Part V
I followed her.
I tried catching up with her, but her angry strides were making it difficult. I looked back to the silluette against the light of Ares pacing in our tend. Good, I needed her alone, I thought to myself.
I continued moving forward, after her, like I had always done. She went up hill.
"Xena" I called, she of course didnt reply, she just kept moving up the mountain. "Xena.. could you stop and listen to me" I said again , she only grounted turning her head slightly to the side. I catched a glimpsy of her eyes and my blood froze with the aggression in them. I stopped mid-step. "I couldnt let you do it", I shouted.
She stopped for a second shooting back that it wasnt my decision to make. Turning around completely annoyed and furious to tell me how Ares was a bad influence and that we should had left him in the norse lands. How the good for nothing bastard had no right to meddle in her business and had tainted me in the process. I was reelling.
I openly laughed to her face. "Believe me, I was happy to help, he didnt need to coarsed me" I quickly responded, and if it wasnt for him, you would be death, I also told her out of spite. After all, what she was saying between the lines was that I was unable to think on my own and had blindly followed him into what she believed was madness - as if wating to keep her in one piece was the most outrageous idea that could had crossed my mind. I was dead furious as well.
She just took a couple of steps in my direction and opened her mouth to say something, but I stopped her, "you had always said that warriors make their own destiny, that dying was out of the question, that it was always needed to do everything in our power to stay alive and kicking, that there was always a way, that it was the essence of a warrior's honor, to be truth to theirselves and live to fight another day", I kept pushing about how She had drilled in my head that a death warrior was not a good warrior at all" , I had to laugh to that one, my brain caught for the first time that those were Ares' words, not hers. He had truly drilled those words to her to the point were she would lecture them to me through the years.
She was death furious, "I was going to go down fighting, it was going to be warrior's death. My terms. Even if it pained me losing my child, even if I was leaving you behind..." she paused herself to take air in and kept her tears in check, and to think of him for sure, my devious mind supplied. "It was the price I was willing to pay for those souls, it was me Gabrielle, I condemned them". She was going to keep with her charade, but she stopped and looked behind me.
I took the opportunity to pressed on while she turned to look in the other direction, a little ashamed, "your life is not a coin you can trade like it was nothing Xena! How..." my tirade dying in my lips the moment, she gasped with what she saw. The woods were all burnt to a crisps, there was not a single tree standing, only black carcasses and when the wind blown, we could smelled it too. We had reached the top. I had not even realised it.
She and I just kept gazing out, to the devastation. The desolation of a land newly destroyed. She was speechless and I felt my checks burning with shame, tears in my eyes. She saw me crumbled to the ground and took me in her arms. It was going to be alright. She was alive. And I felt relieved washing over me while she carressed my hair trying to confort me for my crime. Like always, we would be okay. I was forgiven.
We came back well entered the night. We found Ares deeply asleep in one of the cots. That was the first night Xena slept right next to me in more than a year. It felt wrong, and I could see that she also felt it. She was restless, and while sleep caught me fast, I could feel in my bones how Xena wasnt able to let morpheus take her soundly that night. Not with the easiness and profundity I had glimpsed her do whenever she laid with Ares.
When I woke up the next morning, Xena was already on her feet looking to different maps of the area, making notes. I noticed she had marked the area of the forest surrending us as a dead land. Again I felt the shame travelling up from the pit of my stomach. I guessed she had been up and about for long hours if she already knew the extend of the destruction. It had just bearly missed the citadel western fields. I took a deep breath knowing my efforts had not caused even more damaged.
I looked at her, she seemed to had forgiven me, as a small smile painted her lips for the brief second her eyes locked with mine. I felt relieved once again. I look around the tent and Xena followed my eyes. She replied to my unspoken question with a shudder. Under my pressing inquisitive eyes she supplied, "he is outside with his men", and of course he had come barreled in with a small army, that definately would have not settled well with the warrior princess, seeing Ares at the head of yet another army. She went back to her maps only pausing a brief second to rub her belly, and with a last glance I took my leave to see the arrangements needed to be done the moment she would say it was time to march. That day we had bought ourselves time. If anything, that fire had kept her alive one day more.
While I was out and about checking the supplies and making sure the wounded were tended for. I saw her observing him, her lips in a fine line, she might try and believe she was furious with him. She probably was, but she couldnt fool anyone, she couldnt stay mad at him for long.
In all the years I had known Xena, she had always have a set of emotions that she would circle around whenever it came to the God of War. Those were, and I knew them as the steps of a dance; annoyance, rage, spite but above all, there was passion. When it came to Ares all those emotions were also latent, but in different degrees and in the years after the twilight of the gods, more had been added, those I discovered one by one. There was love, understanding, pacience, and incredibly enough there was peace.
I had learnt to study Xena and her behaviors, I was a master understanding how the curve of her lips would turn upside while he was drilling with one of the men as a sign of masked entertainment, how while following him with her eyes she would counting mentally the steps he was taking to disarmed the warrior, how she would basked in a move masterfully done, and by the gods he was truly magnificent as always, god or mortal, it didnt matter. She truly enjoyed it every time. Enjoyed him every time. Enraged or otherwise.
He tried to speak with her, she turn him down. Words lingered like an almost kiss in his lips.
We marched that same afternoon to the gates of the tea house were according to our intel, the heart of the evil lived. Our way there wasn't cherrypicked and our small group of men and us were forced to fight against a rather large force. It was two to one, but we had the upper hand of having catch them by surprise.
