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Summary: For Gabrielle, Xena's end was only the beginning. A Friend In Need spoilers. Beginning of a series.
*
From day to day my journey,
The long pilgrimage before me.
From night to night, my journey,
The stories that will never be again.
(Enya, Book of Days)
*
Anastay, my daughter of resurrection.
You are like her; however you might in future years seek to deny the resemblance, with your piercing gaze and might of will. These scrolls…my final, and the ones I know will be the most difficult for you to accept.
You are but hours old, nestled against my breast, and they try to tell me that I have years of motherhood to come in which to savor these small joys. I know better, the years passed have taught me as much. Nothing can last that is worth having. Oh, that I could stay with you…what will you be? A warrior? Where will you travel? In your sister's footsteps, to distant lands with words of peace?
Both, perhaps. Your eyes tell me that you are no warrior, but they also speak of no rest. That, I think, is why I have been able to nurse you, claim you, and accept you for what you are now…my legacy…and not what you once were, the soul of Xena. In the short time I have had you by my side; I have loved you freely, and selfishly. You are everything that was, and all that can ever be. I know that the others wait just beyond the doorway, wondering how I can lay claim to loving you so, if I've loved anything or anyone at all since Xena.
I have, by the gods. I have. Just not enough.
She was my soul mate, Anastay. Someday I hope you may find someone to share the bond with, someone who can teach you the depths of devotion the fates decree I can never show you myself.
Xena and I…we were bonded, heart to heart and soul to soul, by blood spilled and by tears brushed away, and by lack of it all. We were friends, and lovers, mother and child, and enemies as well. It was beyond anything within my power to put to word or scroll.
And then she left my side.
Japa was an utterly foreign land of mist and strange beauty. I never dreamed that it would be the last battlefield of the warrior princess, yet eventually; I thought it would prove the same for myself.
The first hours after sunset were the most hellish. A few moments after Xena had disappeared, I pulled myself together and uncapped the urn holding her ashes, dipping my hand into the collection of powder and bones, lifting spare amounts to my fingertips and turning to sprinkle them into the fountain. Nothing happened, and I forced myself to shut the urn, shuddering as I dropped it and scrubbed my hands free of the remnants in a crystalline clean expanse of water.
Somehow, I later gathered the strange little collection of ashes and descended Fuji…even Olympus had never seemed so utterly desolate and otherworldly. I recall that the pathway back down to Higuchi was filled with silent spectators, men, women, and children with shy eyes and gaping, staggered expressions, some carrying lanterns, others tributes of cherry blossoms. It seemed incomprehensible to them that such a warrior had been bested, and even more incomprehensible that Yodoshi's reign of terror was finished.
I pushed past them, brushing off their questions and pleas, their small pities, and went in search of Xena's armor. The field was bloody, and stank of rotting death, but I followed instinct to a position well away from the place of her death and dug bare-handed for hours, determined to retrieve what Xena had so willingly abandoned. If she had intended to symbolize final burials, I intended to rip the symbolism from her. Despite my earlier state of confusion while watching the sunset, dawn had broken the dam of emotions…I fought Xena's pleas to accept the inevitable, fought requiem with all I had in me. I wanted them…her…to feel my pain, I was afraid to let go of it. Afraid to risk giving in, afraid to accept the fact that I was more alone than I had ever been since Hope and the rift, and utterly terrified of acknowledging that for the first time since I had joined up with her, there was to be no end to that loneliness.
Xena was gone, forever. Oh, I knew even then that there would be other incarnations, other legends with her wild spirit and perhaps even dark hair and eyes as deep and clear as Poseidon's realm. But even now, the fact remains as it did then…Xena is gone, forever. What she embodied can never be recaptured.
I had her scabbard packed onto my back when she appeared to me, kneeling at my side and halting my hands. "Leave the rest there." Her voice was flinty, familiar, and it startled me far more than the touch.
I leapt up, fell back momentarily, before regaining some semblance of control and returning her look. "You may need your armor someday."
"No." Xena shook her head, a wry smile twisting her lips. "I won't."
"Xena." I wanted to take hold of her, shake her, but I somehow thought that it would do no good. Whether Xena was beyond heeding such…earthly…pleas, or was simply blocking them away as she did so many of the things that could hurt her, I had no idea, but it was clear that my words would have no effect. She was a beautiful, stubborn spirit.
