DISCLAIMER: See Part 1.
Please send feedback to LadyKate63@cs.com

One look was enough to determine that Gascar's camp had been deserted for hours, probably since the day before. They might have left right after the search party had returned from the farm, Gabrielle thought as she looked around in the moonlight. The pungent smell of horses, mixed with the stale odor of bad cooking, was already wearing off.

The thing to do now was look at the tracks and see in which direction Gascar and his band had gone. She lit a lantern, jumped down from her horse and walked across the site, idly kicking at the trash that got underfoot: a broken wine jug, a torn boot, the remnants of a fried chicken.

She followed the tracks to the road. It looked like they were definitely headed toward the Horada pass, following the false lead.

Then she remembered how, seemingly in another life, she and Ares -- also mortal then, but accidentally and briefly -- were trying to find the enchanted scroll that had undone his powers and screwed up everything else. "Where'd you learn to read tracks like that?" Ares asked, and she proudly told him Xena had taught her. They started talking about Xena and realized, to their mutual consternation, that they had something in common: an unbridled enthusiasm for the Warrior Princess.

Gabrielle put down the lantern, sat down on the trampled grass, and wept silently.

Wiping the tears from her eyes, she thought that she should go toward Horada, look for other campsites, make sure that Gascar's men had indeed left the valley. But what was the point? Of course they'd left. She might as well admit it; the real reason she had gone out wasn't to make sure that the way was free for Ares to leave. She knew it and Xena knew it.

A chill wind blew through the trees and lashed at her wet face. Gabrielle hunched her shoulders, wishing she'd taken a cloak with her, wishing she'd never had this crazy idea, wishing she weren't such a damn fool. She prided herself on how strong she had become since leaving Potadeia, and yet here she was, getting out of the house like a good little girl so that Xena could ?-

She shivered and crossed her arms, trying to shield herself from another nasty gust of wind. The moon was hiding again. Her thoughts went back to the first and only time she had been with a man: her wedding night with Perdicas, kind sensitive Perdicas who had been so afraid to hurt her that it was a wonder anything happened at all. And it had been good, in spite of their fumbling; he had held her so lovingly in his arms, caressed her with such eager tenderness. Oh, it would be nothing like that for them -- they were probably going at it like animals, doing wild, bizarre things like in those carvings in Aphrodite's temple... Stop it. Stop it. She clutched her head. This was a good way to go insane.

What if Xena had felt the same way about her and Perdicas, back then? If it had been even half as agonizing for her... No, impossible -- Xena couldn't have had such feelings for her at the time, she was sure of it ... or almost sure. And there was that other time when she had nearly left Xena to stay with Najara; she wondered vaguely if, underneath all her spiritual pretensions, Najara had been interested in her that way. Maybe she had betrayed Xena first, and now it was coming back to haunt her.

Oh, but she had betrayed Xena far worse, betrayed her to the cruel tyrant Ming Tien when Xena went to Ch'in to kill him at Lao Ma's request; not because she wanted to stop Xena from committing murder, as she had told herself then, but because she had felt so threatened by Xena's bond to this mysterious woman from her past. Jealousy -- even if it was a friend's jealousy at the time, not a lover's -- had pushed her to do something that nearly destroyed them both, nearly cost Xena her life. She couldn't allow it to happen again, couldn't succumb to that emotion; she could never, ever again let herself act on jealousy.

Something wet landed on her hand. She hadn't even noticed that she was crying again. No, wait a minute... Another drop fell on her arm, then on her back. Oh, why not. If she was going to sit here cold and alone while Xena was in a warm bed with him, she might as well get rained on.

The rain ended almost as quickly as it began, and Gabrielle felt irritated at herself for wallowing in self-pity like that. She had known what she was doing when she had told Xena, in so many words, to go ahead and sleep with Ares. Xena's feelings for Ares might run deeper than she had realized before, but if it came down to a choice, Xena would always choose her. They were meant to be together -- Xena and Gabrielle, Gabrielle and Xena, two halves of one whole -- and they always would be. She had to be strong, for Xena.

Gabrielle got up and walked back to where she had left Clio. At the sight of her, the horse snorted impatiently and stamped her foot.

"We're going." She patted Clio on the muzzle. "Sorry you had to wait."

The sky was a solid black now, the night pitch-dark, but she still put out the lantern once she reached the road. If she did run into Gascar's men, she had to spot them before they spotted her.

She rode at a trot toward the Horada pass, reciting poems in her head to keep her mind off other things. It seemed to be working, as long as she remembered to steer clear of anything involving love and jealousy.

It had been nearly an hour since she had left Gascar's camp. The rain had started again, a small drizzle that wouldn't even give her the satisfaction of getting thoroughly, miserably, melodramatically soaked. Gabrielle thought of taking refuge in the thick grove by the roadside. Just then, she saw distant lights moving toward her. Probably just a caravan of merchants traveling late -- but it was best not to take chances. She rode off the road and waited behind the trees. At least it was relatively dry.

Soon enough, she heard the low rumble of hooves, getting closer, and then still-unintelligible voices. She peered between the trees. There were at least twenty-five men on horseback, three of them carrying lanterns.

"... an' he sez, 'Yes, Miss -- would you hold the horse, please?'" said a boorish voice followed by a gale of crude laughter -- it was apparently the punchline to a joke.

The wavering light of a lantern snatched a man's face out of the darkness in a yellowish cloud of watery mist, and Gabrielle stifled a gasp, her hands tightening on Clio's reins. It was Demetrius, the young warrior who had led the bounty hunters' raid on the farm in search of Ares and had tried to banter with her while she posed as a peasant girl.

They were back.

A heavy, deep voice said, "Hey, Demetrius. How much further to that damn farm?"

Ares lifted a hand and brushed his knuckles over Xena's face, tracing its outline. She lay on top of him, her hair cascading down on his chest and shoulders, a soft twinkle dancing in the infinite blue of her eyes. The shadows on the walls swayed gently as the flame in the lamp flickered, its glow made warmer by the glimpse of densely knit darkness in the half-open shutters.

She leaned forward to pluck a short kiss from his lips. Never, ever again would he complain about mortality.

"Hey," Xena said.

"What?"

"Was this your" -- there was mischief playing at the corners of her mouth -- "your first time as a mortal?"

"Gods." He laughed ruefully. "Was I that bad?"

She pressed her forehead to his, chuckling.

"You were great."

"It wasn't. I mean, wasn't my first time." And thank the Fates for that; it had been embarrassing enough with whatever her name was. There hadn't been many; just the occasional woman in a village or on a farmstead who would offer him a hot dinner and a warm bed with her in it.

Ares thought he saw a shade of disappointment cross Xena's face.

"Or maybe it was," he said. "First time ever."

Her eyebrows twitched in puzzlement. He drew her close and touched his lips to hers.

When he opened his eyes, there was understanding in her look -- and then, unexpectedly, a trace of sadness.

"Ares..." she said thoughtfully. "How old are you?"

It had to be a bit disconcerting to her, to know that he was a few thousand years old. He was jolted by the realization that it was a bit disconcerting to him, too. Was he starting to think like a mortal?

"I told you my life didn't really begin until I met you. You just never believe me when I say this stuff." He grinned at her. "Guess that means you're in bed with a younger man."

"Oh yeah.... right."

She gave Ares a slow, lingering, teasing kiss. As he locked his arms around her and parried the play of her tongue, her breath quickened and she squirmed a little, grinding her hips into him.

"Uh -- " Dammit, there were some things about mortality he could still have done without. "You gotta give me some more time..."

"Well -- you're only human, Ares. I like that in a man."

She dove to kiss his nipple, taking it gently between her teeth, swirling her tongue around it, making a tingling warmth spread under his skin.

"Maybe not that much more time..."

He heard her muffled, husky laugh and closed his eyes, ready to let the next wave lift him up, rock him, sweep him away. But something was worrying at his mind, some thought trying to wriggle its way out of the dark corner where he had squashed it earlier.

"Xena...." He ran his hand over her hair. "What happens tomorrow?"

She was still for a moment. Then she lifted her head. There was wistfulness in her stare, and uncertainty, and something like a hopeless plea.

"Maybe there is no tomorrow," she said softly.

"Yes, there is."

Her face half-turned and framed by the pale golden light, Xena was a thousand leagues away. After a while she said, slipping her fingers through the hair on his chest, "You could stay here... you'll be safe -- no one will bother you. You know, you might find a kind of peace here that you might not find afterwards..."

It wasn't completely unexpected -- but still, it was hard, this fall from his newly built little Olympus on earth. So that was what she'd had in mind all along, to stash him away in this dump.

She finally turned to him and made a brave effort to smile.

"And I'll come and visit you..."

The anger he had felt earlier was stirring again, and he almost wanted to say something brutal -- You want me to sit around and wait for you like some damn concubine? -- but no, dammit, no, this could be their only night and it was not going to end that way.

Maybe she was right; there was no tomorrow. Ares gripped her shoulders and pulled her up, and when he kissed her again it was a hard demanding kiss, as if he were claiming her, making her his own, no matter what happened next.

After they broke apart, Xena took only a moment to breathe before she kissed him back with equal force. Then she slid down and caressed his nipples again, stroking, licking, using the lightest touch of her teeth until he was panting and gasping and more than ready for her. Ares' hands cupped her breasts as she took him inside her. At that moment he knew, with the same flat certainty that he knew he was mortal, that for her, he would wait not only on a farm but in an Elijan village. Maybe later, he would be irritated at himself for being so weak. Maybe later. But not now, not now.

