THE BETWEEN THE LINES SERIES
(or what happened between the episodes)
by Texbard
For Disclaimers, see "Looking for Trouble"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3.4 The Coming of Shadows
(post "The Deliverer")
G: “Everything’s changed. Everything.”
- The Deliverer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She’s sleeping now, albeit fitfully. After dinner, which neither of us really touched, I made some tea and told her I could add some herbs to help her sleep. She nodded a little and glanced up at me with those haunted eyes that plague my dreams most nights. Neither of us has been sleeping well and I don’t know which is worse, the sleep deprivation or the inevitable nightmares we both have when we do manage to give in to Morpheus.
After she drank the tea, she curled up under our sleeping furs and turned away from me. This is how it is every night now. I know she’s crying herself to sleep every night, and I know she doesn’t want me to know. Sometimes I try to comfort her and she allows it, and other times she shrugs me off. I don’t know what to do anymore.
Angrily, I poke the fire I’m sitting beside with a stick, and add enough logs to keep it going for a few hours. I pull my cloak more closely around myself, but there is a coldness inside that I know no fire or cover can touch. Before, she and I would keep each other warm through the night. Now — I study her. She’s curled up tightly in a ball under her sleeping furs, her back to the fire. From time to time she whimpers and shakes a little bit, but so far, the herbs are doing their work.
My bedroll is next to hers, but we no longer sleep snuggled up together. She sleeps under her bedding and I sleep under mine. The first night after we left the ruins of that godsforsaken temple, I lay down next to her and rolled over to comfort her, and she jumped. She almost screamed. I heard it, this little suppressed choking sound in the back of her throat, and I pulled away. We both mumbled some awkward apologies. I won’t be making that mistake again. I feel as if I need permission to touch her, and am only certain my nearness is welcome at all when she purposefully seeks me out.
She’s told me the whole story. All the pieces I missed while I was blindly waging my personal vendetta against Caesar. No matter what angle I take, I can’t convince her that none of what happened is her fault. From what she’s described, Khrafstar and Meridian, and that entire band of dirty cowards tricked her and used her. She thought Meridian was going to kill Khrafstar and she used that dagger to protect him. That is so clear to me. I’ve tried to tell her that she is in no way a murderer, that she did what she had to do to protect someone she thought was helpless. To protect someone she loved.
I haven’t said that last part to her, but I saw it, there in the hold of that ship when she was showing him how to use the pressure points to ward off sea sickness. I’d been down that road with her so many times before and I know all the signs of her crushes on pretty boys. In the past, it was annoying, and the more I grew to love her, the harder it was to watch each time it happened.
But when I came down the steps into that hold and saw them sitting there so close together, it was like a sucker punch to my gut. It hurt. Hurt to the bone. We’d made love in that inn the night before we met him. Bathed together and made love again the next morning after I chopped some wood for the innkeeper to pay for our room. Gods, her scent still lingered on me. I didn’t understand it, how she could be falling for him after all we’d so recently shared. Quite honestly, I still don’t, but there’s no room for those emotions now, and so I shove them down deep inside.
She needs me. Khrafstar was right. I took her to that place. If it’s anyone’s fault that Meridian is dead, it’s mine. I don’t know who this Dahak is. He’s not like the one god of David’s people, and certainly not like the gods I know, that I can see and touch and seek out. If I could seek him out, he’d be dead by now. Maybe he’s already dead. Maybe that explosion was the end of him, whoever he is or was. Maybe he wasn’t a god at all. All I saw were those flames, circling her. Maybe it was just another trick on the part of Khrafstar.
Whatever tricks were put into motion, I fell for all of them, hook, line, and sinker. I ignored every warning sign. Ares tried to warn me, twice. Boadicea lied to me about Gabrielle being brought back to that camp. Even Caesar unwittingly used his old line on Gabrielle, about dividing a women from her sensibilities. She repeated it to me and I still let it happen.
