"So what happened afterwards?! How did you know where to find her?!" a visibly affected Gabrielle demanded to know, while frantically struggling not to loose the inhuman fight with those tears that she had been trying so much not to shed, as if the brave act of holding them back would have somehow stood for some sort of heroic gesture that would have actually meant something and that could have made a difference by mending past events…..

All her gathered up courage and endurance ended though the instant she noticed the pearly teardrops streaming unabashedly down the Love Goddess' flawless visage, and, there was so much pain shadowing the Immortal's puffy eyes that the Bard rapidly bowed her head in shame as if her previous reaction had been anything but appropriate when it came to comparing it with the one of the usually untouched by mortal suffering, Aphrodite.

The noisy gulp that followed soon after that life changing observation certainly made the Olympian take a good look at her Bard friend, silently wondering if continuing her narration would have been a good idea given her undebatable mental fragility….She was well aware that despite her kind, compassionate heart, Gabrielle was definitely not the right person on the shoulders of which one should choose to place such heavy, soul crumbling burden.

She stared at her rather hesitantly for quite some time, but the Bard's anxious gaze refused to change it's skilfully coded message, thus spurring her to keep telling the story….

"Can't really brag about having known where to find her….But given the fact that she was carrying Ares' child, and that whether she liked admitting it or not it was a child conceived out of love, I had the ability to sense anything related to it….I could often feel my niece's aura, regardless of how faint it was at the time...I was also capable to tell stuff about her evolution, and through her I could feel the Warrior Babe's emotions…I could easily sense when she was happy or sad, angry, pensive or bored, etc….Well…godly stuff…."

At that moment, as if someone had commanded it, her voice trailed off and her lips stopped moving …Her blank gaze remained literally glued to some invisible point in space that the Bard couldn't see but which had apparently managed to capture even the last ounce of the Goddess' attention…..

"Aphrodite?" Gabrielle's timid voice uttered the name, while her hand sympathetically found a place to rest on her immortal friend's shoulder.

"Yeah.."the surprising answer came with no delay, accompanied by a slightly unnatural shudder from the Olympian's part.

As if coming back from a deep, mind blowing trance, she blinked repeatedly for a couple of seconds, glaring half absently towards the worried Bard before inquiring lowly:

"Where was I?"

"Xaria….you were just telling me that you could sense her energy…"

"I could….Her presence was very important, for both Xena and Ares as a couple, but also for the three of us together…It helped Xe cope in a way with the disturbing reality of the relationship Ares and I used to share, I guess….I suppose it made her feel more…in control of the situation- knowing that they had something that Ares and I had never dreamed of having: a baby to bound us even more…..She couldn't possibly understand at that point that as brother and sister we didn't need anything else to keep us connected. By definition we were two different sides of the same coin: Love and War…Together we were one: the ultimate power meant to rule over mortal and immortal world alike until the end of time…"

When she noticed Gabrielle's perplexed expression, Aphrodite added apologetically, a bitter smile tugging at the corners of her coral lips:

"I guess that's a pretty twisted concept for any mortal to make peace with easily…."

"No, it does makes sense….Love and Hate….Light and Darkness….it's like a balance on which our very nature was built….You can't have one without the other " the Bard firmly stated, realizing that her reaction must have made the Goddess feel incredibly uncomfortable, and that was like the last thing on the planet she had intended to do.

Nonetheless, War's ditsy Sister gazed away, and seconds later her busy eyes were searching for a place to sit…. One random gesture of her hand was all it took in order to materialize a few pink, fluffy pillows and invited the Bard to make herself comfortable…..Two cups of herbal tea soon followed….

"So what happened?" Gabrielle insisted, taking a short sip of the sweet, lemon green, aromatic liquid.

"I still remember those dreadful moments as if it were all yesterday….I was trying on some dresses, there was this super elegant banquet I needed to attend in Troy, and, as always, I couldn't quite decide on the color...Plus, there was the hair….You wouldn't believe that crazy hairstylist that…" Aphrodite began ranting, and it was pretty obvious that the basic story that the Bard was just dying to find out was eons away from ever being told….

"So ? what happened? Did she call you or anything?" she rudely interrupted, with the inborn curiosity of a four years old girl.

The Goddess bit her lip hard while she nervously wiped away another tear.