"Shouldn't be more than a coupla hours, Gascar."

Gabrielle recognized the voice as Demetrius', even though the darkness had swallowed up his face once again.

"You sure you can find it?"

Clio picked this moment to toss her head, making the leaves rustle, but the men must have thought it was the wind. Gabrielle lifted her hand, which suddenly seemed to belong to someone else, and put it on the mare's head to still her. Each breath she made was burning her throat.

"Sure thing, Gascar," Demetrius said with a false joviality that disguised a hint of fear.

"You fuck up one more time, and I'm gonna make you regret you ever joined up for this job."

"Hey, how was I supposed to know it was him?"

"How indeed," Gascar snorted. "You were too busy making eyes at some little hussy." (As the men guffawed, Gabrielle felt a sickly heat rise all over her face and neck.) "Good thing we didn't get too far away."

"Xena's gonna pay for this," said Demetrius.

"Listen, smart guy." Gascar's band had ridden past her, and the voices were starting to fade. "We don't wanna mess with Xena unless we have to. If Ares is in there alone, we go in, do the job, and go off to collect the bounty. Got that?"

"Got it, Gascar. You're the boss."

Gascar grumbled something about the dark night and the rain, and then the men's voices could no longer be heard over the wind and the clatter of hooves. When all trace of them had dissolved into the night, Gabrielle let out her breath.

Biting her lip a little too hard in concentration, she lit her lantern to look for the path. There was a shortcut through the woods and she was going to find it. She couldn't panic, couldn't panic or she would get lost. Focus and stay calm, just like Xena. All of her consciousness had shrunk to a single thought -- Don't let them get to the house first -- but if that was focus, it wasn't making it any easier to stay calm. A vision of Xena in Ares' arms, her face peaceful, her head on his shoulder, intruded momentarily into her mind; this time, though, the pang barely registered. Right now, it didn't matter who Xena was with, only that she might still be sleeping, exposed and unprepared, when Gascar and his men attacked.

The oil lamp had burned out when Xena woke up. She turned to settle more comfortably and laid her head on Ares' chest, listening to the distant sound of his heart, to his soft level breath. As her eyes got used to the dark, she looked up at him, just able to make out the shape of his features. It all came back to her: the look on his face when they made love, a look of pleasure that was almost agony, of unbearable tenderness, of something like surprise; the sound of his sighs that deepened into moans; the strength of his arms as he pulled her down toward him when it was too much for him to endure. "Don't let me sleep," he had muttered afterwards, still holding on to her, "don't let me sleep" -- only to drift away moments later.

She didn't want to wake him yet. She stretched a little and marveled at how light she felt. It was as if she had been carrying something heavy for a long, long time, desperately struggling not to drop it, and had finally let go.

Xena turned and lay on her back, and looked toward the window. Out there was a moonless night, a blanket of darkness still untouched by dawn, and --

Gabrielle.

The walls crumbled inside her, releasing a flood of misery. Gabrielle was out there alone and cold and unhappy. Xena felt a scalding shame at the thought that she had, at least briefly, wished this night would never end. She sat up abruptly and got out of bed, wanting to get away from herself more than from Ares.

She walked to the window, the floor cold and rough under her feet.

She had spent half the night rolling around in bed with Ares, barely giving a thought to the woman with whom she had pledged to share her life -- except when he'd asked her what would happen next, and she had been weak enough, or crazy enough, to all but promise that she'd continue to sleep with him. Xena pushed the shutters wide open and breathed in the cool air. I'll come and visit you... Would she actually have the nerve to tell Gabrielle she was going off to visit Ares? Gabrielle would probably nod quickly and avert her eyes, and that would make it worse. How could she have convinced herself that she wasn't betraying Gabrielle? Of course, Gabrielle had told her so ... but only out of desperation. It wasn't as if she had left Gabrielle much of a choice.

Something else was troubling her. Xena rubbed her arm ... the wetness on her skin -- it was raining. Dammit. She shouldn't have let Gabrielle leave -- should have gone with her -- should have gone after her and stopped her...

She went back and sat down on the edge of the bed. Ares stirred and sighed in his sleep.

Xena remembered the way they had looked at each other, his face lit with such quiet, simple happiness. Even if she could undo it, she wouldn't. She wouldn't take that away from him ... wouldn't take it away from herself.

Her eyes burning with unshed tears, Xena sighed and stared into the window. Maybe it would all work out somehow.

Outside, the black of the sky was now dabbed with the first streaks of pale grey. A bird began to chirp, tentatively at first and then louder as its warble was joined by another. She had to go back to her room; she owed Gabrielle that much. And leave Ares to wake up alone, and miss seeing him wake up and smile at her... Maybe she could wait a little longer. Maybe she could wake him.

She was still thinking about it when the predawn quiet exploded in a loud crash.

Ares bolted upright and groped automatically for the sword at his side. It took him a few moments to remember where he was. The farmhouse -- Xena --

Xena?

A dream ... no, not a dream, there she was, standing by the bed. Life was wonderful.

And it could also turn out to be really, really short, judging by all that banging and clattering in the house.

"Shit," Xena whispered. "All my weapons are in the other room -- "

"You think it's Gascar and the boys?"

He jumped out of bed, fumbling around for his clothes.

"Could be -- I don't know -- " She was slipping hastily into her shift.

"I'll go first." Ares had found the pants and hopped around trying to get into them. Knowing that those cockroaches could kill him was bad enough, but not being able to dress with a snap of his fingers -- even after all this time, it was damn frustrating.

"No, no -- give me your sword -- "

There was another clatter, followed by a shout of, "Xena!"

Gabrielle? From sheer shock, he missed the pant leg, stumbled and landed hard on the floor, muttering a curse. Great. If it isn't the morals squad.

"Xena!" she yelled again, her voice frantic. "Gascar's army is on its way!"

She hadn't beaten them by much. Not half an hour later, peering out of a side window of the house Gabrielle spotted Gascar's men coming over the ridge of the hill. It was almost light now, and the air rang with birdsong. Silvery beads of water still glittered in the trees, but the drizzle had ended, giving way to a wispy gray mist.

"They're here," she said, not looking at Ares. "She should be ready soon -- she'll give you the signal. I'll try to stall them as long as I can."

"Yeah, yeah," he grunted. "You saved them the trouble of knocking down the door."

"Well ... it's not like it would have been much trouble."

In her determination to make enough noise to ensure that Xena and Ares were awake and presentable when she saw them, she had slammed the front door a little too hard behind her. It had come off the hinges and now held in place only because it was propped up by a rickety chair.

Gabrielle smoothed the blue dress she had put on over her warrior garb, and finally brought herself to glance at Ares. In the half-darkness, she thought she saw him give her a nervous look. It occurred to her that he might be worried she'd give him away to Gascar. She pursed her lips. Of course, Ares would get such an idea.

The warriors stopped outside the house. Some of them began to dismount, obviously trying to keep things quiet.

"You're on," Ares whispered tensely.

The porch groaned and squeaked under the heavy boots; the chair grated on the floor as the door was pushed slowly, and then came the expected crash as the door and the chair tumbled down. That was her cue.

Gabrielle screamed at the top of her lungs and raced toward the door, making a spur-of -the-moment detour to grab a couple of pots and a frying pan from the kitchen. Three men were already inside the house. Screaming again, she threw the pots at them and advanced, swinging the pan. At least for a moment, they were startled enough to retreat.

"What's going on?" said a heavy voice she recognized as Gascar's.

"Get out of my house, you -- you -- you no-good thugs!" she screeched as she ran out on the porch, waving the frying pan around.

"Go on, search the house," Gascar said irritably. Gabrielle took a look at him. He was stocky and broad-shouldered, with a scarred, craggy face, harsh yet unmistakably intelligent.

"No, no -- please! We're just poor peasants! We have no money ... there's nothing to take here!"

She knew she was giving a bad performance -- nothing like that brilliant improvisation last time. Maybe it could only have worked on the spur of the moment.

"Calm down, sweetheart," said Demetrius. "No one wants to rob you. We're after Ares."

"Oh, it's you!" She tilted her head in what was meant to be a seductive manner. "Well, you know Ares has left -- my husband told you -- "

"Girlie, if that was your husband, I'm the Emperor of Rome," Gascar said. "You give us any more trouble and you'll be sorry. All right, boys, go in. And remember, don't bother trying to take him alive. You see him, you kill him."

"Hey, Gascar," Demetrius said. "It could be fun, you know -- to have him on his knees, begging for mercy and all..."

"Shut up, you moron," Gascar snarled. "We're not here for your entertainment. We can't take any chances, not if Xena's helping him. Go on."

Gabrielle stepped aside -- it wasn't time to start fighting yet -- and several of the warriors went inside the house. Gascar turned to her again, eyeing her thoughtfully.

"Wait a minute. You're no farm girl, are you." He scratched his beard and then looked at her with a crooked sneer. "I know -- you're Gabrielle, that girl who hangs around with Xena. The famous -- what do they call you again? -- Battling Bard."

"She's famous?" said Demetrius, clearly impressed.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Gabrielle said.

"So," Gascar said. "None of my business really, but why is Xena hiding Ares? I heard about some of the things he did trying to get her back in his service -- set her up for murder and nearly got her hanged, didn't he?"

There was probably no point in trying to maintain the charade; Gascar was too smart. Still, she said feebly, "Really, sir -- you're mistaking me for someone else..."