I wanted to defeat Caesar. Wanted to kill him. So I used Boadicea every bit as much as she was using me. And when Gabrielle needed me most, I wasn’t there. I allowed my hatred of Caesar to separate us. I left her with Khrafstar. I honestly wasn’t even sure I was going back for her when it was all over. After what we’d just been through with my old gang of baddies, and her seeing yet another not so nice side of me, I wasn’t sure if she really meant it when she said she wanted to be with me. She was questioning who she had become because of me, and I’m still not sure, despite her assurances, that she’s happy with what she sees in herself now. Or in me.
She says I’ve changed. After what we just went through, I’m not so convinced, and I’m not so sure she is either anymore. The bad old me was there, almost every step of the way. Maybe I’m not so good for her. Isn’t that why I so easily let her go with Khrafstar? She’d found what we both thought was a spiritual man. His words of wisdom, his devotion to his god, his dedication to something bigger than himself. Everything I’m not, or so I thought. And something she seems to need. Something I may never be able to give her. Khrafstar may have been pure evil in the end, but it doesn’t change the fact that something inside of her seems to need something like what he at first appeared to be.
I once again find myself wondering if there isn’t some safer, kinder place I should take her to, and for her own good, leave her there. Yet I know I can’t abandon her right now. We’re still a long way from home, and she’s more fragile than I’ve ever seen her. I was well on my way to becoming a warlord when I made my first kill. Mine is and was a very different path than hers.
I think this was probably inevitable, living the life we live. At first she followed after me like a star-struck kid. Then I took her into Amazon territory and she became an Amazon princess. And she learned to use an Amazon fighting staff, quite well, I might add. Honestly, as hard as she can hit with that thing, I guess a part of me should have seen before now, how very close she’s probably been for a while now to this next logical step. We end up in fights more days than we don’t. She may not have killed before now, but there was certainly a time not so long ago when she wanted to, and she’s witnessed me kill people dozens of times. We’ve talked about it, for the gods’ sake. We’re all capable of it.
Me, I wanted so badly to guard her innocence, that I never bothered to try to prepare her for this day. All I did was tell her how killing would change her. I warned her away from it, prayed to the gods to spare her from it, and did everything I could to step in front of her and do it for her, so many times. My soul was already stained, so what was one more person’s blood on my hands? Yet I led her into danger, time after time, and foolishly thought I could keep this day from coming.
Well, despite all my efforts it’s here now, leaving us both trying to figure out how to carry on in a world that has indeed changed, for both of us. Suddenly it’s too much, and I fling off my cloak and vacate our little campsite for the comforting darkness of the nearby thicket. I want Argo, but she’s back in Greece, doing whatever she does when I leave her to her own devices. I can’t hug my horse, and I can’t hug my girlfriend. So I find myself leaning against a tree, looking up at a moonless night sky, hugging myself and trying very hard not to cry in frustration.
I love her. I led her into a very bad place. And I’m not so sure she loves me anymore. What if Khrafstar had turned out to be who we thought he was? Where would we both be tonight? Would Caesar be dead? Would she be with Khrafstar and his people and I be alone tonight?
No, I wouldn’t be alone, not yet. I’d probably be camping somewhere with Boadicea and her people, using what I think would have been our victory as an excuse to get drunk for a few nights and forget Gabrielle, at least for a while. The loneliness would come later. Instead, I don’t even know for sure what happened to Boadicea. I saw those dark clouds, and I abandoned our army. I didn’t hear a battle, and ominous as those clouds were, and that explosion after I tossed Khrafstar into the fire pit, I have to think both sides scattered away from that place, to leave the fight for another day.
So in the end, everything I went to Britannia for ended up being for nothing. I used Boadicea, Caesar is still alive, and the person most dear to me in all the world is hurting more than I’ve ever seen her hurt, and I’m helpless to do anything about it. Worse, she’s hurting because of my actions.
