Disclaimer: I own...nothing, sadly.
The Day You Were Born
"Mommy, tell me again about the day I was born."
The tired young woman smiled halfheartedly as she tucked the toddler into bed. If you could call it one. The deerskin pelt, carefully laid over a pebble-less region of the cave floor, hardly constituted an acceptable resting place.
"You've heard that story a thousand times-"
"Please Mommy? I'll be extra good tomorrow! I'll be quiet, and quick, and…" The child paused, at a loss for what other favors she might do in return for her bedtime tale.
The older of the two, barely more than a child herself, gazed at her daughter's cherubic face, brows knotted in thought, her light eyes searching, and brushed a strand of wheaten hair from off her cheek.
"I...won't cry when you make me wash!" She stared hopefully up at her caregiver, convinced her final promise would sway the older woman to her side, "Please?"
"Alright," She relented, not wanting to endure the wailing that would have surely followed any other response, "You're comfortable? Not too cold?"
"Yes Mommy." The babe grinned, snuggling a little closer to the one beside her.
Sighing, she began.
"It was a beautiful, sunny day; you could tell the gods were smiling."
The morn was gray.
"How big were their smiles?" The cherub giggled, reciting the time-old response whenever she heard her favorite story.
Her mother took a chance and tickled her stomach, enhancing the laughter whose sound they both knew was prohibited.
"So big they reached from Apollo's zenith, to beyond Gaya's horizon, so that the whole world was covered in rays of gold from the light glinting off their teeth."
The ground was stained with the contents of the woman's stomach. She lay there on the unforgiving earth, eyes reddened, loath to move, unwilling to live, and the gods glared, pitiless.
The little girl closed her eyes dreamily, imagining the scene.
"It was on this day, that I happened to be walking through the woods of Britannia, a lush forest of every known shade of green-"
"Why weren't you in Greece? Or with Grandma or Grandpa?"
They had just defeated Caesar, a mere day or so before, his demise immediately preceding the youthful one's first kill. An accident. A mistake. Her blood innocence shed.
The single parent bit her lower lip as she attempted to recall the exact details she had described to the child, whose memory was unfaltering.
"I was…with a friend…" The woman began, unsure.
"Xena?"
The raven-haired mentor cupped her companion's cheek, brushing the tears away with her thumb.
Sighing with relief, she continued.
"Yes, Xena. My best friend. We were travelling together, and I didn't know I was expecting you, so I didn't think I needed to be home."
Those were the only true words spoken in the entire lie the blonde had concocted, so painstakingly, for her daughter, the reality being far too morose for an innocent little girl.
"That's okay-I liked being born in Britana." The young one assured her mother,
who chuckled at her mispronunciation, ruffling her silken curls.
"I'm glad."
"What happened next?"
"Then…Xena and I…were walking through the woods…"
"And?"
"And…we came to a clearing," The green-eyed one recalled, "and just beyond the sheltered, grassy circle, was a lake."
Within the woods they trekked, banshees attacked the larger woman, sheltering the smaller, whose countenance was one of terror as she grasped her aching stomach, unable to participate in the battle.
"A big lake?"
The fair-haired mother caught this attempted trick, and corrected the child.
"No-a small one, with just a few fish here and there."
The toddler frowned in displeasure, discontent with her inability to trick her authority figure.
"Seeing those fish in the water made me realize how hungry I was, so I asked Xena, an expert fisher…woman…to catch one for our lunch."
When they entered the nearest village, the fighter sat the bard down at an inn and got her some clear broth, hoping she could keep it down.
"But one wasn't enough!" The giddy youngster cried, excitedly.
"It most certainly was not. I was so hungry I made Xena catch a second, then a third-"
Soup gave way to lamb, and then to goat cheese and liver in a sauce of blood.
"Then four then five then six!" The little girl continued, relishing her ability to count so high.
"Shh." the mother cooed, quieting her.
The babe stuck her thumb in her mouth, the most effective way to keep herself from expressing the unwanted overload of glee.
"Good girl," the young woman rubbed her daughter's forearm, "After the fourth fish, Xena started to suspect something was wrong."
