Chapter 9
Hope rested her bloodied fingers on the hard stone cover of her mothers' sarcophagus, her long blonde hair hung in damp strings, and her clothing was covered in a fine layer of grime and stone dust from her efforts.
"There you go, Mother," she sighed. "Right next to your husband, where you deserve to be."
She ran her fingers along the carved lid.
"I know I told you before," she continued. "But I am sorry for all the pain I caused you and your family. I know I can never make up for it, especially now. But I can do my best to make sure no one else ever has to go through what I put you through."
She let a soft, bitter laugh escape her lips. "I don't know how much I can do to set right everything I've done. It's a lot to accomplish, and I don't think I can make a difference, even if I live to be a hundred.
I've never been alone before, Mother," she went on. "I'm not sure how well I'll do out there, on my own. All I can promise is that I'll try."
"Who said you were going to be alone?" A voice broke into her thoughts.
Startled, Hope wheeled around and found Xena standing at the entrance to the chamber.
"Xena," Hope stammered. "I was, I mean, I wanted to,"
Xena stepped around Gabrielle's sarcophagus and let her hands rest on the smooth stone.
"The last thing she wanted – that both of my parents wanted," Xena began. "Was for us to stick together."
Hope's eyes remained frosty. "You don't have to come with me. Chances are you'd be better off. Safer, if I wasn't with you."
"Yeah," Xena nodded. "That's true. What's your point?"
"Xena," Hope whispered. "Alexander saved my life that day. I never got to thank him as I should. I never got to try and make amends. Now, someone is out there, using my name, and Dahok's name, and starting it all over again."
"So let's go find them and stop them," Xena offered.
"That's what I'm going to do," Hope nodded.
"No," Xena said gently. "You're going to go find them and kill them."
"What's the difference," Hope asked. She turned and walked towards the exit. "Stay out of my way, Xena."
Xena sighed. The grief of her other losses was still so near, and yet, she couldn't allow herself to mourn as she should, lest she lose another sibling.
"I guess it was true, mom," Xena said, patting the newly sealed coffin. "The attitude does come from your side of the family."
Xena came back out of the tomb to find Hope tying down various pieces of gear on Gabrielle's horse.
"You know where to start looking?" Xena asked casually.
"I have some ideas," Hope replied.
"Such as?"
Hope climbed astride the horse.
Xena stepped up and grasped the reigns of the horse, looking steadily into Hope's eyes.
"Let go, Xena," Hope ordered.
Xena smiled and looked at into the horses eyes.
"Sappho," she said quietly. "You stay put, understand?"
Then she fixed her eyes on Hope again.
"Feels good, doesn't it," she said knowingly. "Being so angry all the time. It means you don't have to deal with all the other things running through your head."
"Let go, Xena," Hope said icily.
"I don't think so," Xena replied.
Hope jerked the reigns, trying to free them from Xena's grasp. The reigns snapped, Sappho blinked and jerked his head slightly, but did not move.
"Let go!" Hope demanded.
"Since when do you have any rights to anything in my family," Xena replied with ice in her voice. "This is my mother's horse, and now, mine. If you think you can just waltz in here and take it, you've got another thing coming."
Hope dropped to the ground and grasped her staff. She faced Xena and swung the weapon down towards Xena's head.
Xena simply leapt back clear of the blow.
Hope stared at her for a moment, her chest heaving. Then she straightened.
"Fine," she said hoarsely. "I don't need the stupid horse."
She began removing her sparse belongings and slung them over her shoulder.
She turned and stalked off.
Xena stepped quickly forward and tripped the smaller woman from behind, sending her sprawling.
"You aren't going anywhere," she said assuredly. "Not like this."
With a cry, Hope got to her feet, turned and attacked.
Xena shuffled back away from Hope's angry assault, and scooped up a fallen branch, blocking a vicious sweep of the staff.
The icy detachment that had been so much a part of Hope's persona seemed to vanish.
Xena let her sister expend her fury for a few more exchanges before she slipped in, slapping the staff out of Hope's hands and sweeping her legs out from under her.
Hope went down with a thud. Before she could get back to her feet, Xena had her by the front of the tunic, lifting her bodily from the ground and driving her back against the rocky side of the hill.
"Don't you think I want the same thing you do?" She cried in fury. "Alex was my brother, long before you came into the picture, and Gabrielle was my friend long before you were even born!"
Hope struggled against Xena's grip, but she was only slammed into the rocks a second time for her efforts.