And me, yeah, I’m in my own personal Tartarus, too. I think about our time so far in Britannia, and see so clearly now how easily I could slip right back into my old skin. I haven’t changed so much. Maybe I was foolish to ever think I could. I’m no Hercules, and I think maybe my bad influence on her outweighs her good influence on me. I need to think about what to do when we get back to Greece, yet the thought of leaving her for good is crushing my heart into pieces.
I hear the sound of retching and I sigh heavily. She’s been throwing up what little she eats after almost every meal. So much for those sleeping herbs. Wearily, I push away from the shelter of my thicket and make my way back to our campsite. She’s on her hands and knees, her body convulsing with dry heaves.
“Gabrielle.” I approach her and stoop down. I start to reach out and pause, then allow my hand to just touch her shoulder. “Let me make you some more of that ginger tea. It seemed to help some after lunch, didn’t it?”
She sits back on her bedroll and looks at me with eyes full of grief. “Tea to sleep. Tea for nausea.” She laughs bitterly. “Is there a tea to restore the soul? You seem to have a cure for everything else.”
I shake my head, feeling a sense of helplessness that I fear is becoming permanent. “If there were such a tea, I would have consumed a pond full of it by now.”
“How do you stand it?” She wipes her hand across her mouth and takes a few cautious sips from our water skin. “This feeling that you don’t deserve to live for what you’ve done?”
I pause while pinching herbs from a pouch and turn around to face her. “Sometimes I barely do. There were many days after I met Hercules, that I got up each day and weighed the pros and cons of whether or not to go on.”
“Do you still do that?”
“Rarely.” I turn back to the fire and the cup of water I set to heat.
“What changed?” She moves to my side and touches my shoulder. It warms me all out of proportion to what it is, these touches from her that are few and far between these days. “Xena, tell me. I can’t stand it much longer.”
What can I say that won’t make her feel worse? “There isn’t a one size fits all answer for that,” I finally respond. “You have to find a reason that is personal enough for you, to choose life over death.”
“What was your reason?” She gives me a little shake. “Please tell me. Maybe your answer will help me find mine.”
“You,” I mumble.
“Me?” She frowns and her tone grows skeptical. “What do you mean by that?”
“You were my reason to live.” I swallow and look down. “I was in a very dark place when I met you. You shed some light into all those hopeless places.”
She rolls her eyes and sits back. “What a mess.” For a moment she places her face in her hands, then rakes her fingers back through her hair. “Great.” I hear that bitter laugh again. “I killed Meridian. I killed my own soul. And now you tell me I’ve also snuffed out your light. So much for a reason to live.”
“Stop it!” I throw the herb bag across the campsite and it splits open, scattering dried ginger on the light breeze. “I can’t — ” I realize I’m scaring her, and I also sit back across from her, cautiously touching her knee. “I don’t know what to do to help you.” The guilt washes over me.
“I don’t know if you can.” She reaches out and folds her fingers around mine. “I never thought I’d kill anyone. Never. After all of my talk of revering life. Of breaking the cycle of violence. I don’t know if I can get past this. I just don’t know. I’m not who I thought I was, Xena. I went against everything I stand for. I’m no better than —” She shakes her head sadly. “Never mind.”
A dozen retorts die on my lips, some of them not so nice. I have to wonder just how little she’s thought of me all this time, given how many times she’s watched me kill someone. “No better than me,” I whisper, and scoot away from her, and turn back to the fire. “Here.” I hand her the cup of tea. “Good thing I got some herbs in there before I wasted that bag.”
“Xena, I didn’t mean —”
“It’s alright.” I cut her off. “Finish your tea and try to get some sleep. Maybe you’ll feel better in the morning.” I stand and don my cloak again. “I’m going to check the perimeter.”
“Xena —”
I hold up a hand and manage a smile I don’t feel at all. “No need to explain. I really do need to check the perimeter before I go to sleep. Go on.” I nod toward her bedroll. “I won’t be gone long.” I turn before she can respond, and quickly duck between some thick, leafy trees, out of her sight.