"Come on, give it up. You know I'm on to you. Look here, I don't want any trouble with you or with Xena. All we want is" -- he drew a finger quickly across his neck and made a hissing sound -- "Ares."

She stared back at him silently. Inside the house, the soldiers could be heard stomping around and knocking things over.

"You almost got away with it, you know," Gascar chortled. "Lucky for us Ares decided to get plastered in a tavern and spill the beans. One of the fellas there had heard about the bounty, knew which way we were headed, so he went after us and tipped us off. Once the barkeep told me he left with a tall dark-haired woman, it all fell into place. Otherwise, we'd still be on that wild goose chase, riding to the -- "

"He's getting away!" a man's voice shouted from inside.

Gabrielle turned and saw Ares jump out the window and bolt toward the barn. She held her breath.

"Shoot him!" Gascar yelled, forgetting all about her for the moment. One of the men drew his bow. Gabrielle swung the frying pan and it hurtled through the air, knocking him out just as he was releasing the arrow. Then she took off running as fast as she could, hearing Gascar bellow behind her, "Get him, dammit! And get her too!"

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that at least a dozen men were chasing Ares. So far, everything was going according to plan.

A man on horseback caught up with her and swung his sword; Gabrielle dove and rolled on the soggy grass, reaching under her dress to get one of her sais. It was a clean shot, right in the side of the neck; he made a choked sound, his hands going up, and sagged heavily, then tumbled to the ground while the startled horse neighed and bucked.

We're not here to participate in a bloodbath... That was what Xena had said to Ares when they'd tracked him down and told him about the bounty. Well, so much for that, Gabrielle thought, tugging angrily at the dagger. She ripped off her dress, almost tearing it in half, and wiped the blade on it before throwing the wet rag away. Two more men were already coming toward her. Meanwhile, Ares' pursuers had run into the barn after him. If the trap worked properly, any moment now --

A thunderous boom shook the ground as the barn exploded in flames.

Yeah, baby! Ares couldn't help grinning as he stopped to catch his breath and looked back at the giant ball of fire. Damn, she was good at this stuff.

"Are you okay?" Xena yelled, running up behind him.

"Yeah ... sure."

More than okay. To make love to her and fight by her side in one night -- after this, one could die without too many regrets.

"Go ahead," he said. "I'll go round the house and take them from the back."

That was the thing to do -- attack now, before Gascar and the surviving men had time to recover. To make sure they didn't recover too quickly, Xena's ululating battle cry pierced the morning mist, rising above the roar of the flames. Beautiful.

As Ares sprinted behind the shack, he almost collided with one of Gascar's warriors. The man, who looked shaken and confused, raised his sword somewhat tentatively. Ares' blow knocked it from his hand and sent it flying. With surprising presence of mind, the man lunged forward and went for his throat, taking him down into a puddle. The son of a bitch obviously hadn't washed in days, and his breath reeked of garlic. As they wrestled, Ares couldn't get an angle to turn the blade of his sword toward his attacker; finally, he jerked the hilt forward and rammed it into the man's head. His eyes rolled back and his hands slackened; he slumped, dropping his head on Ares' shoulder, and stopped moving.

With an effort, Ares pushed him off, not sure if his enemy was dead or unconscious, and sat up. He was muddy and wet, his face and neck splattered with blood. Yet again, the thrill of the fight had eluded him. Maybe he was just too close to it now, when he could still feel the man all over him, when he knew that the crunching bone and the thick gushing blood could have been his own. Yet mortals knew it too, and still felt the intoxication of deadly combat; he had felt it with them when he was a god. Maybe they were just used to it.

There wasn't time to think about it now. Ares dipped his palm in the puddle and ran it across his face, but the cold slimy water made him feel even dirtier. Picking up his sword, he jumped to his feet and ran toward the front of the house, to where he could hear the shouts and the clang of metal. He got there just in time to hear Gascar shout, "Dammit, it's just two of them!" and to prove him wrong by quickly taking down two of his men.

Breathing hard, he looked up and found himself staring into a pair of steely gray eyes, one slightly bluer than the other.

"Ares," Gascar said in a low growl that actually gave Ares a shiver of fear.

The warlord charged.

Good thing he didn't have to fight Gascar when mortality was still new to him, when every movement felt slow and clumsy, hampered by the lack of god-power in his limbs and by the unaccustomed need to avoid injury. Even now, it wasn't going to be easy. Though past his prime, Gascar was good.

As their swords clashed, Ares saw a crooked sneer on the warlord's face.

"Not so much fun, is it, when you can't just zap people with fireballs?" Gascar was panting but he still managed to put some mockery in his voice. "You had it pretty good -- pushing people around, knowing no one could ever lay a hand on you... Well, guess what, you're just one of us now. You're not even that good a fighter."

Parrying a blow, Ares scowled and bit his lip. The man was obviously trying to throw him off-balance, but knowing that didn't make it any easier to ignore his taunts.

"Don't worry, if we don't get you, someone else will," Gascar went on. "That's a pretty long list of people you pissed off. Lucky for you if they make it quick. Probably have you squealing like a stuck pig before you die..."

Ares flinched and barely avoided getting hit as his foot skidded. The morning light was in his eyes, peeking through the thinning clouds, making him squint.

"Shut up," he said through clenched teeth.

"Can't manage anything smarter than that, eh?" Gascar advanced on him, making him back away toward the house. The morning light glared through the thinning clouds, hurting his eyes. "You know how pathetic you are? Even if you survive, you'll never be anything more than a loser" -- he made another thrust and the tip of his sword slashed Ares' arm -- "relying on Xena to bail you out..."

At that instant, Ares caught sight of her dispatching one of Gascar's men; she looked in his direction, and their eyes met. He wanted to laugh. To think that he'd let this blowhard get to him.

He chuckled, and the gloating in Gascar's face gave way to puzzlement. Ares' next blow nearly knocked the sword out of the warlord's hand.

"You have no idea," Ares said.

They fought silently after that, except for harsh gasps and grunts, in a whirl of thrusts and parries and blocks, steps forward and steps back on the slick ground; it ended when Ares' sword slid past Gascar's, metal grating on metal, and plunged into his stomach right underneath the armor. Gascar gave a hoarse cry, and as Ares yanked the blade out he swayed and sank to his knees. His eyes, already growing glassy and dim, looked up at the former God of War with that mix of agony, rage and disbelief which Ares had seen on so many faces over millennia. A strand of saliva hung from his open mouth.

"I'll see you in Tartarus ... someday," he rasped.

Ares nodded grimly.

"You probably will."

A quick stab to the neck finished the job. He watched the warlord crumple, a dark pool of blood spreading over the shiny grass.

The last of Gascar's men were making their getaway over the top of the hill, their shouts and the neighs of their horses fading in the distance. A gust of wind whipped at the wet grass and made the flames rise higher over the still-blazing barn, where a moment later something crashed loudly, making a fountain of sparks shoot up toward the sky. The battle was over now. Ares wiped his face with a damp mud-streaked hand, trying to steady his breath. His eyes locked on Xena's again, and suddenly, there it was at last, that moment when fighting together made them one. He thought he saw a smile touch her parted lips.

She gave him an almost imperceptible nod, turned away and went to inspect the bodies.

Ares looked around and noticed Gabrielle approaching. The girl had actually come through for him; after everything that had happened, he hadn't been entirely confident of her dedication to keeping him alive.

He was still thinking of what to say to her when he saw her hand flash upward, a glint of metal in it.

No.

Ares was too paralyzed to move when the almost white blur sliced the air, swishing toward him. That little --

He expected to be thrown back by the sheer force of the blow, and to feel excruciating pain shoot through his body; but there was none of that. Instead, he heard a dull thud behind him. He whirled around. One of the men he had brought down before, and apparently only wounded, was sprawled with a sword clutched in his hand and Gabrielle's dagger buried in his neck, his head resting at an unnatural angle on the bottom step of the porch.

Ares' knees buckled, and he had to lean on his sword to stay on his feet. He blinked and gulped painfully for air, waiting for his heart to slow down.

"So ... it's come to this," he said, gasping. "The God of War ... saved by the little sidekick."

Gabrielle gave him an exasperated look.

"You're welcome."

Xena ran up and squeezed her in a hug, resting her chin on Gabrielle's shoulder and closing her eyes for a moment.

"Gabrielle ... thank you..."

"Yeah," Gabrielle said in a small voice.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

Xena held her a few moments longer, then let go and went over to Ares. The sight of all the blood on him made her frown.

"Are you hurt?"

"Nah, just a scratch." He pointed to his arm. Then he glanced down at Gascar and said, almost admiringly, "He was one tough son of a bitch."

"Come on," Xena said. "I'll take care of that for you."

He followed her into the house, hoping Gabrielle wouldn't tag along. She did, of course.

In the kitchen, Ares took off his vest and washed off the blood while Xena went to get the bandages and the ointment. Then she cleaned and dressed his wound, and said with a quick half-smile, "All better now" -- and she was so close that he couldn't resist reaching up to plant a small kiss on the corner of her mouth. Xena tensed and stood up straight.

"I think we all need to wash up," she said. "I'll bring in some more water."

She walked out briskly.

Smoke from the barn, with a hint of the nauseating smell of burning flesh, drifted into the kitchen through the small window. The fire was still crackling outside; the only other sounds were the occasional whinnying of a horse and the short screech of the rusty handle when Xena pulled up the bucket from the well.

