, my whole being is one unending plea to comfort her, soothe her, ease her pain. I will it as I have never willed anything before, not even when I willed her to follow my advice when I was most worried for her, most weary of the killing of the battlefield.

Agony lances through me—through her—again and her eyes fly open. But this is different. Her eyes are still glazed with pain but they are focused. They are focused on me. I feel a flutter in my chest as my heart races. Surprise. Shock. Elation. She sees me. I have a chest! I have a heart! I am corporeal! She sees me! She sees me as she has not since she was an infant . . . and more, because then I may have had a form to her eyes but I had no substance, yet now I can feel my own body.

Lips parting in—what? Is it awe? I should know but I don't because I am separate—she lifts a trembling hand, weakly; after only seconds, it drops back to her belly.

I grab it. I close fingers around her palm. I stare at her hand in mine. I can feel her. I can see a smaller hand that belongs to me wrapped around her larger one. Mine is the color of cream and is perfect, without blemish. Hers is tanned under the dirt and bruises, the skin chapped from the cold, the nails broken, imbedded with dirt and blood, and tinged blue along the ragged skin at the bases. She makes a sound and I tear my eyes (actual eyes, watering in the cold wind) from our hands to look back to her face. She is trying to speak. I lean closer, and my hair tumbles over my shoulders and around my face. It looks like the same hair she used to reach for from her cradle, but when it falls on her cheek, she feels it; she tries to blink her eyes clear of it. I hurriedly brush it away and then I just keep stroking her face.

"I know you," she mumbles, her voice hardly more than the breath I feel on my cheek. "Who are you?"

I have no name for myself. I have never needed one. I'm Xena's. "I'm yours," I finally reply and my voice is as real as hers.

"What's that mean?" she demands. Her voice is stronger, now, and I realize that she is mastering the pain of her broken legs, and that makes me realize that I no longer feel her pain as I did before. Now that I have a body, I am too separate from her to share in her physical experience.

"I mean I—I'm with you. I watch over you. Guide and protect you."

I am surprised to see humor spark in her eyes, curl her lips just the slightest bit. "You're doing a great job."

The skin of my face goes hot; I'm blushing I realize. "I—I—" I'm trying to say I'm sorry but I'm too mortified to get the words out.

She doesn't notice, has barely paused. "Why?"

"Why?" I repeat, not understanding. Always before I have understood her perfectly.

"Why are you here? Why do you watch over me? Why you? Why me?" she reels off the questions impatiently.

"I chose you," I answer, realizing it as I say it. I didn't just choose, I now know; I chose her. And long before I chose this existence, too. We have always been one, she and I.

"Why?" she says again.

The question hardly makes sense to me. It simply could not have been otherwise. "I'm yours," I can only say again, feeling inadequate.

Those piercing eyes that have never left mine since they opened sink shut. It doesn't matter. I am still fascinated by them, by the cool skin of her face under my fingers, the hand that twitches slightly in mine.

She opens her eyes. "I know you," she says as she did when she first opened them, first saw me. "I love you," she adds matter-of-factly, this woman who no longer says those words, who has seen love cause only pain, who will, when she is rational again, vow to forsake it forever. Her eyes close again. "Don't leave me," she mumbles, almost inarticulately, but I understand her.

"I won't," I promise urgently. "I've always been with you. I'll always be with you, even when you can't see me."

"No," she mutters, shifting uncomfortably on the travois M'Lila made. "'s not enough. Have to see you. Feel you." Her head tosses from side to side as she moans, the pain overcoming even her great will.

I squeeze her hand, stroke her hair. "There," I say, desperate that she should feel me as she wants. "There."

But she doesn't. The hand that I held in mine reaches weakly for what is no longer there. She thrashes now, muttering, "No, no. Don't go," and I wrap myself around her as I have always done, a presence, nothing more. She cries, for the first time since she brought Lyceus home to their mother.

And I know what to do, what I can do, what I must do. I have lived in time with her since I became hers, since she drew breath into her mortal body and became mine to guide, since I chose, but I am not bound by time as her mortal body binds her. I can go back. I can choose as she once chose. I will be born. I will grow. I will feel hunger and cry, learn to walk and fall down, grow up, grow old, die. Suffer all the love and desire and anguish of mortal existence. For her. To feel her, to be felt. To live with her and die with her.

If I still had a body, I would put my mouth close to her ear and whisper to her, but I don't. There is nothing to hear when I tell her, "You will see me again. You may have to wait a while, and I know I will have to wait for you, but we will be together. You will feel me. I will be like you."

I choose again.