We both know I’m lying.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Up next: Secrets of the Soul (post “Gabrielle’s Hope”)
(or what happened between the episodes)
by Texbard
For Disclaimers, see "Looking for Trouble"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3.4 The Coming of Shadows
(post "The Deliverer")
G: “Everything’s changed. Everything.”
- The Deliverer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She’s sleeping now, albeit fitfully. After dinner, which neither of us really touched, I made some tea and told her I could add some herbs to help her sleep. She nodded a little and glanced up at me with those haunted eyes that plague my dreams most nights. Neither of us has been sleeping well and I don’t know which is worse, the sleep deprivation or the inevitable nightmares we both have when we do manage to give in to Morpheus.
After she drank the tea, she curled up under our sleeping furs and turned away from me. This is how it is every night now. I know she’s crying herself to sleep every night, and I know she doesn’t want me to know. Sometimes I try to comfort her and she allows it, and other times she shrugs me off. I don’t know what to do anymore.
Angrily, I poke the fire I’m sitting beside with a stick, and add enough logs to keep it going for a few hours. I pull my cloak more closely around myself, but there is a coldness inside that I know no fire or cover can touch. Before, she and I would keep each other warm through the night. Now — I study her. She’s curled up tightly in a ball under her sleeping furs, her back to the fire. From time to time she whimpers and shakes a little bit, but so far, the herbs are doing their work.
My bedroll is next to hers, but we no longer sleep snuggled up together. She sleeps under her bedding and I sleep under mine. The first night after we left the ruins of that godsforsaken temple, I lay down next to her and rolled over to comfort her, and she jumped. She almost screamed. I heard it, this little suppressed choking sound in the back of her throat, and I pulled away. We both mumbled some awkward apologies. I won’t be making that mistake again. I feel as if I need permission to touch her, and am only certain my nearness is welcome at all when she purposefully seeks me out.
She’s told me the whole story. All the pieces I missed while I was blindly waging my personal vendetta against Caesar. No matter what angle I take, I can’t convince her that none of what happened is her fault. From what she’s described, Khrafstar and Meridian, and that entire band of dirty cowards tricked her and used her. She thought Meridian was going to kill Khrafstar and she used that dagger to protect him. That is so clear to me. I’ve tried to tell her that she is in no way a murderer, that she did what she had to do to protect someone she thought was helpless. To protect someone she loved.
I haven’t said that last part to her, but I saw it, there in the hold of that ship when she was showing him how to use the pressure points to ward off sea sickness. I’d been down that road with her so many times before and I know all the signs of her crushes on pretty boys. In the past, it was annoying, and the more I grew to love her, the harder it was to watch each time it happened.
But when I came down the steps into that hold and saw them sitting there so close together, it was like a sucker punch to my gut. It hurt. Hurt to the bone. We’d made love in that inn the night before we met him. Bathed together and made love again the next morning after I chopped some wood for the innkeeper to pay for our room. Gods, her scent still lingered on me. I didn’t understand it, how she could be falling for him after all we’d so recently shared. Quite honestly, I still don’t, but there’s no room for those emotions now, and so I shove them down deep inside.
She needs me. Khrafstar was right. I took her to that place. If it’s anyone’s fault that Meridian is dead, it’s mine. I don’t know who this Dahak is. He’s not like the one god of David’s people, and certainly not like the gods I know, that I can see and touch and seek out. If I could seek him out, he’d be dead by now. Maybe he’s already dead. Maybe that explosion was the end of him, whoever he is or was. Maybe he wasn’t a god at all. All I saw were those flames, circling her. Maybe it was just another trick on the part of Khrafstar.
Whatever tricks were put into motion, I fell for all of them, hook, line, and sinker. I ignored every warning sign. Ares tried to warn me, twice. Boadicea lied to me about Gabrielle being brought back to that camp. Even Caesar unwittingly used his old line on Gabrielle, about dividing a women from her sensibilities. She repeated it to me and I still let it happen.