"Gabrielle." Her voice hardened, glare blue and brilliant and unyielding. Greater warriors than I had been felled by that glare, and I was hardly immune to its effect, even knowing her as well as I did….as well as I had thought I knew her. "You once made me promise that if something happened to you, I would not become a monster. I'm only asking you the same. I promised you. You promise me, Gabrielle."
"Things were so different then."
"Yes, they were. We became different people. You've become a far stronger person than I ever was. I didn't believe myself capable of upholding that promise…I wasn't capable. Each time I lost you, lost my family, I lost more and more of myself. But you're stronger, Gabrielle." Her words had become fierce and rushed, eyes glimmering just as they had on Mount Fuji. "And you can't begin to conceive of what the fates have planned for you now. Keep your strength for the battles to come."
"I want you by my side for those battles, Xena."
"You don't need me by your side, when you've got me in your heart, in your mind. Everything I knew I gave to you. I can't stay around and limit you, Gabrielle. I can't have you looking over your shoulder for my opinion on every battle, every strategy. That's the surest way to lead you into a fatal mistake. That, I will not do."
"So you're…you're just going to leave, is that it, after you swore I wouldn't lose you?" My voice must have broken, I know my heart did.
"I'm already partly gone." Those few words were far softer and far more cutting than any of the rest had been, and she shook her head, smiling sadly. "And soon I won't be tied here at all. You'll learn to move on, Gabrielle. I promise you that. I promise you that the pain isn't forever."
"Don't leave me now, Xena." I pleaded, terrified by her words and all that they implied.
"I'm not going to leave you entirely until you're ready, bard."
"Gods, I must sound like an orphaned child!" I flew into frenzy in that instant, kicking the dirt beneath my boots with too much force, successfully concealing the formerly half buried armor.
Her smile slanted. "I have a habit of leaving those around."
I had to laugh, if painfully, dusting off my hands and knees. "What am I going to do without you, Xena?"
"Live." Xena said simply, reaching out to tap my cheek, a touch barely there. "Live."
And then she was gone again, and my mood no better than ever as I marched back towards Higuchi. The closer I got the more riled I felt, the more frustrated. I was at an absolute loss.
In the end, it wasn't Xena who first forced me to look past my own moodiness and discontent after all…it was a conflict of a different nature. It was a street, one of Higuchi's scorched ones, and the crowds were brushing forward, jeering and chiding. By the time I had shaken free of my reverie and put a hand to the chakram at my hip, the fracas was louder, the spectators circling around two figures in the middle of the thoroughfare. The larger…and armed…of the two I recognized at once, having spoken to him many times before the battle. Then Kado, Ghost killer's son, had seemed a gentle sort. At that moment, in a Higuchi plaza, he appeared to be attempting murder.
"What do you think you're doing?!" My voice must have been loud enough, the crowds parted with astonishing swiftness, allowing met to stride up and pull him away from the girl he held in a choke hold.
The young woman scrambled to her feet and rushed to my side, taking cover behind me, gasping and wide-eyed. Though I had to fight back a kernel of irritation at her nearness and the distraction, I faced Kado with a composed face and what I hoped were calm tones. "What did she do to you?"
"She was with the coward who killed Xena." My young bushi acquaintance spat, shaking the katana he held…Xena's, I realized. It did not help my mood.
"And he at least wielded his weapon to destroy warriors, instead of stabbing at mere spirits and threatening the weak!" The girl cried out from behind me.
"Stop it." Perhaps my voice started out at a whisper, but neither appeared to be listening…the crowds pressed in, noise greater than ever, and Kado practically lunged to my rear in an attempt to grab his victim. With a kick that would have done Xena proud, she broke free of him in an instant, robes swirling as she dove to my other side. "He had courage!"
"Then you will be honored to join him in death."
"Stop it, both of you!" When even a shout failed to draw them away from the confrontation, I grabbed the young samurai hopeful by his tunic and shook. "Look at you! Is this honorable, attacking an unarmed girl before hundreds?"
Eyes narrowing, Kado nonetheless stepped back, head snapping back sharply at the rebuke. Glaring at him, I turned and faced the mass of spectators. "And you! Were all you fine samurai going to stand there and let her be slaughtered? Shouldn't you be above such petty retribution?!"
