AN: Hey guys! This is my first Xena fanfic! My roommate and I decided to start watching Xena a couple of weeks ago, and we actually just finished season 5, and we're about to start season 6. It's been so much fun so far, and we're super excited. I've fallen in love with the show, big time, so yeah. Maybe expect a couple of fics out of me. Anyway, I hope you guys like this one! This is part one out of two or three!

Disclaimer: I do not own Xena: The Warrior Princess.

Xena was six when she first asked her mother about the name scrawled across her wrist, letters she had become more then familiar with from the hours staring at them, puzzling over them, wondering at their meaning. She knew what the word was- Cyrene had made sure all her children knew how to read. But it was the meaning behind it that she was curious about. So, when she had been able to finally catch her mother elbow deep in the dough she was kneading for tomorrow's customers, she asked.

Cyrene, for her part, had been expecting it. Toris had been about six when he had asked, and Xena was so much like her brother that she had been expecting the question for days. It still threw her, though- how to tell a child such a lovely truth, knowing that it would most likely turn to pain?

"Do you remember the story about the separation of man, Xena?"

"Of course," the child said proudly, sitting on the bench nearby. "There used to be creatures with four arms, four legs, two heads, and two hearts. Zeus, fearing the power of these creatures, split them in half, so each person only had half of the form they once were. Thus, humans were fated to walk the earth alone, looking for their other half. Teacher told us that story in school."

"Well," Cyrene said, drawing out the vowel to give herself time to think, "many of the gods thought that life too cruel. The gods are immortal- they have all the time in the world to find their other halves. Mortals, meanwhile, are short lived. Only a few decades, a century if you're lucky, and then Hades claims you for either Tartarus or the Fields. So…" She paused, wiping her flour and dough covered hands on her apron so she could fully turn to face her child. "So the gods, led by Aphrodite herself, forced Zeus to give the mortals hope."

Cyrene held out her wrist, smiling as Xena held out her own, both presenting the name most precious to them to each other.

"When each person is born," Cyrene continued, sitting next to Xena and wrapping her arm around the girl's shoulders, "they are born with the name of their soulmate, their other half, written on their wrist. This way, they can grow up knowing the name of the one they must ask for, and when they've found their soulmate, they know, right away, that their search is done. This way, humans have a chance at finding their true other half, without as much fuss and muss that would be needed if we didn't have them."

Reaching out, Xena took Cyrene's hand in between her own, turning the appendage until she could get a better look at the name etched into her skin. Tracing the letters, it was after a long moment of silence that Xena spoke up again, her voice quiet and small.

"If Daddy was your soulmate, why did he leave?"

"Just because someone is your soulmate, doesn't mean they're perfect for you, Xena," Cyrene said, perhaps a little too harshly, as she pushed herself back to her feet and returned to the bread. "Maybe once they were, right after Zeus separated the two halves, but times have changed. People are selfish, greedy, angry creatures. Many are loving and kind," she quickly backpedaled, "but everyone has their baggage. Your father, unfortunately, was one of them."

"Did he love you?"

"He did, as best as he could," Cyrene confirmed, "and I loved him. And he gave me three lovely children. But even though our souls were two halves of the same whole, we just weren't meant to be."

For a couple of minutes the two didn't speak. Cyrene, hoping that was the end of the conversation, at least for now, returned to her bread. With almost all the rooms filled, breakfast would be a busy affair the next morning, and she wanted to have enough for everyone. It was a long, sticky chore, one she couldn't get done if she had to keep stopping for her child every few minutes.

And the last thing she wanted to think about was the soulmate she had killed with an axe to protect the child currently talking to her.

"How do you find your soulmate?"

"How else? By looking."

"Mother…"

"Some people are luckier than others," Cyrene finally said, forcing her voice to soften from a growl of annoyance into something normal. "Their soulmates are born into the same town as them, they grow up in the same area, and they eventually run into each other one day. That's the most common way for soulmates to meet." Pausing to wipe the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, she glanced over her shoulder at Xena.