I wanted to defeat Caesar. Wanted to kill him. So I used Boadicea every bit as much as she was using me. And when Gabrielle needed me most, I wasn’t there. I allowed my hatred of Caesar to separate us. I left her with Khrafstar. I honestly wasn’t even sure I was going back for her when it was all over. After what we’d just been through with my old gang of baddies, and her seeing yet another not so nice side of me, I wasn’t sure if she really meant it when she said she wanted to be with me. She was questioning who she had become because of me, and I’m still not sure, despite her assurances, that she’s happy with what she sees in herself now. Or in me.
She says I’ve changed. After what we just went through, I’m not so convinced, and I’m not so sure she is either anymore. The bad old me was there, almost every step of the way. Maybe I’m not so good for her. Isn’t that why I so easily let her go with Khrafstar? She’d found what we both thought was a spiritual man. His words of wisdom, his devotion to his god, his dedication to something bigger than himself. Everything I’m not, or so I thought. And something she seems to need. Something I may never be able to give her. Khrafstar may have been pure evil in the end, but it doesn’t change the fact that something inside of her seems to need something like what he at first appeared to be.
I once again find myself wondering if there isn’t some safer, kinder place I should take her to, and for her own good, leave her there. Yet I know I can’t abandon her right now. We’re still a long way from home, and she’s more fragile than I’ve ever seen her. I was well on my way to becoming a warlord when I made my first kill. Mine is and was a very different path than hers.
I think this was probably inevitable, living the life we live. At first she followed after me like a star-struck kid. Then I took her into Amazon territory and she became an Amazon princess. And she learned to use an Amazon fighting staff, quite well, I might add. Honestly, as hard as she can hit with that thing, I guess a part of me should have seen before now, how very close she’s probably been for a while now to this next logical step. We end up in fights more days than we don’t. She may not have killed before now, but there was certainly a time not so long ago when she wanted to, and she’s witnessed me kill people dozens of times. We’ve talked about it, for the gods’ sake. We’re all capable of it.
Me, I wanted so badly to guard her innocence, that I never bothered to try to prepare her for this day. All I did was tell her how killing would change her. I warned her away from it, prayed to the gods to spare her from it, and did everything I could to step in front of her and do it for her, so many times. My soul was already stained, so what was one more person’s blood on my hands? Yet I led her into danger, time after time, and foolishly thought I could keep this day from coming.
Well, despite all my efforts it’s here now, leaving us both trying to figure out how to carry on in a world that has indeed changed, for both of us. Suddenly it’s too much, and I fling off my cloak and vacate our little campsite for the comforting darkness of the nearby thicket. I want Argo, but she’s back in Greece, doing whatever she does when I leave her to her own devices. I can’t hug my horse, and I can’t hug my girlfriend. So I find myself leaning against a tree, looking up at a moonless night sky, hugging myself and trying very hard not to cry in frustration.
I love her. I led her into a very bad place. And I’m not so sure she loves me anymore. What if Khrafstar had turned out to be who we thought he was? Where would we both be tonight? Would Caesar be dead? Would she be with Khrafstar and his people and I be alone tonight?
No, I wouldn’t be alone, not yet. I’d probably be camping somewhere with Boadicea and her people, using what I think would have been our victory as an excuse to get drunk for a few nights and forget Gabrielle, at least for a while. The loneliness would come later. Instead, I don’t even know for sure what happened to Boadicea. I saw those dark clouds, and I abandoned our army. I didn’t hear a battle, and ominous as those clouds were, and that explosion after I tossed Khrafstar into the fire pit, I have to think both sides scattered away from that place, to leave the fight for another day.
So in the end, everything I went to Britannia for ended up being for nothing. I used Boadicea, Caesar is still alive, and the person most dear to me in all the world is hurting more than I’ve ever seen her hurt, and I’m helpless to do anything about it. Worse, she’s hurting because of my actions.
