So here's the chapter that makes me sick.

Apologies in advance.

Also, a small request for my readers: I really seriously enjoy your detailed reviews of each chapter. The specificity of your comments really helps me to shape the rest of the story, and I love you for it. For this chapter though, I am requesting that you keep your reviews free of spoilers, in case someone new comes along and reads reviews before the story. Next chapter you may continue your reviews as you like, (and as I like lol) but for this one, please keep it as ambivalent and vague as you can. THANKS!

Characters and such belong to universal, (I guess) and renaissance pictures (right?). Story belongs to me.

Flashbacks, from now on, are in italics.

It had been a good day. A stress-free day. They'd settled a town brawl that morning without drawing weapons once and spent the rest of the day a few towns over in an annual summer solstice festival. When it came time for them to leave and make camp, they were both full of ale and tales of men making overtures to them and giving them strange gifts during the day. They spent most of the evening laying beside each other, sharing stories and laughing, and fell asleep that way, with the dinner fire still burning at their feet.

Gabrielle kicked Xena and shouted as a small dart struck her. Xena reached for the dart to pull it out of her friend's neck, but stopped mid-motion as a dart struck her own neck, and her arm fell to the ground, useless. They were paralyzed.

Much of the journey was a blur, they had no sensation in their bodies whatsoever, but could see that they were being dragged by two men through the thicket back towards the village they'd helped. And then they were blindfolded and Xena could no longer tell which direction they were heading.

When her blindfold was removed, Xena was being strapped onto a table that stood vertically against a wall. Once she was secured, a young man stuffed some sort of salve down her throat that paralyzed her voice box. Then the men grabbed a hold of chains and ropes and pulled the table up along a track until Xena hung about four feet from the ground. A small window was opened in front of her and Xena watched in horror as Gabrielle was thrown in to a room.

Three men came at her and poured what was apparently the antidote to the poison in the darts down her throat. It took effect almost immediately and Gabrielle wasted no time taking the three of them down and running towards the door. She was thrown back by more men and held down a second time as something else was poured down her throat. Those men exited and another man entered, this one was taller and clearly the one in charge. He knelt down beside Gabrielle and petted and spoke to her like she was a child or a dog. It made Xena sick.

"Now look what you've done. You silly thing. I was going to help you and then you went and ruined it by hurting my men. Now everything is going to be worse. I really wish you hadn't done that. You made me give you this," he held up the wineskin the other men had discarded, "and it does very nasty things to your pretty little mind."

"Who are you?" Gabrielle asked, appearing distracted by something around her.

"I'm going to help you." He answered. "You and your friend have a sickness in your souls, and I'm going to take that sickness away."

"Xena and I are not sick." Gabrielle answered, swatting at her arms.

"Oh," he said, stroking her hair, "so there are two of you. And her name is Xena? Interesting."

For a moment Gabrielle thought she'd betrayed Xena and began back pedaling. "That was that woman in camp with me. Isn't that what you meant? But I don't know her that well. She was interested in buying a couple of my scrolls and ..." she trailed off. "Where did all these spiders come from?"

"Those spiders are divine creatures," he answered, taking her by the chin and turning her face to look at him. "They only appear when someone is not telling the truth." And then he hit her, hard, and left the room.

Gabrielle hallucinated alone for about twenty minutes before the tall man returned with two guards. The guards seized her by the arms and held her up to the tall man. "We've found your friend Xena in the woods." he told her. "She hurt some of my men, so she's being punished."

Someone in the distance cracked a whip and a woman was heard crying out.

"Oh gods," Gabrielle whispered and then fought against the restraint of the guards, "Xena!"

"She has told us that you love one another." He continued. "Is this true?"

Gabrielle was crying already, the drugs clearly messing with her emotions. When she didn't answer, she was struck in the face.

"Is this true?" the tall man demanded, then struck her again.

"Yes, yes." Gabrielle answered in pain, and then begged, "don't hurt her. She's my family."

The tall man laughed and then said, "You let us take care of her. These men are here to get the sickness out of you, and then you can help us get it out of Xena."

The straps around Xena's legs and arms were tightened, and she was forced to watch as Gabrielle was beaten and raped. Each of the five guards took turns on her, and before each one began, they said to Gabrielle, "I'm only trying to help you."

Gabrielle cried out for Xena, begged, pleaded, screamed, thinking somehow maybe she would hear her and come to her aide. Xena tore against the restraints, shook, struggled and wept, but was unable to get free.

The guards finally left, staggering in exhaustion, and Gabrielle was left alone for a whole day. Xena, on the other hand, was taken down from the table to be bombarded with psychological war, drugged, beaten, and tortured into utter exhaustion, and then, when the tall man became frustrated with her lack of "progress," she was strapped back onto the table and hoisted up to the window again.

The window opened and Xena watched as the tall man explained to Gabrielle that each time she called out for her friend, they would hurt Xena. Then they held her down, dumped more potion down her throat and took to assaulting her again. Gabrielle tried her hardest not to call out for Xena, but when the men brought in a wooden device and strapped her to it, she couldn't help herself, and screamed for her friend. They turned cranks and the joints of the table elongated, stretching Gabrielle's limbs as though they were trying to quarter her. They stopped when Gabrielle's leg dislocated and her wrists snapped, left her there for a few minutes and then returned with whips to strike her and men to violate her.

Each time Gabrielle called for Xena, the straps holding Xena to the table were tightened. Xena eventually lost consciousness and hung limp in the device. The next thing she knew, she was waking up back at camp.

Joxer returned to find Xena throwing up on the floor. He dropped the sealskin he was wearing at the door and ran to her, but Xena was diving towards Gabrielle. She gathered her blond friend up in her arms even as she screamed in fright and held on to her as they both cried.

"You didn't kill me," Xena cried. "Gabrielle, it was a trick. You didn't kill me." She asked for a horrified Joxer to bring her some rum, which she forced Gabrielle to drink, and then carried her into the alley as Gabrielle began retching violently.

Joxer followed them out. "What are you doing??" he asked Xena

"Rum makes her sick." Xena answered, patting Gabrielle's back as she vomited in the road.

"I can see that," Joxer answered, pulling Gabrielle away from Xena. "Why would you do something like that?"

"She was heavily drugged during her torture, this is going to get it out of her system fast." Joxer still thought Xena was a little too excited about making her friend barf in the street. "Run inside and get a blanket."

Joxer gave Xena a dirty look but then did as he was told. When he returned, Gabrielle was laying limp in Xena's arms. "You killed her!" he cried out.

"No, she's just exhausted." Xena answered condescendingly, took the blanket from Joxer and draped it over Gabrielle. "Help me get her inside."

Joxer helped carry Gabrielle back into the cottage, then became confused as Xena laid Gabrielle down on the floor in front of the fire, sat behind her and supported her back with her body. Joxer asked Xena why she didn't put Gabrielle into the bed, and from the look that Xena gave him, her silent answer was deafening clear. Xena needed to hold on to her.