The girl was listening intently, her thumb absentmindedly rubbing the name at her wrist- an old family habit, one all of her children had picked up from her, for when they were deep in thought.

"Others," Cyrene continued, setting the ball of dough she had been working on off to the side for another, "have to work for it. The world is a big place, my love, and there are many people within it. Sometimes soulmates are born oceans apart, and they have to search for each other. These are the ones the stories are written about. That's how your father and I met."

"You've told me," Xena said, speaking for the first time in a while. "He was a wandering traveler who stopped by the inn one night in the middle of a storm. He heard that this inn was run by the prettiest woman in the whole city, and he had to see for himself. He did- he fell in love at first sight, and stayed with you."

"That's the gist of it," Cyrene said with a dry laugh. There was no point in telling the child the entire truth- he had come to stay, alright, but only because some other tavern owner had, in trying to ruin her reputation, told him she was the easiest bedmate in all of Greece, if you had the right coin. He had come to buy her warmth for the night, only to find himself almost impaled on a kitchen knife for asking.

The hand holding the knife had been the same with his name, and the first word out of his mouth after she had attacked him had been hers, whispered almost like a prayer.

He had gotten what he was looking for that night, free of charge, and nine months later they had Toris. Having found her, and finding out about her delicate condition a few weeks later, he had decided to stay, putting up his sword for the life of an inn owner with his soulmate and bastard son.

At least they got married before Xena came along, but only just.

"So does everyone find their soulmate," Xena asked, staring down at the name on her wrist. "If they're not born into your village, if you look hard enough, will everyone find theirs?"

"No," Cyrene said. It was the truth, and she refused to blatantly lie to her child. Mislead, maybe, fudge the facts a bit, of course. But outright lie? That did nothing but hurt the future, and she refused to jeopardize her relationship with her girl.

"Well, why not?"

"Because the Fates are cruel, Xena." Piling a few mounds of well beaten dough onto a pan, Cyrene slid them onto the highest shelf, ready to be baked when she awoke at dawn. "People can die. It's much more common to find your soulmate's grave then to find them alive, especially with how the world is today. Sometimes people are born at the wrong time, because the world needs them for something else. I've seen men travel for years, only to find their soulmate sucking from their mother's teat while they've gone gray. Like with your father and I, sometimes soulmates aren't meant to be- they find each other, but they don't last. And sometimes you just miss. Sometimes they're standing right there, right next to each other, but their eyes never meet, and they never know. One goes left while the other goes right on the exact same street, missing by a hair's breath. But in that situation, a hair's breathe might as well be an ocean."

"What do those people do? If their soulmate's dead, or they can't find them?"

"They turn to Aphrodite," Cyrene said as she bustled about, making another batch of dough to rise for the bread she would need to make for the day after tomorrow. "There's a reason the Goddess of Love exists when everyone has their soulmate chosen for them at birth." She smiled to herself, finally happy with the direction the conversation had taken.

She hoped that her children would find their soulmates, but she didn't want them walking away from this conversation thinking that was the only way they could find happiness. Toris had gotten to this point in the talk much quicker- she was glad to finally impart the same knowledge on Xena.

"Even without your soulmate, Xena, you have to understand that life can be amazing. You can meet someone nice, someone who falls in love with you as best as they can, and you can live a life worth something. Aphrodite helps, leading those who can't find their soulmates to their next greatest love, and sometimes the next greatest is the best."

"I'm going to wait," Xena said, her lips pressed into a thin line as she stared at her wrist.

"Wait until what?"

"What until I'm an adult. Then, if she hasn't been born into Amphipolis yet, I'm going to go find her. I'll find her, and we'll be the most perfect soulmates to ever exist. People will sing songs of our love, and we'll be one of the greatest stories ever."

Pushing herself up from the bench she had been sitting on, standing tall, her eyes narrowed in determination and her chin jutted out proudly, as if daring the world to defy her, Xena held out her hand so the name on her wrist was clearly seen.

