What shocked me even more than the stiffness of her lifeless body though, was the absolutely striking serenity of her features….It looked as if she were sleeping…..And that frozen smile on her pearly lips…..A thousand questions began whirling inside my head as I wrapped my arms around her, still unable to cry, my heart shattered to pieces but my mind refusing to acknowledge her death…..

"You can't be dead…..You can't be…" I muttered as I finally sensed that warm salty liquid that mortals called "tears" running down my cheeks.

I gazed blankly around, as if looking for answers, but I saw nothing before my eyes….Nothing but slick, infinite darkness that had nothing in common with the pure, chalky snow covering everything in sight….

"Noooooooooooooooo!" I growled like a wounded beast, unable to restrain that harrowing pain literally ripping my chest apart any longer…Right out of nowhere, a mountain of snow crushed upon me the following second, turning that heavy obscurity into an even more physical feeling now…..

XXX

An inexplicably powerful fall, followed by a rough collision with the stone wall of the main hall forced me to open my eyes, just to realize that everything was spinning….

"What in Tartarus…."

I tried to finish my line, but to no avail….My own words were echoing insufferably loud inside my head, each sound bouncing from one side of my brain to the other, each jump creating a new, even more resonant echo… It was torture.

"Arghhhh!"

Minutes later, as the effect of whatever that was finally vanished, and once the dizziness passed, I took a disoriented look around. I was indeed in the main hall, and the vortex through which I had returned from the gullible Bard was still opened, still spinning like a tornado…..

A feeling of panic took over me, as the still very fresh memory of Xena's dead body against my chest invaded my mind again, multiplying my hysteria a thousand fold.

I made an effort to get up from the floor but my legs were still trembling like jelly….I don't actually recall how I got to her room, but the speed with which I crossed that damn vortex again, made me vomit even the last drip of wine I had drunk the day before….And the worst part about it was that I did it all at her feet, while still struggling to keep my balance- at least on all fours- without looking too lame…..

"Xena! You're…alive!" I exclaimed in utter surprise, staring at her in wonder while wiping that disgusting crimson residue from my mouth with the back of my hand, and it took all my conscious will not to jump with joy at the sight of her, living and breathing just a few inches away from me.

She just threw me a puzzled and then a very spiteful look in return.

"What did you think, I was going to kill myself because of your idiotic speech? " she paused for a few seconds. "Have you been drinking?"

I didn't know what to say…

"What in Hades' name is going on here?" I questioned, still unable to understand what had happened, and how did I end up there in the first place.

" What do you mean?"

Her voice was as slashing as before. Judging by her tone she was raging.

" I don't know….." I finally concluded, staring at her tightly pressed lips for awhile.

" Weren't you outside?" I questioned, wondering whether I was losing my mind or not….

" I obviously came back….." she replied coldly, passing me by while heading towards the door. "Now if you'll excuse me, I was planning to take a bath….I'm frozen…." she said, exiting the room, leaving me speechless by her bed…..

"Frozen…." I repeated, my eyes still glued to the door, minutes after she left.

With shaky hands, I opened up a portal…..My Princess was slowly undressing herself, her bronze body glimmering in the warm candlelight…..Perfection was the right word to describe it…The second portal I opened, depicted a sick with worry Bard, staring like a lost child into the lively flames of her campfire…There were fresh trails of tears on her face…..

Within a blink, I closed them both…..

"What the fuck was that all about? How could this be? She was dead….I held her stiff body…." I silently said to myself, pinching my arm just to check that I wasn't dreaming, that it wasn't all an illusion….Too bad Gods can't feel pain…..There was no way I could find out…..Or maybe there was one….

XXX

She immediately flinched as I materialized into the bathtub with her, but didn't say anything, just arched an eyebrow at me, visibly annoyed by the nerve I had to drop by uninvited, especially after our last confrontation….

"What do you want?" she finally questioned,seeing that I wasn't about to open my mouth soon.

" I don't wanna fight…." I answered, avoiding her furious, intrusive gaze.

" That's new…." she mumbled, now glancing uncomfortably at the rose petals floating on the surface of the water.

"About Athens….."

"That's the last thing I want to talk about right now…." she firmly interrupted, looking daggers at me.

"Ok then...….Come to think about it, I don't want us to talk at all, actually" I replied, moving closer to her, completely ignoring the rage displayed on her features …

"Could you stop thinking about punching me already? You've already punched me enough today…It still hurts…." I asked, when I finally got in front of her, taking her hand and placing the tip of her fingers on my jaw, trying to prove my point….