She was gone for too long. After a while, Ares glanced at Gabrielle and saw her make for the door. He got up and went after her.

Xena was standing on the porch, with the full bucket at her feet. She leaned against a pole, absently running her hand over the rough wood, her head hung low.

"Xena." Gabrielle came up and touched her shoulder. "Is something wrong?"

She looked up, a faraway, perplexed expression on her face.

"We've got to do something about the bodies..."

"Drag them to the barn," Ares said. "Perfect for garbage disposal."

"Yeah..." Xena lowered her eyes again. When she spoke next, she seemed to be talking to herself.

"This was one peaceful place in my whole life..."

Gabrielle shot Ares a look that said, "This is all your fault," and patted Xena's hands. As he watched Xena rest her cheek on the top of Gabrielle's head and press her hand, his mouth tightened bitterly. Three's a crowd. Yet he had to admit that right now, Xena needed the meddling blonde. How could he offer her comfort when her distress was somewhat baffling to him, something that he would surely never feel or even completely understand?

He turned and was about to go back into the house when he heard her say, "Ares."

Something in her voice made Ares' heart skip a beat and the breath stick in his throat. He turned back. There was a timid, almost frightened look in her eyes.

"You can't stay here." She glanced furtively at Gabrielle. "Some of Gascar's men got away -- they could come back and -- " Her voice trailed off. "It isn't safe anymore."

Her words seemed to hang in the air between them as he stood still, waiting for the verdict.

Gabrielle opened her mouth, looked from Ares to Xena and back, and sighed.

"You can travel with us for a few days," she said. "Until we find a safe place."

Xena let out a long breath, her shoulders sagging a little.

Her voice sounded quite casual when she said, "All right."

The clouds had cleared by the time they left the farm, riding side by side with Xena in the middle. Ares, unusually subdued, rode astride a horse taken from one of the dead men; it was a beautiful animal, its sleek hide almost jet-black with a tint of bronze. As Xena glanced at him, his ring glinted a bright white in the sun, hurting her eyes. She thought of Ares' almost childlike excitement when they'd found it on Gascar while dragging the body to the barn, and of his surprising squeamishness when it turned out that cutting off the dead man's finger was the only way to get the ring off. Their eyes met, and she turned away toward Gabrielle, who was staring straight ahead, her face tense.

Xena wasn't sure what would happen now -- not even sure what she wanted to happen. That was something new, and it scared her; it was as if she were riding a horse and had lost control of it, which hadn't happened to her since she was fourteen. Thinking too far beyond the next few days was a bad idea.

What she needed, what they needed, was a purpose. She remembered that when she and Gabrielle heard about the bounty on Ares, they had been on the way to Elaea; the once-quiet town, where the worship of the Olympians had been almost completely abandoned after news of the Twilight had reached the populace, had found itself embroiled in a nasty turf war between two upstart religious cults, and an old acquaintance on the city council had pleaded for Xena's help. They'd go to Elaea, then. That was the thing to do, pick up where they'd left off.

They rode for a while over the bright emerald-green hills, past sparse trees, past a distant cluster of huts with thatched roofs and a large vineyard where a few peasants were tending to the vines, across a shallow brook where the horses' hooves kicked up spurts of silvery droplets. When Ares spoke up, the sound of his voice was almost a shock.

"So. Are we going anywhere in particular?"

"Elaea."

Gabrielle shot her a surprised look.

"What's in Elaea?" Ares asked.

"Couple of cults making trouble."

Ares seemed to ponder this information. "Cults." He wiggled his eyebrows and gave her a fake grin. "Any -- interesting rituals? Virgins dragged kicking and screaming to the altar?"

Gabrielle sighed in exasperation.

"It's a job," Xena said curtly.

Ares nodded, obviously realizing the futility of attempts to make conversation. After another brief pause, he started whistling a tune that Xena recognized as an old Thracian war song. She could almost physically sense Gabrielle's impulse to yell at him to shut up. She thought of telling him to stop, but in a few moments he stopped on his own, and they rode on in silence.

Gabrielle shuffled into the cramped, stuffy room lit by a sputtering lamp; the innkeeper was obviously skimping on oil. She took off her boots and undressed, slipped on her nightshirt, put out the light and dove into the bed, trying to get comfortable on the coarse sheets and the lumpy stale-smelling pillow.

Once, she had wished so dearly that Xena would stay indoors more often instead of braving the weather and the bugs at yet another campsite. Maybe it's true, she thought; when the gods want to punish us, they grant us our wishes. She wasn't sure which gods were still around, but some higher powers had obviously played such a trick on her. What she wouldn't have given right now to curl up in a bedroll under the stars, by the still-shimmering remnants of a campfire ... with no one else around except her and Xena.

She thought of the first time they had camped with Ares, the night after leaving the farm. After a quick cold meal, Xena tossed him a couple of extra blankets, and they all turned in. It was a while before Gabrielle fell asleep. The next thing she knew, the sun was high and hot and the sky was a pitilessly bright blue, and Xena and Ares and their horses were gone. She opened her mouth to scream and jolted awake, sitting up in her bedroll with a gasp. It was still dark, and everyone was still there.

She felt a little better in the morning when they were briefly alone, and Xena hugged her and kissed her so very sweetly, and asked if she was okay; Gabrielle nodded, and Xena whispered in her ear, "I love you."

They stopped at a lake in the afternoon, when daylight hadn't even begun to fade yet. After they set up camp, Xena said quite casually, "We're going for a swim..." and there was a moment of uncertainty before she added, "Gabrielle and I." It made sense, of course. They undressed behind a shrub and swam toward a tiny island with a cluster of trees; and when they were almost there, Xena dove down and slid between Gabrielle's thighs and nuzzled her, making her gasp and splutter. When Xena surfaced, there was a sparkle in her eyes but also just a hint of anxious yearning for approval; they looked at each other, and Gabrielle shook her head and laughed. Having reached the island, they rolled in the tall wiry grass, kissing the cool droplets of water off each other's faces and necks and shoulders, and it was wonderful -- until the moment when Gabrielle gently ran her teeth over Xena's nipple and heard the husky sound she was waiting for, and her mind filled instantly with the knowledge that Xena had made that sound for Ares; she felt sick at the thought that she might still be able to smell him on her, taste him on her. That was almost enough to make her stop; but Xena pulled her up for a kiss and stroked her wet back, and moaned louder, and Gabrielle knew that she would still do anything to hear those sounds and to feel Xena's body arch against hers.

When they returned to the campsite, Ares gave them a silent sideways look, got up and went to unsaddle and brush down his horse. Gabrielle felt sure that he knew what they had been up to. There was no reason he shouldn't know, she told herself; except that she couldn't quite chase away the thought that one of these days, she might be the one waiting for Xena and Ares, and wondering what they were doing.

Dinner was caught and cleaned and gutted, and Gabrielle went into the woods, less than fifty paces from the water's edge, to gather dry branches for the fire. As she was coming back, her view of the shore blocked by the dense foliage, she heard Ares' voice -- "Oh yeah... that feels good" -- and stopped in her tracks, nearly dropping the firewood. She wouldn't -- not so soon... Then, Ares said, "Ow -- ow" and Xena chuckled, "Don't be such a baby." With some trepidation, Gabrielle parted the branches and saw that he was lying on his stomach, his vest (but only his vest) off, Xena straddling him and kneading his back. Gabrielle took a deep breath; this, she could live with. She walked toward them, and Xena looked up and said, with a jocularity that had a slightly defensive edge, "Mortality hurts, you know."

The next evening, as they sat by the campfire eating roasted partridge, Gabrielle glanced up to see Xena and Ares looking at each other. It was a look that told her too much, and it cut deep, making something dull and cold lodge inside her chest. Then Xena turned her head and their eyes met; and after a moment Gabrielle inclined her head slightly, biting her lip, and looked up again. It wasn't even a real nod, but she knew she was saying yes to a question Xena would never dare to ask. She reflected that she had, after all, given Xena the go-ahead; if she went back on it now, it would feel like an act of jealousy rather than love, like yanking at a leash. Ares would be gone, and it would be just her and Xena, and -- she couldn't have explained it, but something between them would be gone too.

Another night went by, and another day. On the night after that Gabrielle woke up to hear a faint noise, and two tall shadows, one after the other, separated themselves from the dark mass of the trees. She watched as they walked back to the campsite, as Xena wordlessly squeezed Ares' hand, as they both settled into their bedrolls. So this was how it was going to be.

Three days later they arrived in Elaea. As they stood in the dark, dank-smelling anteroom of the inn, Xena paused briefly, her face impassive, turning her head only for an instant in Ares' direction, and finally said, "Two rooms." In her mind's worried eye, Gabrielle saw Xena tiptoeing out in the middle of the night, and then heard her own voice say, "Make that three rooms." Xena turned abruptly and gave her a startled look, both guilty and relieved.

When she came to Gabrielle's room that night, she looked almost timid, as if half expecting to be kicked out. Then they lay together, just hugging, and suddenly Xena said, "Tell me a story." Gabrielle squinted warily; Xena had seldom reacted to her storytelling with anything more than bemused tolerance. "What kind of story?" she asked, and Xena muttered, "Any kind ... I like the way you tell them." She slid down a little, resting her head on Gabrielle's belly. A little hesitantly, Gabrielle launched into a tale about a poor fisherman who caught a fish of such beautiful colors that he felt sorry for it and let it go, and the fish turned out to be a sea nymph who promised to grant him three wishes for his kindness. (At that point, she realized that Xena was listening attentively and really began to put her heart in the story.) The fisherman, she continued, hurried home to tell his wife of his good fortune; and then, looking at the meager dinner on their table, he sighed for a big juicy steak. Lo and behold, one appeared before them that very instant, and the wife cursed him for wasting a wish on such foolishness; on and on she went until the poor man cried, May the gods strike you dumb, you harpy! -- and he had to use his third and final wish to restore her gift of speech.