"Other people might be content with someone who's not their true love. Other people might let their love fall apart, and their soulmate go. But me? Well, I'm gonna be the best soulmate in the world, and Gabrielle, whoever she is, is gonna be the best too. We'll be the best together, and nothin's gonna change that. Just you wait and see, Mother."

"I'm sure I will," Cyrene giggled, trying to keep both the full blown laughter and the overwhelming desire to cry to herself. "Now, go see if Toris needs any help with the firewood, ok? Or if Lyceus' awake from his nap. Just go do something useful so I can get this bread finished."

Xena nodded and ran off, towards the outer doors, where her older brother was stacking wood. But not before stopping, in plain view of the kitchen, to place a quick kiss to her wrist and whisper "I'll find you, Gabrielle, one day. That's a promise." Before Cyrene could comment on it, Xena was gone.

And Cyrene had to work hard to make sure her laughter didn't upset the bowl of flour and eggs she was working with, or that the tears streaming down her face made the dough too salty.

"I hope you do, sweetheart," she whispered to herself. "I hope you do."

Xena was sixteen when she had her first true brush with the love soulmates could feel. Not through herself, though she desperately wanted to find the girl whose name was emblazed on her skin. No, it was, in fact, much to her and Toris' great chagrin, through fourteen-year-old Lyceus, who had met his love in the market.

It was a stroke of great luck, they all agreed. The girl, only two years younger than Ly, had been born to a set of wheat farmers, the same people Cyrene bought her flour from. With their farm only half an hour outside of city limits, it was almost amazing that the two hadn't run into each other before, though it made sense. Cyrene generally left her younger two to tend to the inn when she needed to run her errands, taking Toris with her to carry the basket. Or Xena, when Toris was running off with his friends. But either configuration of basket holder, Lyceus had always been left to manage the inn, make sure no brawls broke out and the linens were fresh in each room, tasks a boy his age could handle.

But for this trip Xena had disappeared as well as Toris, running off with some of her friends- a rougher group then Cyrene would have liked, but no one too dangerous, and so the inn had been closed for the afternoon and Lyceus had accompanied her.

To say it was obvious the moment it happened would have been an understatement. The moment the two children's eyes had locked over the miller's stall, several things had happened at once, making it more than clear to everyone what was going on:

Lyceus, in all his graceful boyish charm, had dropped the basket full of goods, spilling almost twelve dinars worth of supplies into the mud and the muck.

Linsa, the poor girl, had jerked her hands apart so quickly she had torn the bag of flour she had been holding, covering herself and her father in thick white powder.

And both of them, at the same exact time, had said the other's name, soft as a prayer, but louder than any scream could have been for those paying attention.

"It was like I had been thrown into the center of Hephaestus' forge, stabbed through the gut with Ares' own sword, impaled with Artemis and Athena's golden and silver arrows, trampled by Apollo's chariot, and zapped by Zeus' great lightning bolt all at the same time," Lyceus said the moment the all four of them were home, Xena and Toris having rushed back as soon as they heard the news through the grape vine to get there at the same time as Cyrene and him. "It was as if, the moment I saw her, this great, unbearable pain spread through me, and she was the only one who could stop it. And the moment our hands touched…"

He sighed, leaning back against the wall, a love struck grin wide on his face as he replayed the moment their fingers had brushed before Cyrene had pulled him back and Linsa's father had snatched her away.

"It was as if I was in the Elysian Fields, and nothing could be more perfect. And now she's gone."

His face crumpled into tears as he slid down the wall, either unknowing or uncaring of Toris' touch as he howled for his lost love.

"Why'd you stop them, Mom," Xena asked, livid for her brother. She had heard the whole thing from the friend that had come to get her- Cyrene had snatched up the basket in one hand, grabbed Ly by the ear with the other, and had hauled him away while Linsa's father had done the same to her, almost bodily throwing her into the carriage before setting off for home, leaving the farm hand to tend the stall. An overall awful display for two soulmates who had found each other, especially from Cyrene, who had always been so supportive of them all finding their own someday.