"I know what it feels like to lose everything!" she screamed. "I know how it burns inside! I know the things it makes you want to do!"
Hope flailed wildly, trying to break free, but Xena held her fast. "I know." She said more calmly. "I know because I did it."
Hope screamed and suddenly Xena was flung away, landing several yards from the enraged young woman. At the same time there was a deep rumbling from within the tomb. A cloud of dust belched forth, obscuring Xena's vision.
When it settled, Xena saw Hope standing near the entrance, covered in a fine layer of dust, her eyes wide in amazement, looking down at her hands.
Xena picked herself up and dusted herself off. "Well, that was impressive."
Hope looked at her, and then back at the opening of the tomb.
"I," Hope stammered. Then she winced in pain. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."
Xena stood.
"It's alright," She said gently. "At least I know what Dad meant when he told you to watch your temper."
Hope sat down and fixed her eyes at the ground before her feet.
"All these emotions," she said in a defeated voice. "I can't keep them under control. It's like this weight on my chest. It keeps pushing, and pushing, until I feel like I can't breathe. And then it just,"
"Explodes," Xena finished.
Hope nodded. "It's just that. I never really knew…I mean.."
"I understand," Xena said as she got to her feet.
Silence settled cold over the room as Xena fell silent, the beer in her hand, long forgotten.
She looked at David, absently turning the glass on the bar beside him.
Her best friend for over two millennia stood next to him, her eyes narrowing with suspicion as the memories were reawakened in her mind.
A smile began playing at David's lips, though he didn't look up at the two women.
Xena's eyes narrowed. "The thing I don't understand is why you saved her, and then proceeded to put her through all that? From what she described, it was like torture."
"Sounds like it," David nodded.
Gabrielle looked at David carefully. "There's something you aren't telling us."
"Perhaps," David replied. He reached over the bar and drew out a cigar from a nearby paperboard box and lit it.
"Wait a second," Xena said, rising. "You said that you entered that prison and put Hope in precisely the right place to survive the building collapse, right?"
David nodded. "Yup."
"And you did lead her in the right direction to find someone to help her," Gabrielle added. "This man you described. Ian."
Again, David nodded. "Uh huh."
"Then all the other stuff?"
David puffed on the cigar a few times, his eyes studying the two women before him thoughtfully.
"I don't know anything about all that." He finally said. He pointed at Xena. "You'll note that I stopped talking, right after Hope left Ian and then you picked up the tale from there."
"Yeah," Xena nodded. "You stopped, so I figured that you were looking for what happened from our point of view?"
"Correct." David smiled.
"So you did want it from our point of view." Gabrielle stammered. "You wanted to hear it from us because you wanted to be sure that we were, um, are, who we claimed."
David smiled softly and looked into Gabrielle's eyes. "I knew that the second I looked here." He pointed at her eyes. "All that other stuff that you two went through with Hope and my little dreamscape training sessions, well?" He shrugged. "This is the first I've heard about it."
"That's impossible!" Xena said sharply.
"You came to her shortly after she left Ian to find us!" Gabrielle added.
David sighed and then, he looked up at them and his entire manner seemed to shift. His posture was more bent, less proud, as if he were weary. His clear eyes dulled a bit and when he spoke, his voice was deeper, and laced with a thick Scottish accent.
"Old Ian Macgregor of the Wolf's Head Dragoons, born in Glasgow in fourteen thirty seven." He said.
"Sorry to spoil your party, lassie," He said to Gabrielle. "But Old Ian is merely a character that I created for a Renaissance Faire I once worked at. Of course, I had to make him look different from me. I knew that your lovely daughter would be more inclined to open up to a stranger, than to the man she killed."
Gabrielle and Xena's mouths both fell open in shock.
"Let me see," David continued in that thick voice. "He was a dirty bastard, with long graying hair and a thick, bushy gray beard. He took to sitting at the fire during the night and, though I haven't been told officially, stews a wicked rabbit for an evening meal?"
He smiled and took another puff on the cigar as he brought the eerie transformation to a halt.
"Yes," Gabrielle managed to stammer.
"That was me." David acknowledged. "Everything after Hope left Ian's cabin is all new to me. I never had anything to do with that."
He paused for a moment and then quickly added. "Except for when Hope brought you into my dreamscape and I tried to delay you from interfering with your mom. That was me as well."
"And all those lessons?" Xena asked. "The skills she learned when she went through all that?"