Xena chuckled quietly; after a moment's pause, she said, "That's pretty sad, isn't it?" and Gabrielle replied, stroking her hair, "Well, I don't know ... it was a really good steak!" They both laughed, and then Xena shot her a mischievous look and said, "Let's hope it was better than the happy boot." That was a reference to a lighthearted moment they had shared at a tavern in Thessaly a couple of months earlier: Gabrielle had complained that her steak tasted and felt exactly like a boot, and Xena, who liked to rib her about getting all sentimental toward animals, had deadpanned, "At least the boot lived a happy life." The memory of it made them both laugh, and they laughed together until they were kissing; then they made love, and held each other in silence, and talked some more, and all was well. Or almost well, because hiding out in the back of her mind was the knowledge that they could no longer talk about everything.

Xena's scheme to deal with the two rapacious cults actually gave Ares more to do than Gabrielle; but it worked. Since this scheme also involved getting some of the locals to believe that Ares was still a god, for him to stay in Elaea was not an option, and so they moved on together -- just as they moved on from the quiet village they passed through a few days later. The question of finding a safe haven for Ares had yet to come up. Somehow, without ever talking about it, they began spending more nights at inns, and it was tacitly understood that on some of those nights Xena went to Ares; and somehow, this insane arrangement had started to seem almost normal, even if it was almost impossible at times to pretend that it didn't exist.

There had been the morning when, having slept late (and alone), Gabrielle came down into the inn's greasy-smelling dining room and found Xena and Ares sitting at a table half-turned toward each other, laughing at something, hand in hand, faces glowing. Seeing her, Xena froze in mid-laugh and awkwardly moved her hand away, the joy ebbing from her face and giving way to an apologetic look. There had been the night when Gabrielle was startled from her sleep by a loud crash; the next morning, Xena had stared into her oatmeal and muttered a quick explanation about rickety furniture. Before they left, she conferred in hushed tones with the smirking innkeeper, and then spent a long time hammering in Ares' room. As they were leaving the inn, Gabrielle felt like grabbing Xena by the shoulders and shouting in her face, What are you doing? How can you? That frightened her.

And there was more: the time when they had fought to free some children from a couple of slave traders and their guard of mercenaries; and when the fighting was done and Gabrielle went over to comfort the huddled children -- crying and frightened but unhurt -- she turned and saw the look that passed between Xena and Ares as they re-sheathed their swords. They were both slightly out of breath, their lips parted in a hint of a smile waiting to break through, the same glint in their eyes. They only looked at each other for an instant, but that was enough. It was as if, across a distance of at least ten paces, they had clasped hands. He was still bad for her (of course!); this was exactly why. But before Gabrielle could focus on that, another thought filled her with a dull aching heaviness: the knowledge that their mutual joy in a good fight was a bond between them which she could never share.

Before, when they had traveled in the company of Eve or Virgil, Gabrielle had sometimes found that she missed having Xena all to herself, missed the ease of their chats and the comfort of their silences. This was different. The day after leaving Elaea, as they rode through a long stretch of the open plain, it finally got to her; she prodded Clio and took off at a gallop, slowing down nearly two hundred paces ahead. Xena caught up with her and said quietly, "Gabrielle?" ?- and Gabrielle replied, much more caustically than she'd meant to, "I think I need a little break from all this togetherness." They rode by side for a while, just the two of them, and Gabrielle relaxed enough to make small talk; then she noticed Xena stealing a look behind her shoulder to make sure Ares was behind them, and she sighed and tugged at the reins, stopping to wait for him.

The lack of privacy was bad enough; having something unspoken and unspeakable linger between them when they were alone was worse. They had swept things under the rug before -- but it had always been things they had managed, for better or worse, to put behind them. This was here and now, a part of their lives they couldn't possibly share.

Once, she had decided to talk about one of those buried things from the past -- what happened in Ch'in, her anger at Xena back then, her horror at her own betrayal -- with the small hope that it might lead to a talk about the here and now. They were camping out near a stream; Ares had fallen asleep, and Xena sat by the water watching the quivering pearly trail of moonlight and occasionally making it ripple with a long stick. Gabrielle crawled out of her bedroll and came to sit next to her. Xena wrapped a warm, comfortable arm around her shoulder, and Gabrielle leaned against her, catching the leathery scent of her sweat. After a long silence she said, "Xena... you know -- I've been thinking..." She felt Xena's body tense a bit, and in that instant she knew that if she started to talk about this, it would sound as if she were blaming Xena, or blaming Ares -- after all, he was implicated too, however hard it was to comprehend that the man she had just watched fumble with a fishing line was the same being as the god who had sent her half across the world with a flick of his hand.

Her words still hung in the cool air over the murmur of the stream and the clicking and whirring of insects, and Xena's arm was stiff around her. Gabrielle let out a slow breath and closed her eyes. After a moment she dropped her head on Xena's shoulder and whispered, "I love you."

She and Ares avoided each other as much as they could, which wasn't much. Being Ares, he couldn't resist the occasional gibe about little things like Clio's name: "You named your horse after one of Apollo's floozies?" he asked, eyebrows raised in mock puzzlement, and when Gabrielle tersely replied that Clio was the Muse of History, he smirked, "Right, one of Apollo's floozies." Mostly, though, even Ares apparently knew better than to snipe at her now. And yet with every passing day, he got on her nerves more and more.

A part of her knew that in a different situation, some of the things that drove her crazy would have seemed innocuous or even endearing: his one-liners, his half-joking gripes about the lack of creature comforts, his efforts to maintain an immaculate appearance (which, she dimly realized, was less about vanity than about holding on to what he was); the fact that he named his horse Dragon; the fact that he bungled nearly every chore he tried to do, and that he wasn't trying much anymore. Once, after an exhausting day, she asked him to watch a pot of rabbit stew while she took a nap; she woke up to find the stew burned -- after all the time she'd spent preparing it -- and Ares engrossed in watching Xena brush down Argo on the other side of the clearing. She nearly lost it that time, especially when he gave her an innocent shrug and said, "We can always have fish..."

Yet, at odd moments, she felt almost sympathetic. There had been the time Xena went hunting on her own, leaving her and Ares to set up camp. After a while they heard a noise that might have signaled her return; they both turned their heads with nervous anticipation, and it occurred to Gabrielle that they were both caught up in something beyond their control, like fellow survivors of a natural disaster. Hurricane Xena.

She had stopped thinking about how it would all turn out.

She wasn't thinking much, either, about some of the things that had preoccupied her lately -- whether the warrior's path was right for her, and what it was doing to her soul. She could go for days now without remembering that boy she killed in the north African desert by mistake, when she thought he was about to attack Xena. What did it say about her, she wondered occasionally, if she was more terrified of losing Xena than of losing herself?

Gabrielle raised herself up and poked at the pillow in a futile attempt to make it softer. Just then, she became aware of light rustling and scratching in the corner. Mice. Well, at least it wasn't bedbugs. She sighed and lay down, pulling the threadbare blanket over her head. She had to try to get some sleep; they were planning to get an early start. She thought of how Xena had come to her the previous night, how greedily Xena had kissed her mouth -- she had never kissed so hard before and it made Gabrielle wonder fleetingly if that was the way she kissed men, the way she kissed him -- how gently they rocked against each other in a familiar rhythm that let the heat build up slowly until it was almost melting her skin from inside, how they snuggled afterwards with her head nestled between Xena's sweat-dampened breasts. Gabrielle sighed and hugged the pillow.

The floorboards in the hallway creaked wearily. She shivered a little and wrapped the blanket tighter around herself, wondering if that was Xena.

No, definitely not her -- just some dumb hick trampling past the door.

Ares turned on his side and tried to stretch his legs; you obviously had to be a midget to stay at this place. Village inns ... He didn't want to think of the spacious bed, with sheets of black silk and formidable ornate bedposts, where he once entertained his women at the Halls of War ... a lot of women who were not Xena.

He wondered if any of the gods were still alive, and whether they ever checked up on him. He hoped not; he especially hoped that Athena couldn't see him from wherever gods went when they died. He could just see her shake her head with the usual mix of slightly scornful superiority and genuine embarrassment on his behalf. After all those years of trying to win Xena as his Warrior Queen, he had become little more then her sidekick, following her -- and her girlfriend! -- all over Greece, playing his part in her humanitarian projects and sleeping in these ratholes ... and Athena would never understand what made it all worthwhile, at least most of the time.

For a couple of days after they left the farm, he wasn't sure what was going to happen. He and Xena barely spoke, even when alone for a few moments. On the second day, when they camped by the lake and the two women slipped off for a swim (oh yeah, right ... a swim), Ares felt apprehension and anger clutching at his throat. Did she expect him to put up with this? He remembered how, right after he'd given up his godhood, they were talking on a grassy beach and he kept hoping that she'd invite him to join her and Gabrielle and Eve -- thinking that even if she wasn't going to sleep with him, it was okay as long as they could travel together and fight together, as long as he could discover the mortal world by her side. He was thinking the same thing when Xena walked away from him a second time, after saving him from the Furies. But the last few days had changed everything. Damned if he was going to tag along like a eunuch while she and her girlfriend made out behind his back.