"Because of that," Cyrene said, motioning towards the sobbing boy. "It's bad enough that they touched after the first meeting- if I had left them, they would have probably been making out in the middle of the street, or worse! You have to understand, Xena," she continued as she swept into the kitchen, her daughter at her heels, "that the first contact is the hardest for soulmates. Everything within them calls for the other, longs to touch and be touched, and it's the hardest thing to resist. You know Toris is a bastard, he's living proof of how little control newly met soulmates have! Now, if it had been you and your Gabrielle, or even Toris and his Selene, then I would have left things well enough alone, but Ly is a child, and that girl is even younger than he is. Would you have left them alone?"

"No, of course not," Xena replied, "but there's still the fact that Lyceus is sobbing in the middle of the tavern as if you just stabbed his favorite dog. How are you going to fix that?"

"With this," Cyrene sighed gratefully as she found the pouch she had been searching for, holding it up for her daughter to see. "Your grandmother used to make me drink this whenever there was a chance I would meet someone new, just in case they were my soulmate. This dulls the senses, gives the body time to get used to the first shock of meeting, and lets you keep some control over yourself. It works just as well after the first contact. We'll make it into a tea, get Ly to drink it, and then tomorrow, when he's calmed down a bit, the two of us will go out to the farm. We'll talk to the girl and her parents, see what they all have to say. Now get some water boiling. I want this in him before he becomes dehydrated."

Two cups of tea later, and Ly had calmed down, at least enough for Toris to help him to his feet and carry him off to bed. He was still a mess- a hiccupping, uncoordinated mess, but his feet had stayed under him, he had kissed Xena and Cyrene good night (disgusting, wet, snotty kisses, but kisses nonetheless), and the stairs hadn't proven too much of a problem with Toris there to help. But at least he was a mess that didn't risk choking on his own tongue every few minutes, something they all were grateful for.

"You're really going to take him to the farm tomorrow," Xena asked when he was gone, helping her mother organize the kitchen for the next day's rush.

"Yes, after I get him to drink a pot of tea. Hopefully a whole stomach full will keep him calm, and if he's calm, she should be too. We'll have to keep an eye on them in the coming years," Cyrene said with a grin and a shake of her head, "but hopefully between me and her parents, we can come up with a plan that keeps those two happy and us from becoming grandparents before our time."

The next day was almost torture for Xena and Toris. They had been left in charge of the inn, Cyrene and Lyceus tucked away in the little cart drawn by their single horse to go visit the farm, despite their insistence on going with them. Cyrene had shut them down, and as if the Fates were intervening, the inn was crowded. Everywhere they looked, wherever they turned, there was someone new ordering food or drink or a room, everyone talking about yesterday's events and the excitement of a pair of souls finding each other.

No chance for the two of them to sneak away and run to the farm, no chance to even sit and talk between each other about the events happening with their younger brother, just people and people and more people, until finally Xena threw out the last drunk and Toris led the last customer to their room, allowing them to shut down the inn for the night.

Then they sat and waited, even though it was long in the night, for their mother and brother to get home.

Home they eventually did, and when they did, the first thing out of Lyceus' mouth was "I'm getting married."

"When Linsa turns eighteen," Cyrene clarified as she shrugged off her cloak, sending Lyceus to put away the horse and cart in the stables behind the inn. "The two of them are allowed to visit each other on the weekends, supervised of course, and when Linsa turns eighteen, if they still want each other, then they'll get married the fall of that year. But not a moment before, and if a baby shows up, then she's being shipped off to the Hestian Virgins and he's getting castrated. No arguments, no excuses, and everyone's happy."

Happy they were. Lyceus, seemingly unconcerned with the threat hanging over his little head, spent the entire rest of the night talking about his love, wishing with all his heart that one day his siblings would find what he had. Toris and Xena agreed- they were happy for him, even with the twinge of bitterness that they had to fight from seeping into their tones.

