So I'm dragging it out a little more. As usual, nothing is mine except what no one else wants.
Also remember this is now rated M due to violence and I don't intend on painting anything with glitter to make it less upsetting.
Xena sat down on the floor next to Gabrielle's bed and took to stripping her friend of her wet clothes and trying to dry her hair with a sheet she pulled from the other bed. After getting Gabrielle's blond locks as dry as she could, she squeezed her own hair out into the sheet and then threw her own blanket on top of the others that were piled on top of Gabrielle. The fire Joxer built was huge and blazing in mad abandon, quickly turning the cottage into a large log-and-tar heat locker. Xena was still shivering, though, and took the remaining blanket off the other bed and wrapped herself in it, leaving the mattress completely naked.
Time seemed to nearly stop as Xena waited for Joxer to get back. She was concerned for his health, too, now that she was warm and lucid, knowing he'd been in those cold rapids in nothing but his pants and the boots he was still walking around in. Gabrielle, Xena guessed, had slipped into a coma from the cold or shock, but was breathing deeply now and beginning to get some color other than blue back into her face. Xena watched her intensely from her bedside, her chin resting on the mattress near Gabrielle's face, she stroked Gabrielle's hair and tried to will her back from the brink of death.
"C'mon, Gabrielle," she whispered, "please, don't give in now." Hot tears sprinted down her cheeks. "You can't leave me here without you, Gabrielle, I'm not ready. I'm not strong enough." She wiped her face with her arm and then rested her head on her elbow on the mattress where she could still watch her friend. Soon the rhythmic sound of her breathing lulled Xena into a deep, hard sleep.
Joxer returned soon after, finding Xena on the floor next to Gabrielle's bed, wrapped in a sheet, the drying tears on her face lit up in the firelight like glass. He pulled a pile of blankets from a leather bag he'd procured and wrapped Xena in another thick woolen blanket. She didn't stir a bit. He left the room and changed his own clothes, then put a cauldron of stew on the fireplace and hung his boots off the mantle to drip dry. He sat down in the big chair that he dragged up to where he could stir the stew from it, and wept bitterly, all the while trying not to wake Xena or Gabrielle. But it wasn't them he cried for.
There was no justice in the world, he thought. It was no random coincidence that he had been in this town when Xena found him. He was waiting for someone. To be precise, he was waiting for a funeral.
A week earlier, a letter had come to him in Athens from his sister, Mira. Her village had been plundered by a group of zealots looking for some kind of king. They slaughtered all the boys in the village that were about a year old and met a certain description. Mira's three-year-old son, Lucius, was executed along with twelve other boys. They were coming back to the cottage to bury him because it was his favorite place to visit. And no matter how much he tried to prepare himself, Joxer knew he would not be able to bear seeing the light of the family brought to town in a little box.
The stew was done cooking, and Joxer took the cauldron off the fire and put it on the table, poured himself a bowl of it, and then decided he wasn't in the mood to eat. He poured his helping back into the pot and looked around. Xena and Gabrielle were still sleeping soundly, but the meager furnishings and the lack of dry clothes for them unsettled Joxer a little bit. He put on his now-dry boots and went back to town.
It was not long after this that Xena was wrenched from her sleep by a blood-curdling cry. Gabrielle began thrashing in the bed and crying, cursing, muttering incoherent words. Xena wasn't sure whether to wake her or not, but the next thing that Gabrielle said made up her mind for her.
She called out for Xena in a long, pain -filled cry, and then repeated it, over and over, crying so hard her breath came in shattered waves. In all their travels and the peril they'd lived through and all the times Gabrielle had called to her friend for help, Xena had never heard her sound like this. Her own heart broke at the sound of it, and she fluttered around Gabrielle's head trying to wake her.
"I'm right here, Gabrielle, just open your eyes." She was shouting over the bard's calls of mourning, trying hard not to panic. "Gabrielle, you have to wake up. I'm right here."
Eventually Gabrielle opened her eyes, and looking at Xena, she caught her breath for a second. "Xena?" she asked, her voice raw from screaming; her hand drifted out to validate her but then shied away, unsure.
Xena took hold of Gabrielle's disbelieving hand and squeezed it tight. "I'm right here," she said.
"It can't be." She said, wanting to cry all over again. "They told me you were dead."
"No, I'm right here with you."
"But I saw your corpse. They showed it to me, hang-" she swallowed and tried again, "hanging in that device..."
"Who showed you?"
"Those men...I don't remember...don't remember what they were called. Xena, they killed you." She stopped and dropped eye contact with Xena. "...I killed you."
"What?"
"Xena, how are you not dead?"
"I don't know, Gabrielle, I don't remember anything."
"You--" she began to shiver violently. "You don't remember that place?"
"No, I don't."
For a split second, her face revealed a hint of satisfaction tangled in all the pain. "Good," she said. "Xena, I'm so cold." She turned onto her side and curled up, looking for warmth.
"Your clothes were wet," she explained, finding the stack of blankets and throwing another one onto Gabrielle, who grabbed a hold of Xena's had again when she was through fussing with her blankets. "When Joxer gets back I'll go to town and buy us both something dry to wear."
Gabrielle was drifting back to sleep, not registering what Xena was talking about. She pulled in her arm, bringing Xena's hand under the blankets; she kissed the deep purple ring on Xena's wrist and then tucked her hand against her throat. "I'm so sorry," she said, whispering, looking intensely into the warrior's blue eyes. "I should have been stronger for you." She broke into tears again. "Xena, I'm so sorry I killed you."
Xena could only cry in response. She didn't know what else to do.
.