The backrub she gave him later in the evening cheered him up a little, besides easing the cramps that had plagued his mortal existence. It was good to feel her touch again, the warm, gentle strength of her hands. But it also made his yearning for her all the more acute, nearly unbearable as he lay just a few paces from Xena that night. There was an easy way out of his misery; but under the circumstances, it seemed like a final humiliation -- especially if Xena or, worse yet, Gabrielle woke up and caught him in the act. Somehow, eventually, he fell asleep and found relief in a dream.

The next morning, when Gabrielle went to wash up in a little cove shielded by lush shrubbery, he wanted to talk to Xena but couldn't work up the nerve, afraid he'd bungle it. As he was rolling up the blankets, he turned and saw her looking at him, and the tenderness in her eyes made him momentarily forget to breathe. He stood up straight and came up to her. After a brief, tense silence, he gave her a lopsided smile and said, hoping his voice would hold steady, "So ... what does a guy have to do to get a date around here?"

Xena almost smiled back but bit her lip; her eyes flickered as she turned away, obviously making an effort to keep a grip on herself. His heart pounding, he took her hands, and she murmured wistfully, "Ares..." There was a rustle behind the bushes -- Gabrielle was obviously back from her bath and getting dressed -- and he could have kicked himself for waiting so long. "Look," he said brusquely, "I just need to know..." She looked up at him, anxiously and a bit defensively, and lightly squeezed his hands, weaving her fingers through his. Ares stopped before he could utter something that would come out as bitter or whiny, or both. With a small smile, he let go of her hands and said, "Well, if you do decide to visit -- you know where to find me."

That evening when they were sitting around the fire eating, he caught Xena looking at him, but he couldn't tell what she was thinking. Another day went by; the next night, Ares lay very still in his bedroll, wondering if it was going to happen, hoping that Xena was only pretending to be asleep and that Gabrielle really was. Then Xena stirred and sat up, and a moment later he raised himself on an elbow. The blue-tinted light of the nearly full moon gave her face an eerie look, chiseled and smooth as marble, but then she turned slightly, and her eyes were sparkling and alive as they met his. Without a word, she rose, walked to the edge of the clearing and vanished into the woods. He got up and followed her as quietly as he could; the tall grass was cool and dewy under his feet, the dampness seeping into the linen of his pants and making them cling heavily to his ankles. His eyes made out a narrow footpath between the trees. It occurred to him that he might lose track of Xena and end up stumbling around the woods looking for her, feeling completely ridiculous.

He caught up with her in a tiny patch of a clearing, where the thick weave of branches and leaves overhead opened up just enough to let in the moonlight. She stood still and rigid by an oddly twisted, moon-bleached fallen tree, watching him as he walked toward her. With no more than half a pace between them, they faced each other, probably for not nearly as long as it seemed. Then they were locked in each other's arms, feeding on each other's mouths, and he willed himself not to rub against her through the thin fabric that was the only thing separating them now. He drew back and actually managed a grin -- "This is what you had in mind, right?" ?- and she shushed him, pressing into him, biting his lips, breaking the kiss to brush her cheek against his and breathe his name.

They sank down into the grass; Ares slid down to taste her and didn't stop until after the second time she came, and then it was his turn to find out to what exquisite madness she could drive him with her mouth. "Are you okay?" she said afterwards, stroking his forehead, and he knew that she didn't mean just his ragged gasps for breath. He took her hand, kissed her knuckles and whispered, "Never better" and then, after the briefest pause, asked, "Are you?" Her mouth tightening a little, she turned away for a moment, then looked at him again and nodded. "Yeah." She settled into his arms and nestled her head on his shoulder. "Yeah."

That moment was enough for him to wonder if she was thinking about Gabrielle, or about one of the many things she had reason to hold against him. But none of it mattered as they lay together on the warm crushed grass, her lips roaming over his neck and shoulder while her hands stroked his back. He joked with her about giving him backrubs every day, and she laughed softly and held him close, running her fingers through his hair. She asked him if he knew how to fish, and when he said no, she promised to teach him. "I guess you'll have to teach me everything now," he said, half-facetiously but with a touch of real embarrassment at his helplessness; and she gave him a long kiss and said teasingly, "Not everything." This time, when they made love, he knew that she was accepting him not only into her body but into her life.

In Elaea -- where, at Xena's insistence, he grudgingly changed into less conspicuous clothes -- he got to help her on the job. Personally, Ares was of the opinion that the people of this town were smug morons who deserved to be fleeced by cults, warlords, or anyone else who would bother; but he knew better than to voice his views on the subject. He was amused to find out that one of the cult leaders, Ixidor, had formerly served as a very junior priest at one of his temples. This gave Xena an idea -- one that made him rather nervous at first, since she wanted him to do nothing less than pose as a god. He told her she was crazy; she told him he was scared. It worked.

She did an amazing job of rigging up the effects at the temple so that, when he stepped out from behind a statue, it really looked like he had arrived through the ether with the usual light show. He was quite convincing as he glared at the cult leaders and their followers -- whom Xena had managed to gather at the temple on some made-up pretext -- and told them they were toast unless they cleared out of town by sundown. If anyone doubted Ares' identity, it helped that Ixidor, who had seen him before, crumpled to his knees, his ruddy face turning greenish and dripping with sweat, and squawked, "My lord Ares!" (It also helped that, moments before, Xena had coaxed the fool into making some disparaging remarks about his former god.) A glass ball filled with some kind of glowing concoction supplied the finishing touch. Raising the ball in his hand, he growled, "Do not make me zap you!" and the cult members began to move nervously toward the doors while Ares laughed gleefully at the sight of Ixidor trying to back away on his knees. Then, at Xena's discreet signal, he lobbed the ball into a corner where Gabrielle set off a small explosive device, and the stampede that followed was a lot of fun to watch.

It felt good to be feared again, though there was also a quick tug of sadness at the thought that it was all faked, that his powers were gone; holding the glowing ball, he had had a vivid, aching memory, not so much in his mind as in his flesh and bone, of what it was like to have a real fireball form in his palm, born effortlessly from the power coursing under his skin. But then Xena came up to him, smiling warmly, and held his hands and said, "You did great." She looked like she wanted to kiss him -- in fact, she looked like she wanted to pull him into a back room and have her way with him, except that the annoying blonde was already trudging up behind them. They made up for it, though, that night at the inn.

Their next task turned up unexpectedly while they were passing through a village where half a dozen kids had been stupid enough to get themselves abducted by some slave traders (who were smart enough to have the protection of a corrupt magistrate). This time there was real fighting involved. Apart from the thrill of fighting at her side, doing anything at her side, there was a curious moment when they brought the kids back to the village and watched the parents sweep them up in tearful hugs, and Ares caught himself getting an embarrassingly pleasant feeling at the thought that he'd had a hand in making this possible. It occurred to him that Xena must have felt like this too, and he was sharing in her life just like he had wanted. Once, when he was still a god, he had told her that he was willing to fight beside her, to champion the common folk he had never really seen as much more than fodder for his wars. He wasn't even sure he had truly meant it then, but maybe there was something to be said for all this up-with-people stuff.

He was sure of one thing: however he had imagined his life with Xena back then, he hadn't expected Gabrielle to be in the picture -- at least not quite so much, and not in that way. Having to put up with her was bad enough; he actually had to play nice and make sure she was willing to put up with him. When they rode together, he would hang back once in a while to let her have her quality time with Xena -- though, truthfully, that was far better than being subjected to the bard's deep thoughts about the colors of the sky or the inner lives of flowers. (Unfortunately, if Xena hadn't gotten tired of this crap in six years, it was unlikely that she would now.) He had to reconcile himself to never waking up next to Xena, to acting as if they were no more than traveling companions when the blonde was around. Despite the need to keep Gabrielle reasonably happy, he hoped she had a vivid imagination; he certainly got a kick out of the look on her face the morning after he and Xena broke the bed at one of those dingy inns.

The problem was, he had a vivid imagination, too. Given the amount of time he had spent around the Amazons in the old days, sleeping with women who also had female lovers was nothing new, and could make for a nice diversion. But being jealous of a woman ... that was different, and damn disconcerting. Not that he had any reason to doubt his ability to please Xena -- but obviously, being in bed with Gabrielle gave her something that he couldn't, and that knowledge gnawed at him far too often for his comfort. Once, he had a dream in which the two women made love to each other in complete abandon as he lay watching them, mysteriously unable to move, horrified and aroused in equal measure; it was even worse than the recurring nightmare which had him waking up at a campsite or an inn to find that they had dumped him, vanished without a trace. A few times, too, his brooding about what Xena felt in her girlfriend's arms led him to imagine what it was like to caress Gabrielle's small lithe form, and his body's reaction to these thoughts left him annoyed at himself and at her; surely, he wouldn't touch the blonde harpy if he were stranded with her on a desert island.

Occasionally, it occurred to Ares that he, the God of War, should have had more pride than to accept this ridiculous setup -- that he should tell Xena to choose between him and Gabrielle, that if she chose as he glumly suspected she would, he should leave, start a new life overseas ... maybe even try to get his godhood back. He didn't think about Olympus nearly as often as he had in the early days, but he did think about it, and he knew that a part of him still believed he would return there, someday. Then, before this thought could solidify into anything like resolve, his mind would fill with memories: Xena smiling at him when he brought her blackberries one morning, and kissing the scratches he'd gotten on his hands picking them from the thorny bushes; Xena shuddering in his arms with her eyes closed and her mouth open; Xena looking at him when he fought Gascar; Xena tugging playfully at his ear and telling him to sit still while she cut his hair. It was all worth it; he couldn't walk away from her, from them, from the fact that there was a them.