David shook his head. "It was never part of my plan to teach her how to fight. That was the last thing on my mind. I didn't know what her intentions really were. I didn't point her in your direction until I was reasonably certain that she was sincere, but even then, I didn't give her anything to make her a threat to you."
"But David," Gabrielle said. "All the things she described to us, when she was in those dreamscapes were, well, they were things that only you would have known about. They were all things from this time?"
"The whole Dagobah and Matrix thing?" David replied. "Yeah, well, you got me there. Still, Star Wars was a popular series and the Matrix was a popular flick too." He shrugged.
They were all silent for a long moment.
"You know," David mused, rolling his cigar absently between two fingers. "Maybe we're approaching this from the wrong angle?"
"What do you mean?" Gabrielle asked.
"We're focusing on the "why's"," David added. "Why did she see what she saw? Why were the dreamscapes the way they were? Why? Why? Why?"
"Okay?" Gabrielle asked.
"Let's take it from the beginning," David continued. "First thing that happens is Hope somehow manages to contact the three of us, at the same time, and get all of us together tonight."
"We know that," Xena replied. "She appeared to me, and Gabrielle in a dream, and she materialized in your house."
Gabrielle looked at David and felt a shiver of anticipation run up her spine.
"I know that look, David," she said with a smile. "You're scheming again."
"Yes I am," David nodded. "This is the part of a mystery I really enjoy."
"Which part?" Xena asked.
"Trying to think like the person on the other side of the fence," David answered. He leaned forward and took a sip of his whiskey. "Okay, let's go through the whole thing again, but this time, I want to try and se it from the other perspective."
David looked at Gabrielle. "You'll have the easiest time with this little exercise, honey. You actually experienced the call from Hope's perspective."
It was a strange roll reversal as they each relived the experience of their dreams. David asked many questions, trying to keep them in the frame of mind of the person sending the call. In the end, when they all fell silent again, David sat perfectly still, his eyes focused inward in thought, the cigar forgotten between his fingers.
He came out of his introspection and looked at Xena. She had the same, calculating, thoughtful look in her eyes.
"Okay," He said with a wry smile. "Out with it?"
"There were three different types of messages," Xena said. She looked at Gabrielle. "You actually saw things through her eyes, but Dad, er David and I, saw things differently."
David smiled. It was a testament to how wrapped up in the situation Xena had become for her to refer to him as her father.
Gabrielle smiled. "That's an interesting twist."
Xena shrugged.
"And the messages were different types of messages," David continued. He pointed to each of them in turn. "You were actually drawn into her situation, seeing everything from her point of view. Xena, your message was a memory, drawn up from a previous incarnation, but because you had no access to the experiences of your previous life, you thought it was Gabrielle, I mean Angelica, that you were pounding."
"And you actually saw her, in your house, as some sort of projection," Gabrielle concluded. "But you thought it was me as well."
David nodded. "Three different types of messages to three different people all at the same time."
"Impressive," Xena said. "To do all that, at the same time, considering the condition she was in?"
"And the more I think about it," David nodded. "The less I believe it."
Both women looked at him questioningly.
"David, we all experienced these things," Gabrielle said.
"Oh, I'm not questioning that it was done," David said, and then his eyes stayed fixed on his wife for a long moment, and slowly, a look of dawning began to appear on his face.
"Son of a bitch," he sighed. Then he chuckled in appreciation. "Slick. Real, real slick."
"What?" Xena asked.
"Here I am sitting down with my wife and my daughter from a previous life, and it's so familiar to me, that I didn't even catch it until this moment." David replied.
"When I stop and think about it, there was no way that Hope could have contacted one of us, let alone all three. Not without help, anyway."
"But you said that she could have managed it." Gabrielle countered. "You said that sometimes it can happen."
"Given certain circumstances," David agreed. "But I was forgetting what I did to her the last time we faced off."
"Why?" Xena asked, ignoring the chill of that memory as it slid up her spine.
"Because I basically shorted out her ability to do anything." David replied. "I zapped her with every ounce of energy I had. Everything."
"So, she learned how to do it again, or," Gabrielle began, but she stopped when David shook his head.
"Think of it as a radio without a power source or an antenna," he said. "Even if you have the ability to tune in, you have nothing to receive the signal. That was what I did to her. I pulled her receiver and switched off the radio. The only think working would be the clock."
"And that was what you did to her," Xena nodded.
David nodded. "The only way she could have done anything is if someone else had helped her." He chuckled again. "Which means I just got played like a damned fiddle."
"Why do you say that?" Gabrielle asked.