And me, yeah, I’m in my own personal Tartarus, too. I think about our time so far in Britannia, and see so clearly now how easily I could slip right back into my old skin. I haven’t changed so much. Maybe I was foolish to ever think I could. I’m no Hercules, and I think maybe my bad influence on her outweighs her good influence on me. I need to think about what to do when we get back to Greece, yet the thought of leaving her for good is crushing my heart into pieces.
I hear the sound of retching and I sigh heavily. She’s been throwing up what little she eats after almost every meal. So much for those sleeping herbs. Wearily, I push away from the shelter of my thicket and make my way back to our campsite. She’s on her hands and knees, her body convulsing with dry heaves.
“Gabrielle.” I approach her and stoop down. I start to reach out and pause, then allow my hand to just touch her shoulder. “Let me make you some more of that ginger tea. It seemed to help some after lunch, didn’t it?”
She sits back on her bedroll and looks at me with eyes full of grief. “Tea to sleep. Tea for nausea.” She laughs bitterly. “Is there a tea to restore the soul? You seem to have a cure for everything else.”
I shake my head, feeling a sense of helplessness that I fear is becoming permanent. “If there were such a tea, I would have consumed a pond full of it by now.”
“How do you stand it?” She wipes her hand across her mouth and takes a few cautious sips from our water skin. “This feeling that you don’t deserve to live for what you’ve done?”
I pause while pinching herbs from a pouch and turn around to face her. “Sometimes I barely do. There were many days after I met Hercules, that I got up each day and weighed the pros and cons of whether or not to go on.”
“Do you still do that?”
“Rarely.” I turn back to the fire and the cup of water I set to heat.
“What changed?” She moves to my side and touches my shoulder. It warms me all out of proportion to what it is, these touches from her that are few and far between these days. “Xena, tell me. I can’t stand it much longer.”
What can I say that won’t make her feel worse? “There isn’t a one size fits all answer for that,” I finally respond. “You have to find a reason that is personal enough for you, to choose life over death.”
“What was your reason?” She gives me a little shake. “Please tell me. Maybe your answer will help me find mine.”
“You,” I mumble.
“Me?” She frowns and her tone grows skeptical. “What do you mean by that?”
“You were my reason to live.” I swallow and look down. “I was in a very dark place when I met you. You shed some light into all those hopeless places.”
She rolls her eyes and sits back. “What a mess.” For a moment she places her face in her hands, then rakes her fingers back through her hair. “Great.” I hear that bitter laugh again. “I killed Meridian. I killed my own soul. And now you tell me I’ve also snuffed out your light. So much for a reason to live.”
“Stop it!” I throw the herb bag across the campsite and it splits open, scattering dried ginger on the light breeze. “I can’t — ” I realize I’m scaring her, and I also sit back across from her, cautiously touching her knee. “I don’t know what to do to help you.” The guilt washes over me.
“I don’t know if you can.” She reaches out and folds her fingers around mine. “I never thought I’d kill anyone. Never. After all of my talk of revering life. Of breaking the cycle of violence. I don’t know if I can get past this. I just don’t know. I’m not who I thought I was, Xena. I went against everything I stand for. I’m no better than —” She shakes her head sadly. “Never mind.”
A dozen retorts die on my lips, some of them not so nice. I have to wonder just how little she’s thought of me all this time, given how many times she’s watched me kill someone. “No better than me,” I whisper, and scoot away from her, and turn back to the fire. “Here.” I hand her the cup of tea. “Good thing I got some herbs in there before I wasted that bag.”
“Xena, I didn’t mean —”
“It’s alright.” I cut her off. “Finish your tea and try to get some sleep. Maybe you’ll feel better in the morning.” I stand and don my cloak again. “I’m going to check the perimeter.”
“Xena —”
I hold up a hand and manage a smile I don’t feel at all. “No need to explain. I really do need to check the perimeter before I go to sleep. Go on.” I nod toward her bedroll. “I won’t be gone long.” I turn before she can respond, and quickly duck between some thick, leafy trees, out of her sight.
We both know I’m lying.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Up next: Secrets of the Soul (post “Gabrielle’s Hope”)