The crowds murmured lightly in disappointment before dispersing, a few of the men scowling and threatening under their breath. I ignored both they and Kado, turning to detach the young rebel from my side. "Who are you?" I demanded, uncaring if my tones were rude.
The girl bowed her way to the ground in subjugation, eyes angling up only briefly; in what I suspected then and know for certain now was challenge. "I am only an honored widow, Heika."
Perhaps it was the more than blatantly implied mockery that cracked my control, or the fact that she looked achingly similar to Akemi, or perhaps it was simply her connection to the bastard who had murdered my soul mate, but I…I broke apart for a moment. I drew the katana I carried on my raw and tender back, and lifted it…and then it was Kado of all of them that drew forward, grasping my wrists and wresting the sword from my grip with surprising ease. For a long moment that seemed all he would do, the stranger who had his father's dignity and a burning desire for revenge that I understood all too well, with my fists balled and ready to hit and the murmured fear of hundreds surrounding us. Eventually, I reached out to take the weapon back, and he threw it forward, striking my face with its tip once, twice, thrice. It stung, brutally, and even as I struck the blade aside, I felt tears rise to my eyes and fall just as quickly.
We stood there for a long moment, Kado-sama and I, with that katana at my throat, before he gently replaced it in Xena's sheath on my back. "Do not spoil your own lesson, Sensei." He advised softly, sharply.
"I'm sorry." I think those were my words to the woman I had threatened, but they are obscured by time and the memory of her eyes. Terrified, disappointed, yet ferocious, the eyes of a young dead creature that had no dignity but that of worship, and even that small dignity I had attempted to take from her in a moment of blind rage. How I hated the moments of blind rage…the warrior moments. It seemed ceaselessly unfair, the lack of control, the inner warfare between all I had been and what I had become.
Bending, I made small sounds in my throat to comfort her, as I had done with Hope and Eve. Eventually, she drew forward again, and I took her hands in mine, forcing a smile. "Tell me how I can make it up to you." I coaxed, and she frowned upward, youthful superciliousness littering her voice, accentuated by a tongue I had only just learned.
"Take me with you."
It was I who drew back then, standing and staring down at her. "No. I won't do that. I would rather kill you."
Her laughter was soft, abandoned. "If you leave me here, I will know nothing but suffocating ignorance."
"Treasure it." I turned, wanting as far away as possible. It was too much to take in at one time, Xena's death, and the sudden responsibility she seemed to have cast upon me, and the muddle of loathing and respect to be found with it.
"She said that you were wise, the Warrior Princess." The girl had come to her feet and followed me by then, dark hair tumbling free of its confines, and for the moment no one else seemed to exist in the world, only the pair of us and the Ghostkiller's son, at my shoulder, silently watching, tense but not striking. "Before the battle, she spoke to me. She told me to approach you. She said that you would understand me. I must leave here! This place, these people, will kill me! I was meant for more! She said that you would understand!"
That was before she knew who you respected, I thought darkly, but spoke only calm words, measured and distant. "She may have been right on at least one count."
I'm going to join up with Xena. I'm going to be a warrior, like her.
I was meant to do so much more…
I found myself sighing, meeting her expectant look with my best attempt at unsympathetic frustration. "I suppose you won't stay here?"
Her chin jutted out. "I would rather you kill me."
"Very funny. Don't tempt me." Turning away, I headed back off towards the docks, reassured by the swift parting of the crowds and the swift footfalls behind me. "I may never come back here, you know. If you have family…"
"I have no one now."
Once again ignoring the implied pride and insult, I focused my sternest look on her. "Somewhere down the road, when you find that you miss someone, you can remember that I warned you." Pausing, I had to take her in…pale, impatient, a weeping willow of sorts. "You need better clothing. Samurai wear for now, until you become accustomed to less modest gear. Those robes will cause you nothing but trouble. They tear easily, I think, and you won't be able to run in them. The way will be hard."
She only smiled at me, brilliantly and oddly, and it was Kado who spoke, voice tense and hard.
"This one does not deserve to wear the attire of a samurai."
"And I do?" His judgment struck me as enormously comical, despite my tiredness and dark mood.
"You are not Xena, true." I felt his eyes boring into me, even as I stiffened. "Xena had no master, she was fully attuned to bushido, the way of the warrior…but it went far deeper. The Warrior Princess died as she lived, with complete sincerity and honor. There was never any doubt for your friend, she came to know her path and recognize the likelihood of its destination. You do not find the same calm within you when faced by battle or death. You are servant to your doubts. Yet…you are her chosen. You are worthy. But her…this one…" His hand waved rudely, and I watched a crimson stole up my young foreigner's face.