After the fair one's stomach began to grow uncontrollably, after the townsfolk called her witch, after they burnt the inn so that she fled into the streets, after the banshees screeched that the child of Dahak was within her, the darker maiden knew.
"Whab wav wrong?" The wide-eyed child mumbled through thumb-plugged lips.
"My stomach was getting bigger, and bigger-"
"Because of all the food?" The little girl questioned, slyly attempting to thwart her mother's memory again.
"Because you were inside it."
"And thew wav nobing wrong wib vat!"
"No," the young woman smiled at her babe, caressing a creamy cheek with her thumb, "I was thrilled once I knew you were coming."
The blonde insisted her mentor was wrong, that the banshees had lied. She cried a child's tears, overwhelmed with fear and hate for the demon god that cursed her with its spawn.
The angelic façade glowed with delight.
"What aboub," the little one removed her dampened digit from her mouth, "your friend?"
"She was happy too, of course. That's why she made sure I was safe when you were born."
"Why weren't you safe?"
The elder struggled to recall the 'facts' of the matter.
"You see…at almost the instant Xena realized, a warlord attacked us-"
"Why did he want to hurt you?"
"He didn't want me-it was my friend he was after-"
"Enemenies!" The one with the golden ringlets exclaimed.
"Yes-she had a lot of enemies."
The townspeople chased the vulnerable one, determined to destroy her unborn godling. Her protector fought fiercely so that her protégée might be spared.
"And then she got rid of them and then you had me and then-"
"I haven't gotten there yet!" The mother shook a finger at the small interrupter.
"Sorry Mommy!"
"It's okay. You're right though. Xena did defeat them, with swordplay and jump-kicks-stuff a little beyond my level."
The smaller one giggled.
"But before she went ahead and fought, she hid me in a brush nearby."
"The one with the blueberries and pretty flowers?"
The seasoned warrior laid her moaning friend inside a barn, amid the hay and horses, to shield her from the rain and murderers outside.
"Yes. The first time I held you, a rose petal fell on your nose and you let out this perfect little sneeze-"
"Like this?" The toddler faked a giant 'ACHOO!'.
"Not quite," Her larger companion shushed her, "You were born at the end of Xena's battle, and once she finished with the last of the warlord's men, she rushed over to me."
"And what did she say?" The miniature eagerly anticipated her favorite part of the story.
The raven-haired woman wrapped the bundle of flesh, blood, and mucus in a potato sack, the only available cloth, and looked on disgustedly as her comrade fell in love.
"She told me how beautiful you were, and how she knew you were going to grow up to be a wonderful, amazing person."
The young one clutched her child to her breast, unwilling to believe that what her superior said was true. That her daughter was a monster. That she needed to be killed.
"Just like you?"
She waited until the one she viewed as mother, sister, friend, was distracted, then ran. Better the world than her baby.
"Exactly like me."
The pale-eyed junior waited for the story to continue, but it did not.
"Okay, now it's officially bed-time, kiddo." The youth tucked the person she loved most into her makeshift sleeping pallet.
"Mommy?" The inquiring voice begged a final question before her slumber, "If Xena was so nice…why did she kill those men that she was fighting instead of letting them go?"
Her mother was caught off-guard. Usually the ending question was 'Why isn't Xena running with us?'.
"They were bad people…"
"So they had to die?"
The green-eyed one considered the question, and chose her words carefully.
"Sometimes…sometimes people have to die so that other people can survive."
The little girl struggled to understand.
"Maybe when I grow up I'll be like Xena. I'll kill people too." She closed her tired eyes.
"Bad people. You don't need to kill them though; you could just rough them up a bit…"
The babe didn't answer.
The night she was born, she murdered a man, strangling him with the chain he wore around his neck. Her mother didn't believe it, so she ran.
The desperate creature prayed a futile plea to the gods that Xena wouldn't find them. That her daughter wouldn't succumb to her father's will.
The young one sighed in her sleep, an inaudible, breathy murmur escaping the peach lips.
Gabrielle knew lies couldn't erase the past, or stop the inevitable darkness she saw, bit by bit, overtaking her daughter's mind. But they could, for those few minutes they were told, preserve the hope that everything would be alright.
For in those moments, Hope could be innocent.