She successfully managed to control her chuckle, but still, I could see right through her. She wasn't at all as pissed as she wanted to make me think she was.

" So….wanna kiss and make up?" I asked her on a jocular tone.

"Where would we have to kiss?" she questioned, obviously humoring me.

"Wherever it was you hit me…." I rapidly answered, and my body instantly reacted at the sight of her wet breasts approaching my chest as she moved closer to kiss my cheek.

"Here?" she whispered against my ear in a low, suave voice, while her index began tracing my jaw.

"Yeah…..that's the place….." I answered, completely entranced by that toxic nearness of her voluptuous body, so amazingly sexy and …

The string of my thoughts was broken swiftly and irremediably though by the soft contact of her lips against my skin, and for the love of Gaia, I just couldn't control that nervous breath any longer when her palm touched my chest for balance as she leaned in towards my face….

"Do not move….do not move…." I kept repeating myself while the distance between us vanished…..It was useless…..the next thing I knew, my arms were wrapping around her, and my hands were on her face, in her hair, and all over her body, and I was kissing those venomous lips which had the habit of hurting me each time they got the chance, with a fierce passion, forgetting all about the fact that one of the reasons I was there in the first place was to see if she would come to me, if she would be the one to beg for once….

"You are real….." I murmured unintelligibly , biting her lower lip-finally realizing that she wasn't just some ideal vision of my twisted imagination- and, as my tongue thrust and parried with hers, I couldn't help wondering if it was because of the hot water or because of my arousal that I felt as if my entire body was burning like a pyre…..Her soft voice moaning my name, making everything inside me vibrate, wasn't helping my madness much either, quite the contrary, and neither did her bewitching hands, sliding up and down my back, making me groan with pleasure….A strong pang of desire finally sliced within me as her nails descended rapidly down my spine, scratching me viciously in the process, making me instinctively push her brutally away, just to follow her the second after, pressing her roughly against the edge of the tub…..

"Did you really mean it, Xe? " the question unconsciously popped out of my mouth, despite the fact that was the last thing I wanted to know that very then...

"Mean what? " she answered in a shivering voice as she rested her forehead on my lips, trying to catch her breath, and for a moment , the scent of her perfume, of the oils she had used on her hair, or the one of the flower petals, filled my nose with an intoxicating bouquet that inflamed my senses, making me almost forget what the question was.

" That we will never be more than this…." I whispered back, as if afraid to actually say it aloud. Afraid that if I would, it would actually come true.

"Well what's wrong with this?' she questioned wantonly, cunningly wrapping her arms tightly about me, our thighs now intertwined, and needless to say, all my senses went ballistic as I felt her blazing center rubbing against my thigh, biting my neck playfully, hunger gleaming in her eyes, and for a moment there, I can't deny that I actually saw things her way….What was wrong with that?

"Everything…" I breathed hot against her lips, barely fighting now that extreme sexual tension, rising like a wall of fire between us….

She just gazed at me in bewilderment, clearly confused about the blatant contrast between my words and my body language…..And though I could have made an effort to clarify it for her, I wasn't quite sure what that meant either. One thing I knew though….I didn't like where things were going between us. She was way too shallow for my exquisite tastes…..

I simply vanished from her arms, shuddering at the awareness that I wasn't such a great fan of having the old Xena back as I thought I would be…..Too all appearances I was actually obsessed with the good, compassionate, Xena….I was in love with the hero…..The joke was on me...

"Damn Ares, you're getting old!" I told myself once I materialized into my chambers, still naked, staring into the mirror at my ageless body…"If you've started to have a thing for good girls, that's definitely a bad sign….Keep it up like this and soon you'll end up like Joxer…. " my brain continued to mumble making me laugh involuntarily at the perspective…

"Ok, let's fix that damn vortex already! By Styx, another trip like that and I'll definitely go cuckoo ! " I added with a sigh, my skin instantly covering in goosebumps at the possibility "To Hades with all the alternate universes!"

Now all I had to do was to keep my mind busy long enough to avoid going back into that hot tub with that demonically alluring woman and thus giving in my every sexual fantasy with her...Half an hour later, the sensation of her lips on mine, of her wet, silky body in my arms was still haunting me...The mere memory of her breath on my neck was pure torture...By all Gods of Olympus, how I wanted her!