"…may just be my chosen yet." The words poured from my mouth unwanted. The girl whom I had taken on as apprentice yet knew not the name of stiffened beside me, her breath sucked in so sharply I feared for her health.
"I do not believe you capable of such folly." His tones held genuine agitation.
I had to mask another sigh of impatience. "Kado, I am not a naïve farm girl. This woman…child…is only following what she was taught. Apparently Xena's death was honorable enough to everyone but you and I. I can't very well punish her for the only customs she has ever known. I trust Xena. If she sent her to me, she has a reason."
Or two, I secretly feared, but it seemed something best kept from the Ghost killer's son. He was reckless enough as it was, and I was tired of death in my shadow.
"She is a Heika…a queen!" The foreign girl burst out. "You should respect her honored opinion!"
Kado-sama sighed. "You will come to regret this."
I somehow suspected that he was all too right, but only nodded and smiled slightly, drawing away. "We need horses if they can be arranged, and provisions. You won't see either of us again."
"We leave so soon?" My new companion stared at me.
"I have no reason to stay here." For a moment, Xena's armor and in truth Xena's spirit made me doubt my own declaration, but I forced myself to rally and remain calm. Perhaps only Kado noticed the shaking of my fingers on the chakram, his lips softened briefly, head angling upward. "And it's a long road home. I need to go to Chin, find Eve…"
Eve.
I had no way of knowing then whether or not she already knew of her mother, if Michael or Ares or Aphrodite had gotten to her first, but I prayed not. Eve was all I had left at that point, and I wanted to be there to catch the first tears. Xena had always caught mine. A warm, sharp pain radiated from my hand, and I glanced down to see that I had gripped the chakram tightly enough to slice into the dirty and cold skin. I only smeared the blood on the blue tunic I had worn for the past day and night, removing it and dropping it into the water that lapped at the edge of the pier.
The chakram would remain bloody and untouched until long after Japa was a bitter memory.
Summary: For Gabrielle, Xena's end was only the beginning. A Friend In Need spoilers. Beginning of a series.
*
From day to day my journey,
The long pilgrimage before me.
From night to night, my journey,
The stories that will never be again.
(Enya, Book of Days)
*
Anastay, my daughter of resurrection.
You are like her; however you might in future years seek to deny the resemblance, with your piercing gaze and might of will. These scrolls…my final, and the ones I know will be the most difficult for you to accept.
You are but hours old, nestled against my breast, and they try to tell me that I have years of motherhood to come in which to savor these small joys. I know better, the years passed have taught me as much. Nothing can last that is worth having. Oh, that I could stay with you…what will you be? A warrior? Where will you travel? In your sister's footsteps, to distant lands with words of peace?
Both, perhaps. Your eyes tell me that you are no warrior, but they also speak of no rest. That, I think, is why I have been able to nurse you, claim you, and accept you for what you are now…my legacy…and not what you once were, the soul of Xena. In the short time I have had you by my side; I have loved you freely, and selfishly. You are everything that was, and all that can ever be. I know that the others wait just beyond the doorway, wondering how I can lay claim to loving you so, if I've loved anything or anyone at all since Xena.
I have, by the gods. I have. Just not enough.
She was my soul mate, Anastay. Someday I hope you may find someone to share the bond with, someone who can teach you the depths of devotion the fates decree I can never show you myself.
Xena and I…we were bonded, heart to heart and soul to soul, by blood spilled and by tears brushed away, and by lack of it all. We were friends, and lovers, mother and child, and enemies as well. It was beyond anything within my power to put to word or scroll.
And then she left my side.
Japa was an utterly foreign land of mist and strange beauty. I never dreamed that it would be the last battlefield of the warrior princess, yet eventually; I thought it would prove the same for myself.
The first hours after sunset were the most hellish. A few moments after Xena had disappeared, I pulled myself together and uncapped the urn holding her ashes, dipping my hand into the collection of powder and bones, lifting spare amounts to my fingertips and turning to sprinkle them into the fountain. Nothing happened, and I forced myself to shut the urn, shuddering as I dropped it and scrubbed my hands free of the remnants in a crystalline clean expanse of water.
