Xena did not get to play against Jamaica. She had really hoped she'd get to play against Jamaica. If she had been in her right mind, she would have fully understood that it was a smart move on Athena's part. The team didn't need Xena to win and it was better to rest her for the upcoming semi-final and final games. But as Xena watched Eve charge at the Jamaican defender marking her and forcefully make her way around her, she wished she had been out there. The defender lost her balance and Eve had a straight shot at goal. It bounced off the crossbar but Varia managed to get a head on the rebound and it bounced awkwardly past the diving goalkeeper.

Xena watched Varia break into her normal celebration of screaming up at the fans. She began to run toward Eve but then reconsidered and slowed her approached as the rest of the team jump around Eve instead.

"And Varia off the cross bar deflection puts the U.S. at 3-0," Iolaus said excited over the broadcast.

"I would say that secures it for them," Melosa added. "Onto the semi-final."

"Yes," Iolaus added. "It looks like they will be again facing Canada but this time with some home field advantage at BC Place in Vancouver in three weeks."

Xena felt guilty on two fronts as she watched Vaira unsurely walk back to the midfield for the kickoff. She had been so selfishly caught up in her own feelings that she had basically forgotten about Eve. He had been her family too and she was more of a child than Xena had been at the time. She has also been such a fucking asshole to Gabrielle.

Kid didn't deserve that, Xena grumbled in her head. She knew she should make herself stop calling her a kid. It had moved past that. Sure, she was much younger than her, but she didn't view her like she did the other college players or professional rookies on the team. But that probably didn't matter anymore. She had probably pushed her away forever. And it wasn't like there was a lack of people around to jump to the young defender's defense and give her insight on just how much of an asshole Xena could be.

Xena felt an intense urge to look up over shoulder at the box reserved the rest of the team and the executives. Gabrielle had to be up there, but Xena didn't want the rest of the bench to see her looking.

"Ohhh," Melosa exclaimed in response to a hard tackle from Tara that sent a Jamaican winger tumbling forward.

"Agreed," Iolaus added. "A hard tackle from the American right back and…oh is it? It is. That's a yellow card for Tara. Feelings on that, Melosa?"

"I mean, no card is always better than a card, but it is her first of the tournament and it is unlikely she will start next game," Melosa answered.

"Yes, we've been told Gabrielle is expected to make a full recover and be game fit in time for the team's next match up against Canada."

The rest of the Jamaica game was uneventful and ended with the somewhat expected result of 3-0 in favor of the United States. Gabrielle hung around in the clubhouse with Aphrodite and the rest of the player, who had not been in the lineup. She did not want to admit it was so she could avoid seeing Xena, but Athena had told them they did not need to come to the locker room once the game ended.

Once the team bus had returned to the hotel, Xena had returned to her room but left the door propped open. She heard a distinctively Varia-sounding scoff from the hallway as someone walked past. A few moments later, Eve walked into the darken room. Xena looked up from aimlessly scrolling through her phone from her seated position on the bed. Her cousin was standing halfway between the doorway and the bed with her shoulders slumped and her arms crossed over her chest. She glanced over at the television, which was the only source of light in the room.

"Food Network?" Eve questioned her with a small smile.

Xena replied with a shrug. "'Hotel tradition'," she stated.

"'But this ain't no hotel for ya, honey'," they recited in unison Cyrene's respond to Lyceus' excuse for his phase of constantly watching the Food Network.

Eve began to cry and covered her face with her hand.

"Fuckin' come here," Xena demanded.

Eve rushed across the room to her older cousin and laid beside her with her head against her shoulder. Xena wrapped her arms around her. "Ya played good today," Xena told her. "He would have been proud."

Eve gave a tearful laugh. "You didn't get to play. He would have been disappointed. He always liked watching you more than me."

"Well, I wasn't the annoying little kid he had to share a bathroom with," Xena pointed out.

"Well, I could never be as cool as big sister Xena," Eve replied.

They both almost started to tear up again. But the aggressive intro of the next episode of a Guy Fieri show stated and they settled in to watch it and not think about how eight years ago they had together discovered that their family member had been murdered by going into the shed to get their soccer equipment.