It wasn't easy; even without Gabrielle, there was plenty to haunt them. One evening when they were having dinner at a nearly empty inn, a young woman entered with a pretty child in tow, a girl no more than six summers old with shoulder-length brown locks and huge hazel eyes with long dark eyelashes; as they came up to the grey-haired innkeeper, the young woman said, "Hi, Mom" and the girl squealed, "Grandma!", and the innkeeper hugged them with exclamations of joy. Xena's spoon clanked on the table. Ares glanced at her and saw the quiet heartbreak in her face before it turned distant and blank; she looked, as mortals said, as if she'd just seen a ghost. In the next instant, he knew that she had: the ghost of the daughter whose childhood she had missed, the ghost of the mother she had lost while sleeping in an ice cave for twenty-five years ... the cave where he had buried her after she'd faked her death to fool the gods. Their eyes met; her lips tightened and twisted slightly, and he thought he saw a mute reproach in her stare.

Perhaps it was a good thing that Gabrielle came back to the table just then and he had to hold his tongue, because otherwise he might have blurted out, "Dammit, you made me watch you die! If you had only trusted me enough to let me in on your plan..." And Xena would have told him -- as he reflected moments later, when the hot rush of anger had worn off -- that she had little cause to trust him back then, and plenty of cause to think that if she took him into her confidence, he'd just use it to manipulate her. She could have reminded him of other things, too; for instance, that once he had tried to make her kill her mother in a scheme to force her into his service. The ghosts were there to stay.

A couple of nights later, at a different inn in a different village, in the drowsy warmth of their embrace after making love, he thought of that moment -- of the doe-eyed little girl, of the grief and loss in Xena's face. "Xena," he whispered into her soft hair, and when she responded with a contented "Hmm?" he said, "Let's have a child."

In an instant, her body went rigid; disentangling herself from his arms, she moved away to the edge of the bed. "You're crazy," she said, her voice crisp and flat. Ares wondered if she meant "You're crazy to think that I would bring a child into this mess," or "You're crazy to think that I would do this to Gabrielle," or "You're crazy to think that I would have a baby with a man who once threatened my daughter's life if I didn't bear him a child," or all of the above. At least she didn't say that the thought of it sickened her, the way she did once. They lay silently for a while, and he felt cold and miserable between the damp sheets. Then Xena muttered, "I'd better get going," and slipped out of bed.

When the door closed behind her, Ares slammed his fist into the wall, wincing in pain. He tossed and turned for at least an hour, and finally, when the patch of sky in the tiny window was turning from black to grey, he did something that was absolutely forbidden by their unspoken agreement: he went to her room. Luckily there were no locks on the doors. Xena sat up abruptly. "It's me," he muttered before any sharp objects could fly in his direction, and she hissed, "Ares, you fool -- what are you doing?" He came up and knelt by the bed. "What?" she asked, a little less harshly, and he swallowed and said, "I love you."

She sighed -- "Ares..." -- and put her arms around him, rocking back and forth a little as he rested his head in her lap. "I know you do," she whispered, "I know. I..." He held his breath, wondering if she was going to say it. She took his face in her hands, lifted his mouth up to hers and kissed him, and said, "It's okay."

In a few moments she gently told him to go; he slunk back to his room and managed to sleep a little. The next morning when he came down for breakfast, Xena was alone at the table. Ares stopped and looked at her, anxiety surging again, tightening into a coil in his chest. Then she reached out to take his hand, and her smile made him dizzy with happiness. He sat next to her, breathing in the light tangy scent of the herbs she used in her bath; she picked up a piece of honey-dipped flat bread from her plate and slipped it in his mouth, and he licked her fingers and they both shivered. They talked about nothing in particular. She told him they were heading to a nearby village to help resolve a dispute with a landowner over water rights; "I bet you'll put me to work digging ditches," he said, and she teased him about how great he would look digging a ditch -- and then her laugh broke off as if she'd been slapped, and she let go of his hand. He didn't have to turn and look to know what was wrong. Blondie's timing was still impeccable.

He tried not to think about how long this setup could go on, or how it would end. For the time being he was sharing Xena's life, and sometimes her bed. It would have to do.

Maybe she would come tonight.

It had started raining outside, the water dripping, pounding on the roof, sloshing in the trees. There was a noise in the hallway -- a soft thump, a creak... something that could be footsteps. Ares lifted his head, straining to make out the sounds over the patter of the rain.

The footsteps came closer; not one but two people, one stomping heavily, the other shuffling. "This way, Sir," said the innkeeper's wheedling voice. A door opened with a fretful squeak. Apparently a late arrival, some tired traveler coming in from the rain. The innkeeper said something else and a male voice replied to her, muffled by the distance. Something thudded on the floor, then the door slammed shut, and the innkeeper trudged back down the hallway.

Xena took her hand off the door handle, went back to her bed and sat down with a sigh.

She had been about to walk out of the room when she heard the steps. She didn't really care if the innkeeper or the new guest had seen her tiptoeing through the hallway in her shift, or if she got lewd stares and winks in the morning; a steely glare was usually enough to fix that. It was just that she felt too much like a teenage girl sneaking out at night to meet her boyfriend. And that was strange, because she didn't feel very young ... she felt worn out.

She hadn't planned for it to happen this way. The first night they camped out, lying in her bedroll under the chilly white moon, she told herself that she had to do right by Gabrielle. Whatever Gabrielle had in mind when she told her to go to Ares, it certainly wasn't "Let's have Ares join us so you can take turns sleeping with both of us." Even to think about it was absurd.

Gabrielle lay about four paces to her left, and Ares on her right a little further away, and she might as well have been stuck on some deserted rock in the middle of an ocean. She needed Gabrielle so badly, needed to fold herself around Gabrielle, to caress her until they both forgot the hurt, to see her eyes smile. She tried not to think of anything else, but the memories came anyway -- the tender, eager, almost disbelieving look in Ares' face when they first made love, the quiver in his voice when he whispered her name, how it had felt to rest her head on his chest and rub her cheek on the fuzzy hair that covered it.

She wondered if it would ever happen again -- knowing that the answer should have been a firm no.

The memories returned when she and Gabrielle lay on the grassy island in the lake after making love. She drew a fingertip across Gabrielle's skin, glittery with water and sweat, tracing the outline of Gabrielle's breast and the curve of her hip, and found herself thinking about how Ares would look with his hair wet and tiny droplets of water sparkling on his body. Xena squeezed her eyes shut, nearly gritting her teeth in frustration. Gabrielle reached up to plant small kisses on her jaw, trailing toward her mouth and finally brushing against it; the soft flutter of Gabrielle's tongue between her lips brought Xena back to the present, to how good it was to hold Gabrielle in her arms. Gently, she kissed her back and slid a hand down her body, listening to her trembling sighs. She couldn't bear the thought of losing Gabrielle, yet again. So much of their life together had been haunted by loss: their first night, when they were sure they were saying good-bye forever; their bittersweet reunion after Gabrielle came back from seemingly certain death, when the pure joy of their love was tainted by Xena's conviction that the only way to save Gabrielle was to separate from her forever -- or else her vision of being crucified together would come true.

Xena shook her head slightly; she didn't want to dwell on doom and loss. A happier memory came to her, from just a few days before they heard about the bounty on Ares: how Gabrielle had made a new kind of dumplings and she'd tasted one and pretended to wince, only to laugh at Gabrielle's crestfallen look; and how Gabrielle's face had lit up in a still-girlish smile when Xena popped another dumpling in her mouth and grinned to show her appreciation.

She cupped Gabrielle's face and looked in her eyes, and kissed her deeper. It wasn't fair that she should want anyone else.

The sun was golden in the bright grass, and the breeze was mild, and for a brief time she was happy -- until they left the little island and swam toward the shore, and it occurred to Xena that Ares knew exactly why they had left him behind. Back at the campsite, he avoided her eyes and grunted in response to her soft-spoken "Hey." She watched him walk away sullenly to take care of his horse; and in that instant she knew that she couldn't possibly expect Ares to ride with her, fight with her, sleep five paces away from her, and never touch her -- not after what had happened between them -- not when they were traveling in the company of her lover. Even if he went along with it, which was doubtful, she couldn't do it to him... couldn't leave him with so little dignity. Worse, she wasn't sure she could do it to herself.

Ares came back to the camp some time later, when Gabrielle was off gathering firewood and Xena had just finished cleaning the carp she had caught. She threw a furtive glance at him, long enough to notice the little grimace on his face as he sat down. "Are you all right?" she asked, and when he didn't answer she came closer and said, "What's wrong?" He looked up at her, his mouth twitching, and spat out, "My back hurts from riding. And from walking. I haven't exactly got the hang of this whole mortal gig, okay?"