Somehow, I later gathered the strange little collection of ashes and descended Fuji…even Olympus had never seemed so utterly desolate and otherworldly. I recall that the pathway back down to Higuchi was filled with silent spectators, men, women, and children with shy eyes and gaping, staggered expressions, some carrying lanterns, others tributes of cherry blossoms. It seemed incomprehensible to them that such a warrior had been bested, and even more incomprehensible that Yodoshi's reign of terror was finished.
I pushed past them, brushing off their questions and pleas, their small pities, and went in search of Xena's armor. The field was bloody, and stank of rotting death, but I followed instinct to a position well away from the place of her death and dug bare-handed for hours, determined to retrieve what Xena had so willingly abandoned. If she had intended to symbolize final burials, I intended to rip the symbolism from her. Despite my earlier state of confusion while watching the sunset, dawn had broken the dam of emotions…I fought Xena's pleas to accept the inevitable, fought requiem with all I had in me. I wanted them…her…to feel my pain, I was afraid to let go of it. Afraid to risk giving in, afraid to accept the fact that I was more alone than I had ever been since Hope and the rift, and utterly terrified of acknowledging that for the first time since I had joined up with her, there was to be no end to that loneliness.
Xena was gone, forever. Oh, I knew even then that there would be other incarnations, other legends with her wild spirit and perhaps even dark hair and eyes as deep and clear as Poseidon's realm. But even now, the fact remains as it did then…Xena is gone, forever. What she embodied can never be recaptured.
I had her scabbard packed onto my back when she appeared to me, kneeling at my side and halting my hands. "Leave the rest there." Her voice was flinty, familiar, and it startled me far more than the touch.
I leapt up, fell back momentarily, before regaining some semblance of control and returning her look. "You may need your armor someday."
"No." Xena shook her head, a wry smile twisting her lips. "I won't."
"Xena." I wanted to take hold of her, shake her, but I somehow thought that it would do no good. Whether Xena was beyond heeding such…earthly…pleas, or was simply blocking them away as she did so many of the things that could hurt her, I had no idea, but it was clear that my words would have no effect. She was a beautiful, stubborn spirit.
"Gabrielle." Her voice hardened, glare blue and brilliant and unyielding. Greater warriors than I had been felled by that glare, and I was hardly immune to its effect, even knowing her as well as I did….as well as I had thought I knew her. "You once made me promise that if something happened to you, I would not become a monster. I'm only asking you the same. I promised you. You promise me, Gabrielle."
"Things were so different then."
"Yes, they were. We became different people. You've become a far stronger person than I ever was. I didn't believe myself capable of upholding that promise…I wasn't capable. Each time I lost you, lost my family, I lost more and more of myself. But you're stronger, Gabrielle." Her words had become fierce and rushed, eyes glimmering just as they had on Mount Fuji. "And you can't begin to conceive of what the fates have planned for you now. Keep your strength for the battles to come."
"I want you by my side for those battles, Xena."
"You don't need me by your side, when you've got me in your heart, in your mind. Everything I knew I gave to you. I can't stay around and limit you, Gabrielle. I can't have you looking over your shoulder for my opinion on every battle, every strategy. That's the surest way to lead you into a fatal mistake. That, I will not do."
"So you're…you're just going to leave, is that it, after you swore I wouldn't lose you?" My voice must have broken, I know my heart did.
"I'm already partly gone." Those few words were far softer and far more cutting than any of the rest had been, and she shook her head, smiling sadly. "And soon I won't be tied here at all. You'll learn to move on, Gabrielle. I promise you that. I promise you that the pain isn't forever."
"Don't leave me now, Xena." I pleaded, terrified by her words and all that they implied.
"I'm not going to leave you entirely until you're ready, bard."
"Gods, I must sound like an orphaned child!" I flew into frenzy in that instant, kicking the dirt beneath my boots with too much force, successfully concealing the formerly half buried armor.
Her smile slanted. "I have a habit of leaving those around."
I had to laugh, if painfully, dusting off my hands and knees. "What am I going to do without you, Xena?"
"Live." Xena said simply, reaching out to tap my cheek, a touch barely there. "Live."
And then she was gone again, and my mood no better than ever as I marched back towards Higuchi. The closer I got the more riled I felt, the more frustrated. I was at an absolute loss.