"No….I can only wish she had Sweet Pea….I don't know why she didn't, maybe I could've helped somehow…I could have brought Ar for her sooner…I only realized that something had turned horribly wrong when Xaria was…gone….Her sudden, unexpected absence was literally an indescribably tormenting experience- it kinda felt like a gigantic void swallowing my very being….I had never felt anything similar before….I was so scared….I instinctively popped myself to where I had left Xe hours before, but there was no trace of her….I didn't know what to do, but I could swear it on Daddy's lightening bolt that she was in danger so I did the first thing that I could think of: I went to get Ares. "

"Did you find him?" the Bard jumped to ask, almost chocking on the question.

"I did….We kinda met halfway through the aether…He was as white as a sheet. It only took one glance for him to realize that he had been right, that she was not ok, that in less than a day his whole life had turned upside down….I can still hear him yelling….."

She stopped again, even more abruptly this time. Her skin was all covered in goose bumps and her eyes held behind their light azure irides a subtle hint of well buried fear….

"I can only guess you didn't have the most pleasant of conversations...?"

"He still had the Dagger of Helios on him…..He said that he only spared my life because killing me would have taken too much time, and that time was something he didn't have at the moment."

"I'm sure he didn't mean it Dite….He was just worried..."

"Oh yes he did….It's just that finding Xena was a priority….He had every intention of killing me, I had no doubt about it."

Gabrielle's following braintwister left it's temporary prison almost simultaneously with Aphrodite's last words, but this time, the usually bubbly Olympian failed to hear her….

The impeccably preserved details of her memory were quickly transporting her back to the past, her divine senses recreating again an entire scene in which for the second time since her creation, the daughter of Zeus had feared someone with such an unbelievable intensity that her tiny heart had been but split-seconds away from exploding.

"Where is she?! Where is she Dite?!"

Panic swept through the beautiful Love Goddess like the piercing of a sharp Gaelic spear, making her chest tighten and her breath remain blocked somewhere in between her lungs and her throat. An unprecedented wave of nausea and dizziness made her loose her balance...

By the time Ares reached her, she was barely able to articulate one sound. She was paralyzed with fear and remorse.

"Ar...I…"

"Where is she?!" he screamed , savagely grabbing a fistful of her long, golden curls with one hand and slapping her straight across the face with the other, hardly repressing the urge to smash her head against something, then and there, no questions asked.

The overly emotional Love Goddess cried out in pain….His grotesque behavior was way too similar with the one induced by the Furies not long before, with the exception that this time, there was no Alecto now to control him; he was doing it all on purpose…..

"I don't know…I left her just outside of Messene…" she shrieked, covering her pretty face with her palms, in the unsuccessful attempt to make him stop hitting her.

"What?! What did I tell you about keeping her safe? She should have been inside the Halls of War!"

"She asked me to….."

The unmistakable, glistening blade of the dagger- so close to her neck- made her blood froze inside her veins though and any inflection die on the tip of her tongue …

"Bro'….." she still managed to utter right before the razor sharp edge grazed her neck superficially, making a thin thread of blood flow down on her chest, soaking the

transparent lace hem of her cleavage .

"The only reason I'm not killing you right now, is because when I do it, I want it to be as painful and as slow as possible….I wanna enjoy it….But make no mistake…If something happened to her, you're as good as dead, Aphrodite…Now….where exactly did you leave her and when? …."

"It was at the foot of a hill….a few kilometers away from the gates...I can take you there…"

"When was this ?"

"... Just a few hours ago….She said something about wanting to pay a visit to an old friend…a childhood friend…."

Hearing her words, the God didn't say anything else. He just ran his fingers through his hair. He was beyond furious, he was fuming…and beyond the fury there was an unimaginably large ocean of ultimate desperation and atrocious fear…

"Dite ? Dite are you ok ?"

Gabrielle's concerned voice and the urgency of her touch brought the Goddess back to reality.

" I'm fine…"

"I can see how hard it is for you to remember all these events, but please Dite, I need to know…..What happened to her? What happened to Xaria? Why didn't you feel her presence any more? Did she….Was it Athena?"

Taking a deep breath and summoning all of her remaining psychical force, the Love Goddess replied, avoiding the Bard's inquisitive gaze:

"What I saw there….I uh….I can't get it out of my mind….There's no worse punishment than that….Ares actually thought that he'd done me a favor by letting me live…..By the Fates, he had never been so wrong about anything in his life!"