(None of them knew in two short years, their home would be under attack. None of them knew that Toris would flee, Xena would pick up her sword, and, accompanied by Lyceus and a small group of boys, just boys for the men had fled, she would defend her home from the raiders. None of them knew the death rate her choice would have- almost all except her, somehow left alive and mostly unharmed, despite having the most blood on her sword. None of them knew Toris would flee once again, this time from the death of his brother, that Cyrene would claim her daughter had died in the same fight her son had while turning her away, and that Xena would be told, in no unclear terms, that she wasn't welcomed back home.

None of them knew Xena would happily leave, because the hate she could stand. She could stand the glares, the comments, the obvious crude gestures sent her way when before there was only kindness and love from the people in her town. Xena could stand that.

She couldn't stand the heart wrenching cries Linsa let out when Lyceus had been carried home, the ones that still echoed from the cave he had been put to rest in, and she couldn't stand the fact that her little brother was dead because of her.

None of them knew.)

For the entire night they laughed and joked and teased, Toris and Xena calling each other 'Aunt' and 'Uncle' to make Cyrene go pale, only for her to laugh when they ran from the dish towel she snapped at them. They drank and they ate and they laughed, just honestly happy.

And all the while, Xena rubbed her thumb over the name on her wrist, and once again made her promise to find her, one day.

For her first year as a warlord, she looked.

All of her men knew not to kill without warrant- men who stood up to them, any who tried to defy them, they could be cut down without a second glance. But any who surrendered, any who stood aside and let them do what they wanted? They were to be spared, for two reasons- the first, and most important, was so they could spread word of their deeds. How were they supposed to become a feared and respected army if no one was alive to say who conquered them?

But the second was so all of the living's wrists could be presented to her, so she could see if her name resided among them.

It just made sense, in a way. Her soulmate was a weakness- someone who could be found and used against her. But if Xena found her first, brought her into the army, taught her how to fight, how to defend herself, kept her safely surrounded by loyal men who would follow her into Tartarus and back?

Well, how could that be a weakness?

Once, she almost thought she saw it, a four letter name with three of them right that she caught from the corner of her eye, drawing her up short. But the 'X' she thought she had seen was instead a 'L,' and part of her was relieved- the child was only seven, maybe eight at the most, and the idea of a soulmate eleven, almost twelve years younger than her? No, thank you.

So, for the first year she looked.

Until she met Caesar. Met him, seduced him, trusted that he could hold up his end of the deal and they would work together to rule the world. Until her trust was betrayed, most of her men cut down around her while she stood there, helpless, just watching the world she had spent the last year building crumble into dust at her feet.

Until, while his men were tying her to the cross to be crucified, he stopped to talk to her.

"It's a shame you never found your soulmate," he said casually, coolly, his own name covered by the metal bracers he wore. "I might have actually used a nail on the strumpet instead of rope. It might have been a little lopsided, but with a giant 'X' like that on her wrist, marking the spot? It would have been hard to resist."

She had searched until that moment, and as the hammer made contact with her legs, she was glad she had never found the girl.

At first she had been glad that Gabrielle had been spared- spared the pain, the death, everything that was bringing her short life to a pitiful end. A pitiful end she almost wished for as she was cut down and taken to the healer, for that at least would have ended the pain instead of forcing her to endure.

But as she rose again, M'lila dead at her feet, her legs set and numb from the pressure points, Xena was glad she had never found her soulmate all over again, for a very different reason.

She was glad she never found that Gabrielle, for it would have just been one more body covering the floor, one more bloodstain she would have had to clean off her sword, and she didn't have time for that. If she wanted to fulfill the burning in her chest, destroy the world with her own two hands, she didn't have time for soulmates.

They were nothing more than a weakness, and if she ever did find the girl, she'd make sure that weakness no longer existed.