In the end, it wasn't Xena who first forced me to look past my own moodiness and discontent after all…it was a conflict of a different nature. It was a street, one of Higuchi's scorched ones, and the crowds were brushing forward, jeering and chiding. By the time I had shaken free of my reverie and put a hand to the chakram at my hip, the fracas was louder, the spectators circling around two figures in the middle of the thoroughfare. The larger…and armed…of the two I recognized at once, having spoken to him many times before the battle. Then Kado, Ghost killer's son, had seemed a gentle sort. At that moment, in a Higuchi plaza, he appeared to be attempting murder.
"What do you think you're doing?!" My voice must have been loud enough, the crowds parted with astonishing swiftness, allowing met to stride up and pull him away from the girl he held in a choke hold.
The young woman scrambled to her feet and rushed to my side, taking cover behind me, gasping and wide-eyed. Though I had to fight back a kernel of irritation at her nearness and the distraction, I faced Kado with a composed face and what I hoped were calm tones. "What did she do to you?"
"She was with the coward who killed Xena." My young bushi acquaintance spat, shaking the katana he held…Xena's, I realized. It did not help my mood.
"And he at least wielded his weapon to destroy warriors, instead of stabbing at mere spirits and threatening the weak!" The girl cried out from behind me.
"Stop it." Perhaps my voice started out at a whisper, but neither appeared to be listening…the crowds pressed in, noise greater than ever, and Kado practically lunged to my rear in an attempt to grab his victim. With a kick that would have done Xena proud, she broke free of him in an instant, robes swirling as she dove to my other side. "He had courage!"
"Then you will be honored to join him in death."
"Stop it, both of you!" When even a shout failed to draw them away from the confrontation, I grabbed the young samurai hopeful by his tunic and shook. "Look at you! Is this honorable, attacking an unarmed girl before hundreds?"
Eyes narrowing, Kado nonetheless stepped back, head snapping back sharply at the rebuke. Glaring at him, I turned and faced the mass of spectators. "And you! Were all you fine samurai going to stand there and let her be slaughtered? Shouldn't you be above such petty retribution?!"
The crowds murmured lightly in disappointment before dispersing, a few of the men scowling and threatening under their breath. I ignored both they and Kado, turning to detach the young rebel from my side. "Who are you?" I demanded, uncaring if my tones were rude.
The girl bowed her way to the ground in subjugation, eyes angling up only briefly; in what I suspected then and know for certain now was challenge. "I am only an honored widow, Heika."
Perhaps it was the more than blatantly implied mockery that cracked my control, or the fact that she looked achingly similar to Akemi, or perhaps it was simply her connection to the bastard who had murdered my soul mate, but I…I broke apart for a moment. I drew the katana I carried on my raw and tender back, and lifted it…and then it was Kado of all of them that drew forward, grasping my wrists and wresting the sword from my grip with surprising ease. For a long moment that seemed all he would do, the stranger who had his father's dignity and a burning desire for revenge that I understood all too well, with my fists balled and ready to hit and the murmured fear of hundreds surrounding us. Eventually, I reached out to take the weapon back, and he threw it forward, striking my face with its tip once, twice, thrice. It stung, brutally, and even as I struck the blade aside, I felt tears rise to my eyes and fall just as quickly.
We stood there for a long moment, Kado-sama and I, with that katana at my throat, before he gently replaced it in Xena's sheath on my back. "Do not spoil your own lesson, Sensei." He advised softly, sharply.
"I'm sorry." I think those were my words to the woman I had threatened, but they are obscured by time and the memory of her eyes. Terrified, disappointed, yet ferocious, the eyes of a young dead creature that had no dignity but that of worship, and even that small dignity I had attempted to take from her in a moment of blind rage. How I hated the moments of blind rage…the warrior moments. It seemed ceaselessly unfair, the lack of control, the inner warfare between all I had been and what I had become.
Bending, I made small sounds in my throat to comfort her, as I had done with Hope and Eve. Eventually, she drew forward again, and I took her hands in mine, forcing a smile. "Tell me how I can make it up to you." I coaxed, and she frowned upward, youthful superciliousness littering her voice, accentuated by a tongue I had only just learned.
"Take me with you."
It was I who drew back then, standing and staring down at her. "No. I won't do that. I would rather kill you."
Her laughter was soft, abandoned. "If you leave me here, I will know nothing but suffocating ignorance."