"Thank you for picking me up," Gabrielle said as she peered across the darkened car at Ngara as she drove them from the airport back to Stanford.

"Of course, Gabrielle," she replied with a kind smile. "It's not a problem."

"I just really didn't feel like taking an Uber this time," Gabrielle added.

Ngara gave a small shrug. "You don't need to explain yourself to me. I know how national team camps can be," she replied with her slight British accent coming to the surface. "And you are still injured, aren't you?"

Gabrielle sighed. "No, not really."

"You did not play against Jamaica."

"Yeah, but I wasn't going to play anyway."

"Xena did not play either," Ngara pointed out, which seemed to blanket the car in an intense silence for a moment.

"Oh," Ngara finally added as a follow up. "Did it sour between the two of you? It seemed to be going well when she came for the UW game."

Gabrielle gave a long, exaggerated groan. "It was. And it like…almost happened but I was really injured at the time and then the next morning…she was well…it got weird because…"

"It was the anniversary of her brother's murder, was it not?"

"Uh, see that is exactly what Varia was saying," Gabrielle blurted.

"What?"

Gabrielle rolled her shoulders and sighed again. "She pushed me away without giving me any reason and like Eve did the same to Varia."

Ngara peered at her mouth agape for a moment. "So, they are truly together? You know all of Thalassa's tumblr friends would be elated."

Gabrielle groaned her covered her face again. "This is still so weird."

Ngara gave a warm laugh. "Hopefully, your roommates don't make it worse," she told her as she slowed the car to a stop outside her house. "See you at practice."

"Yeah, see ya," Gabrielle told her as she grabbed her bags from the backseat and closed the door. She turned and walked up her stairs to her house.

She unlocked the front door and stepped into the darkened living room. She audibly scoffed at the scene before her. There were two empty bottles of wine, and numerous beer cans spread among the various coffee tables. Based on the snoring, it seemed at least Orion and Twickenham were asleep despite a later scene in "The Favourite" blasting out of the television in the center of the room.

Euripides popped his head over the back of the couch and meet her eyes. "Welcome home, Gabrielle."

"You broke into my Blu-Rays?" she motioned at the television.

"It was Stallonus," he clarified.

Gabrielle laughed for a moment. "Why?"

Euripides pointed at him with the wine glass in his hand. "He was, we were…all a bit drunk," he explained. "And you kept saying how good the screenwriting was."

"Well, next time you guys want to get bombed and watch lesbian movies, maybe wait until your lesbian is here," she said as she shook head at him amused.

She walked through the living room with her bags. He forced himself off the couch and grabbed a bottle of white wine out of the fridge and a possibly clean glass off the counter and followed Gabrielle to her room.

"What are you doing?" Gabrielle asked him amused her as took the wine glass he managed to pour without slipping any.

"You have been on a journey amid the stars away from her humble dwellings for days, possibly having intimate encounters with the gods of the bedroom wall," he said as he dramatically gestured at her poster of Xena from the 2015 World Cup. "Pray Gabrielle, soccer bard of Potidaea, tell Euripides your tales from the city of Angels."

Gabrielle laughed but then sighed and shook her head. "It's complicated. Like literally nothing happened. It was too…complicated."

She took a long drink from her wine glass.

"It did not seem so complicated last time," he replied drinking more from his glass. "What changed?"

"She's just…she's been famous for so long," Gabrielle pointed out. "And like she's been through a lot of stuff and nobody ever really thinks of that on the day-to-day. And like, I'm not…like I could never be anything like Lao Ma. I'm…I'm nothing compared to that."

Euripides drunkenly hiccupped as he raised an eyebrow at her. "Well, I have no idea who this Lao Ma is—"

"Ugh, of course you don't," Gabrielle complained.

"That is not my point. She — Xena seems to like you and you seem to understand her very well. So, this other person does not matter. Be yourself and show her how you can be there for her. Why do you think me and all those sloppy boys live here? You are an excellent friend and an excellent roommate. You are excellent at everything and you will be excellent at whatever you becpome for your wall god," he added, drunkenly gesturing up to her poster again.

