Disclaimer: This all belongs to Renaissance Pictures and Universal. I wish I could say it was all mine. Truly I do. But I'm just borrowing this wonderful world with all due respect.
Timeline: Throughout the "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" episodes "The Warrior Princess" and "The Gauntlet" (references to "Past Imperfect")
Much love to Teddy E and triciabyrne1978 for the speedy betas!
"Falling"
by
LadyRowan Darkstar
She knows she's been falling for a while. A true warrior recognizes when the only course is retreat. But she hasn't retreated. She's terrified she shattered all the bridges behind her. Terrified the burning beneath her skin will scorch and consume if she ever stops the chase. Anger is life, and blood on her skin heats the blood within.
She feels more alive slicing Estrogon's throat than she has in months, and she holds onto that rush of power and certainty. These are the rules she understands.
*****
Her men are good. The best. She wouldn't travel with anyone less. The first punch sends a blaze of pain through her body, searing her back and ringing in her ears. Their courage builds. She rallies and rebels and the strikes feel like a path back home, but ultimately she falls, and for a moment she is crouched and cowering beneath the onslaught. Time skips, then settles on a smart-mouthed little girl by her village's riverside, screaming for her brother as the local bullies bear down. The rhythmic beats to her back send waves out through her universe, ripples like water from a pebble in the ocean, and she imagines the shimmers in the torchlight around her. Her hearing shuts down and all she can see is the line.
The taste of dirt and blood carries the meat and thread of her life.
*****
She hears her own voice echoing over the sun-shimmering meadow. "That was not my idea! I never murdered women and children!" and the hoarse desperation is something she neither recognizes nor understands. She hasn't apologized since she broke her mother's best carafe and her mother didn't yell, but instead sat down and cried.
Xena's thought for so long that she was committed and sure of her destiny, that she had no one to care for or impress. But more and more nothing has made sense since she stared into black and desperate eyes, retreating into darkness, dizzy and nauseous with the smell of burning flesh.
She wonders sometimes if she drowned that night in the pull of a tiny mouth at her breast.
*****
She rips at leaves, claws into the bark of the tree, running splinters beneath her fingernails. She screams into the emptiness within and without and slams her sword into the trees again and again and again.
She falls breathless to the ground, aching and hollow and limp. Her knees are bruised and shredded.
His gently forceful voice still rings within her head.
Who the Hades is Hercules but a stone in her road? Why the fuck does she care?
*****
She swings into the fray and swears she catches a genuine smile on Iolus' face. She can't imagine why this matters or why the gesture tightens the vulnerable triangle at the apex of her ribs. She toyed with this clever man's life, tossing him to the wolves like a worn-out boot. She used him, played him, fucked him, and none of the emotion was real. She felt nothing when he smoothed back her hair and told her she was beautiful. Told her she was brave. Told her she was good and whole amid the scars of war. She felt nothing. She felt...
Her chakram whirls through the night and men fall like grass before her blade.
Somewhere in the chaos she hears the voice of a ghost called Borias and feels his fingers pull and tangle her hair.
He'd said the word -- love -- and she'd wanted to slit his throat.
*****
The silence is deafening.
The battle has quieted and the others are soft and relieved while she is strung like a harp wire.
She tells the strong, gentle man that it's over. She doesn't even know what 'it' is. Only that 'it' has long been an answer to the noise in her head.
But the violence and power aren't fully quieting the shouts, anymore. The chaos creeps into her dreams and steals her breath like storm winds.
She knows she's been falling for a while, but she doesn't know where to retreat.
His smile is the only path she sees. She tries to return it with one of her own.
The gesture hurts in places she has forgotten.
*****
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