"Treasure it." I turned, wanting as far away as possible. It was too much to take in at one time, Xena's death, and the sudden responsibility she seemed to have cast upon me, and the muddle of loathing and respect to be found with it.
"She said that you were wise, the Warrior Princess." The girl had come to her feet and followed me by then, dark hair tumbling free of its confines, and for the moment no one else seemed to exist in the world, only the pair of us and the Ghostkiller's son, at my shoulder, silently watching, tense but not striking. "Before the battle, she spoke to me. She told me to approach you. She said that you would understand me. I must leave here! This place, these people, will kill me! I was meant for more! She said that you would understand!"
That was before she knew who you respected, I thought darkly, but spoke only calm words, measured and distant. "She may have been right on at least one count."
I'm going to join up with Xena. I'm going to be a warrior, like her.
I was meant to do so much more…
I found myself sighing, meeting her expectant look with my best attempt at unsympathetic frustration. "I suppose you won't stay here?"
Her chin jutted out. "I would rather you kill me."
"Very funny. Don't tempt me." Turning away, I headed back off towards the docks, reassured by the swift parting of the crowds and the swift footfalls behind me. "I may never come back here, you know. If you have family…"
"I have no one now."
Once again ignoring the implied pride and insult, I focused my sternest look on her. "Somewhere down the road, when you find that you miss someone, you can remember that I warned you." Pausing, I had to take her in…pale, impatient, a weeping willow of sorts. "You need better clothing. Samurai wear for now, until you become accustomed to less modest gear. Those robes will cause you nothing but trouble. They tear easily, I think, and you won't be able to run in them. The way will be hard."
She only smiled at me, brilliantly and oddly, and it was Kado who spoke, voice tense and hard.
"This one does not deserve to wear the attire of a samurai."
"And I do?" His judgment struck me as enormously comical, despite my tiredness and dark mood.
"You are not Xena, true." I felt his eyes boring into me, even as I stiffened. "Xena had no master, she was fully attuned to bushido, the way of the warrior…but it went far deeper. The Warrior Princess died as she lived, with complete sincerity and honor. There was never any doubt for your friend, she came to know her path and recognize the likelihood of its destination. You do not find the same calm within you when faced by battle or death. You are servant to your doubts. Yet…you are her chosen. You are worthy. But her…this one…" His hand waved rudely, and I watched a crimson stole up my young foreigner's face.
"…may just be my chosen yet." The words poured from my mouth unwanted. The girl whom I had taken on as apprentice yet knew not the name of stiffened beside me, her breath sucked in so sharply I feared for her health.
"I do not believe you capable of such folly." His tones held genuine agitation.
I had to mask another sigh of impatience. "Kado, I am not a naïve farm girl. This woman…child…is only following what she was taught. Apparently Xena's death was honorable enough to everyone but you and I. I can't very well punish her for the only customs she has ever known. I trust Xena. If she sent her to me, she has a reason."
Or two, I secretly feared, but it seemed something best kept from the Ghost killer's son. He was reckless enough as it was, and I was tired of death in my shadow.
"She is a Heika…a queen!" The foreign girl burst out. "You should respect her honored opinion!"
Kado-sama sighed. "You will come to regret this."
I somehow suspected that he was all too right, but only nodded and smiled slightly, drawing away. "We need horses if they can be arranged, and provisions. You won't see either of us again."
"We leave so soon?" My new companion stared at me.
"I have no reason to stay here." For a moment, Xena's armor and in truth Xena's spirit made me doubt my own declaration, but I forced myself to rally and remain calm. Perhaps only Kado noticed the shaking of my fingers on the chakram, his lips softened briefly, head angling upward. "And it's a long road home. I need to go to Chin, find Eve…"
Eve.
I had no way of knowing then whether or not she already knew of her mother, if Michael or Ares or Aphrodite had gotten to her first, but I prayed not. Eve was all I had left at that point, and I wanted to be there to catch the first tears. Xena had always caught mine. A warm, sharp pain radiated from my hand, and I glanced down to see that I had gripped the chakram tightly enough to slice into the dirty and cold skin. I only smeared the blood on the blue tunic I had worn for the past day and night, removing it and dropping it into the water that lapped at the edge of the pier.
The chakram would remain bloody and untouched until long after Japa was a bitter memory.