Gabrielle laughed. "Thank you," she told him. "Are you going to sleep on my floor or do you want me to carry you back to your room?"

He laughed as he held up his half-filled glass. "This is still here," he told her. "So, on the floor. No where else."

Gabrielle laughed and nodded. "Okay, catch," she told him as she very lightly tossed a blanket toward him.

Xena felt a bit like a creep walking around the baggage claim carousels in the Vancouver International Airport looking for the one for the incoming flight from San Francisco. She eventually found it and sat on a bench pretty far away from it, but she still had a clear view.

Goddamn, this is stupid, Xena had been telling herself for hours. She had Gabrielle's number. She should have just texted her hours ago instead of basically stalking her location at an airport more than two weeks after she had kicked her out of her own hotel room because she was still not good enough at processing her emotions about her brother's death.

Her mind wondered for a moment. What had Gabrielle done during that time? Probably attended her classes at Stanford, practiced with her college team. Maybe she had talked about her with multiple other college kids. Fuck, maybe she was too old for Gabrielle.

Gabrielle was relishing in the ice-cold water from the bottle she had bought from a shop on her way to the baggage claim in the Vancouver Airport. She had been planning to wait by herself for her bags and then take one of the cars the national team had already paid for to take them to the hotel near BC Place.

Gabrielle smiled but almost laughed as she spotted the woman clearly trying to hide her identity. But despite her non-descript black shirt and pants and Chicago Sky hat covering most of her face, it was fully clear to Gabrielle that it was Xena. She saw Gabrielle approaching her and stood, pulling her hat back to a more reasonable position.

Gabrielle scrunched her face and exhaled while shaking her head as she reached Xena. "So, do you want me to assume the flight from O'Hare landed recently and that is why you're here right now? Or can I acknowledge that you are being a creep?"

Xena did not want to laugh but it burst from her lips anyway. "Goddamnit, Gabrielle," Xena grumbled so softly and kindly that the younger woman felt the heat from her own face blushing.

Xena turned her gaze to Gabrielle's face and they meet eyes for a moment. Gabrielle felt the same panicked uncertainty she had felt around Xena in every moment they had spent together excluding the last few moments in her hotel room in Los Angeles just before they had…well done nothing. Xena seemed to reach for Gabrielle's hand but stopped herself and pulled her hand away. Gabrielle wasn't really sure why she still had such strong feelings about her, since she had been so terrible the last time they were together. But she reached out and grabbed her hand. When Xena peered at her questioningly in response, Gabrielle simple shrugged.

"I was a fuckin' jerk back in L.A.," Xena admitted. She looked down at the thin airport carpet embarrassed. "I'm really sorry." She peered up at Gabrielle bashfully. "I am sure you knew what that day was and ya were only tryin' to help. And…I'm sorry, Gabrielle. I fuckin' mistreated you and that wasn't right."

Gabrielle fought the urge to instantly embrace her, but she did not want to make it seem like her actions in L.A. hadn't hurt her. "I did know, and I do, Xena. It must be awful that everyone knows your personal issues and everything bad that ever happened to you, but I'm not just some random fan. Not anymore. I wanted to be there for you. I could have been there for you. You just didn't let me."

Xena sniffed back tears as she nodded in acknowledgement. Gabrielle took a step closer to her and pulled the brim of her Chicago Sky hat down a bit more before she stretched upward to kiss her lightly.

Xena placed a hand on her shoulder and held Gabrielle back after she initially pulled away from her. "I really don't deserve any of this, kid."

Gabrielle shrugged with a bright smile. "Am I allowed to fight that?"

Xena scoffed. "Well, it seems I ain't gonna be too good at stoppin' ya."

They peered at each other instantly until a loud beeping erupted from the baggage claim carousel behind them and caused them both to jump. They both peered at each other silently for a moment before stepping closer and patiently waiting for Gabrielle's bags.

"Well, it's kinda late. I guess we should get your stuff and head to the hotel?" Xena awkwardly suggested.

"From what SyFy channel programming has been teaching me since about 2010, it's probably nice," Gabrielle told Xena with a wide smile as she grabbed her team issued bags off the carousel. "Come on," she called back at her as she walked toward the exit.