Desmounting to fight back left us with precious seconds to spare, but I did see Ares searching her eyes, trying to gauche that this would not be a second attempt to a suicide mission from her part. She just looked up him and said his name "Ares", there it was again, the prayer, or just her making him understand that she was still dead set in saving those souls. He shook his head and took her in his arms. This time, she didnt turn and they kissed with the passion of hungry lovers. He said something in her hair, something I didnt quite catch. I remember I did see her nodding her head slightly. And a brief kiss to let her go against the will of his aching body. It was a small kiss full of everything they would not normally put into words.
And as battle continued and the forces of the enemy seemed to flater, I heard Ares histed with gutteral pain, a warrior had wounded him.
Like I said before, each time anyone dared to go up against him and was able to get the upper hand, it was like she couldn't understand it. Her vision seemed to blur, her instincts seemed enhanced and the fury, the fury in her eyes was like scorching fire consuming a dry field. I could relate to that, it had happened to me once, a life-time ago at a Roman camp where she had been injured.
This time was no difference, the sword bearded that dared to cut his leg was not even able to congratulate himself before Xena's chakram was foot deep into his back. A savage force behind that thrown.
And then I heard it, like the mantra it was, "Ares.." the scream got to my ears before I was able to turned to look at her, she had rushed to his side, cradling his leg, to try to stop the bleeding.
Ares from his part was pushing her away. We were not finished with the fight and like always, whenever he wasn't looking for her attention, there was this serious focus, this animalistic basic sense of war in him. You could see the god beneath him, pushing her, driving her, commanding her to go back and fight. To not lose focus.
"I'm a big boy Xena, I know how to dress a wound", his severe look and the strength taking away the cloth from her, maked her more annoyed than anything. "I know" her dry reply, looking into his eyes a second longer than necessary before squeezing his arm, giving in to his command and pausing to give him his sword before looking up and rushing back into action.
I had not stopped fighting during that ordeal, but I had slowed down to watch them. Something that during the last year I had started catching myself doing more and more.
A few minutes later, I saw him lifting himself up, using his sword for support, just in time to parry a blow. He looked for Xena in the field right after giving death to his opponent. He found her going against two well armed men. He sighed relieved and just like that he was back again on war mode, his pupils dark, his breathing controlled and walking with the confidence of the gods, minus the little limping you could see when his injured leg took the weight of his body on it. He was going to her. Not a surprise there. She, on her part, I saw her smiled his way from the afar. She paused a second before continue to dispose of first of the two men attacking her.
It was a true sight to the eye. He was. I parried another blow that I almost didn't see coming until it was inches from my midsection. I shaked myself out of my musings and kept fighting.
We won. Men tailed out or were dead on the ground. We knew they would keep coming. We needed to be prepared.
That night we thought about our options, we listened carefully to the tales. How whoever entered the house was either a dead man or a ghost. It was again down to a suicide mission. She was so ready for it. It was scary the calmness of her acceptance. We were not.
I went to scout ahead with her, while Ares set the small camp. We would strike down the following morning, it felt so wrong leaving her out of my sight. She was annoyed I was babysitting her, but his desperate voice kept raging in my head after almost a month "dont leave her out of your sight". I didnt dare.
He must had gather all this strength cause in that very moment, Ares popped out of the blue. For a second making me believe it was all those years ago, and he was walking in out if thin air, but it wasnt that. Those days were long gone.
We had been so caught up in our own musings that we didnt heard him coming. Something shift.
For his part, he looked like a bull this time, his strides solely focus in Xena, walking up to her. I brazed myself for new match of titans as I liked to call it. She, on her part, shot him a fierce look defiyingly, but when he got to her, against all predictions, he just fell to his knees before her.
He gently grabbed her by the hips , his eyes leveled with her belly and before she could react out of her shock, he planted a sweet kiss to the almost imperceptible life forming within her, murmuring something in a tongue that I couldnt understand, but one she seemed to recognized if we took Xena's unearthed gasp as any signal. And that is when it happened, one of her tears fell on her cheek.
Years later, he would explain for the sake of my scrolls that it was a prayer in the ancient tongue of the gods, a sacred plea to protect or die trying.
What I heard coming out of his month, left me awestricken for the first time since our threesome had started, he wasn't fighting, all fire gone out the window. He was pleading with her. He took her hands and not caring I was there to witness said "Since the dawn of time" there he was again with those cryptic words, that regale air of officialness, reminding us, her, that he had been a god. Maybe he couldnt help it. It was after all his nature.
"Since the dawn on time, I had dread this moment Xena." He breathed ouy, "Stop this senseless war". He laughed. Xena cupped his face in her hands, trying to bring him upwards. "Ares, this is my mess to clean up, you know this" she sighed trying to reason with him for the tenth time. Nevertheless he didnt let her talk as he continued, pulling her to his chest to make her look into his eyes.
"There is nothing for you here" Only death I supplied in my mind. "You can no longer keep flighting the gods of foreign lands, all my favors are used up and gone" he said with desperation, he kissed her forhead, eyes, cheeks, and finger tips. "I can only make you a deal" he smirked, the last one it seemed, "I will make sure my sister deals with the gods of these lands, that she make them release those souls, this is not a quest for mortals and we are simply that - mortal". He wasnt giving her not even an inch, he will not lose this battle.
He whispered to her having her now closed to him, his voice caught in his throat "I am not here at the end of the world to beg for my life Xena...my life is yours, I am begging for its life" he said placing a delicate hand on her belly, "our child's life, please Xena, let's go home." She broke, her tears were running freely as mine were. He was pleading. He was human. She understood. War was dead. The fight was over.
His words must had touched her immensely, and while she didnt have the voice to say anything, she hugged him with her tears becoming sobs, nodding imperceptibly into his arms.
What I witnessed that night was the ultimate end game. He had finally gotten to her. I couldnt had been happier for her. For the first time in those tumultuous twelve plus moons. I agreed with my younger self. I loved every second of it.