"Remember what I said about the spell I wrote?" David explained. "I said it was a seeking spell, remember?"
"Right," Gabrielle nodded. "You said it was a seeking spell, not a summoning."
"Exactly," David stood up and began pacing. "I set it up so that I could travel to the source of the transmission, for lack of a better word. It was supposed to be a one person trip. Me and me alone, jumping lines back to wherever and whenever the signal came."
"I understand." Xena nodded. "But you said yourself that the little flash of memory I had when I was a kid, back then, was enough for me to create a link and come forward to now."
"Absolutely," David replied. "For you. Not for your mom, uh Angelica, I mean, Gabrielle. Shit, this is going to drive me nuts."
The women smiled.
David gestured to Xena and continued. "You had a link to this time, and you had enough previous knowledge in the arts of Shamanism to attempt to travel that link to the present, and I'll go so far as to say that you could also, if given time to set things up properly, bring someone back here with you."
"Thanks," Xena replied with a hint of sarcasm.
"My point is this," David continued. "You didn't make any preparations in advance. And, no offense, but you wouldn't have had the energy or the knowledge to overcome my spell without disrupting it enough to bring me back here and hit the brakes."
Xena felt a touch offended by that remark. "What makes you think so?"
David smiled. "How much shamanism have you practiced since you became a cop in this life, kiddo? You went out of your way to give me shit about my 'going pagan' whenever you could. You telling me that you're actually a High Priestess of the fourth magnitude, and you've been pulling the wool over my eyes for the last year?"
"Point taken," Xena nodded.
"Now," David continued. "Just so we understand what all was involved here. On my best day, with luck flowing out my ears, I might have been able to bring one of you forward without making you loony in the process. Might."
"David?" Gabrielle asked suddenly. "I have a question. It may or may not have anything to do with this, but, why didn't you say goodbye to Xena before we left on Charon's boat?"
"What?" David asked.
"When you brought me to Charon's boat, after, you know?" Gabrielle said. "I would have expected you to talk to Xena before we left."
"Honey," David said. "You lost me at the part about the boat."
Both women frowned at that statement.
"David," Xena said slowly. "I saw you lead Gabrielle onto Charon's boat. It was right after Hope and I left Ian."
"Hope and you left me," David countered. "I already told you. I was Ian. Those were the only times I was involved. After I helped her get out of the prison, while she healed, and when the two of you showed up in that dreamscape. Believe me, that was all I could handle. Now, what's all this about Charon's boat?"
Quickly, Xena recounted the tale Hope had told her about David being there to take Gabrielle to the other side when her time came.
David listened and was silent for a long time afterwards.
"And don't forget," Gabrielle added. "Xena, Alexander and I saw you standing above the tomb, during your funeral. We knew you could come back."
"Problem is," David countered. "I showed up at my funeral on my way back to find you after you got home. It was a glitch in my navigating the vortex that put me there to begin with. I dipped into my own future, so to speak."
"On your way into the past," Gabrielle added.
"In a life I supposedly never had." David finished with a grin. "Anyone dizzy yet?"
"I have a headache," Xena said, rubbing her eyes. "So, what do we know?"
"Several things," David smiled. "We know that my life and family in the past were real, because you're sitting here now, with me, and you remember it. We know that someone, or something, manipulated things to make me think my life then was a mind freak brought on by a four day coma.
We can be reasonably certain that the same entity manipulated events after I saved Hope, giving her some of the gifts she had possessed before I pulled her plug. And we know that the sendings we all received, and the spells that I used to trace them were tampered with while we were in circle."
"Okay," Xena ticked off her fingers. "Someone else started training Hope after you were done. Someone else got inside her head and helped awaken her conscience, and someone else was Charon's dock, escorting you to the Elysian Fields when you finally died." The last was directed at Gabrielle.
"So?" Gabrielle asked. "Who is this mysterious someone? And what does he or she want with Hope?"
"Always assuming Hope was the subject of all this attention to begin with," David finished.
He smiled. "We're looking at this as if Hope was the target. What if Hope was the bait to bring us out into the open and set up things for here and now? What if the two of you are the reason?"
"Still too many questions," Xena shrugged. "And not enough facts to point to an individual."
"Well," Gabrielle asked. "Perhaps the answers lay in what happened afterward? After you and Hope had your little fight outside the tomb."
"Yeah," David nodded. "What did happen after the two of you calmed down?"
Xena paused, her beer nearly to her lips. She took a drink, set the beer down and smiled.
"Quite a bit, actually."
END