He turned away. Shaking her head, Xena quickly rinsed and wiped her hands, then knelt next to him and said, "Lie down." She almost smiled at the startled look he gave her. "On your stomach," she said. "Take your vest off." As Ares complied, she reminded herself that she wouldn't be touching him for pleasure, hers or his; it was only for pain relief, she had the skill and it would be cruel not to use it. Wiping her still-damp hands on the grass, she straddled him and felt him shudder a little. She kneaded his back slowly, easing the tension in the muscles, pressing her fingertips into his spine and shoulder blades. He groaned and Xena bit down on her lip, getting an all-too-vivid picture in her mind of Ares turning over so that her hands were on his chest and his eyes were on her, wide and cloudy with desire. She pressed harder, and couldn't help laughing and teasing him a bit when he let out an indignant "Ow!" -- and then she heard a noise and raised her head to see Gabrielle coming toward them with a bundle of sticks in her arms. She reminded herself that she wasn't doing anything ... wasn't doing anything wrong. Not yet.

Lying in her bedroll that night, Xena wondered if she had half believed that spending a night with Ares would get him out of her system -- and if Gabrielle had believed it, too. What a stupid expression, she thought; what a stupid thing for people to say. After the other night, he was in her blood more than ever; it was as if they had truly merged with each other and being away from him felt like being torn from a part of oneself, like missing a lost limb and still feeling it all the time.

She knew that Ares wasn't asleep, and that he was as desperate for her as she was for him; just as she knew that he was going to talk to her when Gabrielle went to bathe the next morning. He did it his way, falling back on clever one-liners, getting clumsy and tongue-tied when his emotions got the better of him for a moment -- but it wasn't difficult to figure out what he was trying to tell her: I'll wait for you, but I can't take it much longer.

Xena thought about it that day as they rode on toward Elaea. It wasn't just that she wanted him; it wasn't just that she didn't want him to leave -- she cringed at the thought of using sex as bait to make him stay. She loved him. Trying to hold on to him and to Gabrielle was greedy and unfair; losing either one of them was unbearable.

It was meant to be, Xena told herself. She had always prided herself on making her own fate; but perhaps no one did, man or god, where love was involved. She hadn't chosen to love Gabrielle, she certainly hadn't chosen to love Ares -- she just did.

That evening, they sat at a campsite eating in near-silence, and there was a moment when she found herself staring straight into Ares' eyes, dark in the deepening twilight, filled with a longing so intense that she couldn't look away -- a longing for so much more than her body. She wasn't sure how long they stared at each other like that, but when she shifted her eyes she caught Gabrielle looking at her, and it made her cheeks burn. Gabrielle tilted her head down in an almost imperceptible movement, her face lit up by the campfire's faint crimson glow; when she raised her eyes toward Xena again, it was in a look of quiet agreement. Xena's heart sank. So Gabrielle knew what she was thinking, and accepted it. To her dismay, she wasn't sure if that was a bad or a good thing. She couldn't do this to Gabrielle, she couldn't ... but what would it do to Ares if she pushed him away now, and what would it do to her and Gabrielle? There was no good way out of this.

The night after that, some part of her still wanted to believe that she wasn't doing this on purpose, just letting it happen -- that she was just going for a walk in the woods and Ares just happened to follow her. It was maddening, to be thinking that way. As a kid, Xena had sometimes overheard older girls talk about their boyfriends, in the neighborhood and at Cyrene's tavern; they had a way of making it sound like it was never their fault if they went too far, like they'd gotten carried away, swept off their feet. She had scoffed at that, even then: when she made love with someone, she had decided, it would be because she wanted to, and she would never lie to herself about it. This was no time to start.

In a small clearing, Xena stopped and stood still, her hands clasped on her stomach, her bare foot kicking away at the pine cones and sticks scattered in the grass. The moon peered through the murmuring leaves overhead, and everything was mottled with bluish white: the grass, the darkness of the trees, her own skin. Then the branches rustled at the edge of the clearing, and Ares came out into the moonlight. He walked toward her as she watched and waited. After all this time, she had stopped running.

Then there was no more distance between them, and she lost herself in the heat of his kiss, until Ares pulled back and joked, "This is what you had in mind, right?" -- and it jolted her back into reality, a reality in which everything had consequences and in which there was still time to turn back. Instead, she silenced him with another kiss and pulled him down with her into the dewy grass. But the thought of Gabrielle still nudged its way into her mind a few times -- even when Ares was kissing her stomach and she was trembling and raising her hips toward him in anticipation of more; even when she caressed him with her mouth, thrilling to the taste and feel of his hard yet so tender flesh, to his gasps and groans, Oh Xena oh you make me feel so good; and again when they lay together afterwards and Xena found herself thinking that Gabrielle might have woken up and noticed them gone.

She ran her fingers down his spine and he sighed. "Hey," he said, his breath soft on her neck, his beard tickling her skin, "you know what you can do for me?" "What?" she drawled in a mock-sultry voice, and he said, "Rub my back every day." She chuckled, but part of her wondered if he was asking her to say that they'd be together for good; she couldn't promise him that. "Is that all you want from me?" she teased, sounding more light-hearted than she felt. He nuzzled her and whispered, "Well -- since I have to put up with all this walking and riding -- getting used to it might as well be fun."

Her eyes tingled. Oh, Ares knew how to get to her, even if he wasn't doing it on purpose. By his side, she could help him learn to live as a mortal, help him stay human. She had made him her own; he was her responsibility now. I won't ever let you go. She couldn't say it to him, but she did think it, her lips moving soundlessly, as she hugged him tightly and stroked his hair. This was their real first night, their beginning. She knew that it was also the end of something -- of any chance that things between her and Gabrielle would go back to the way they were before.

Xena couldn't be sure whether Gabrielle was awake when she and Ares returned quietly to the camp; but instinct told her that she was.

As they rode up to the inn in Elaea three nights later, Xena realized that she had been trying not to think about the sleeping arrangements. If she and Gabrielle stayed in the same room, as they always had, she might not get a chance to be with Ares at all; asking for separate rooms felt like slapping Gabrielle in the face. She didn't fully make up her mind until she stood before the counter at the inn. "Two rooms," she said, keeping her eyes on the dour-faced, bored innkeeper. Then Gabrielle spoke, her voice sounding a little strange, as if she hadn't talked in a long time and was out of practice: "Make that three rooms."

In her room that night, as she was removing her armor, it occurred to her that this might have been Gabrielle's way of saying that it was the end for them. She was in a near-panic when she went to Gabrielle's room barefoot, wearing only her leather tunic. Gabrielle opened the door, her face slightly drawn and careworn, her eyes grave; then she gave Xena a plucky little smile as if to say, We'll get through this, and stepped back to let her in. Xena reached out and stroked her cheek, and for the next several hours there was nothing and no one between them.

She waited another night before she went to Ares.

After a while, it seemed almost normal. As far as anyone was concerned, the three of them were friends, companions, comrades-in-arms traveling together, helping those in need and fighting evildoers. Ares adapted to their life and their work surprisingly well. Xena knew, of course, that he had about as much interest in serving the Greater Good as she did in shopping for jewelry and perfume -- that he cared only about fighting at her side, and that if she said one evening, "Hey, let's go out and raid a village just for kicks," he'd cheerfully join her. Still, whatever his reasons, he was doing good things. Xena didn't expect him ever to shed his cynicism, and wasn't even sure she wanted him to; but she still hoped that goodness and nobility might grow on him, that she was giving him a chance to change the way she had. And besides --she quickly brushed past this thought whenever it occurred to her, but there it was -- fighting next to someone who enjoyed fighting felt … good.

Except that nothing was normal. The simplest things that lovers or even friends did -- a hug, a squeeze of a hand, resting one's head on the other's shoulder -- were now off-limits much of the time. Even the privacy of a room at an inn was only so private: she had to wonder how much could be heard through those walls, especially if the rooms were close by. One night, she and Ares tussled playfully on his bed, and she teased him into such a state that he finally flipped her on her hands and knees and rode her in a near-frenzy, and she, for once, let him take charge completely, urging him on with short husky cries, until they collapsed in a heap. Then he moved off her, gently turned her over and hugged her to his sweat-drenched chest while she nestled her head in the crook of his neck -- and at that moment there was a loud peevish creak, and the bed wobbled and sagged and crashed under them as its wooden frame fell apart. Clutching each other, they burst out laughing; Ares whispered, "Did the earth move for you too?" and they laughed again, until it occurred to Xena that the next day she'd have to make some arrangement with the innkeeper to cover the damage -- and that Gabrielle, who must have heard the crash anyway, would inevitably know about it.

One morning, Xena woke up at the campsite, slowly opened her eyes, squinting at the searing sunlight, and realized that Ares and Gabrielle were gone. Fear jabbed into her chest, snatching her breath away: They had both gotten fed up and left her. She sat up abruptly and whirled around. Ares' horse, Dragon, was still there, but there was no sign of Clio. As Xena took a deep breath, trying to steady her lurching heart, the shrubbery at the edge of the clearing rustled and Ares came out. "Where's Gabrielle?" she blurted out, her voice a little hoarse. He shrugged, "Off by the brook, watering the horse with the fancy name," and then came up to her and added with a grin, "Here, your breakfast in bed." Only then, she noticed the clay pot in his hands; it was filled with blackberries. She didn't know whether she wanted to laugh, or to cry, or to kiss him, especially when she noticed the cuts and scratches on his berry-stained hands. The former God of War, battling the brambles to pick berries for her. She smiled and took the pot from his hands, and brought his hand to her mouth, pressing her lips to the hot scraped skin. A minute later Gabrielle came back with Clio and muttered a flat "Good morning." Life went on.

That first awful stab of fear stayed with her, and gave her a couple of troubling dreams. Another time, Xena dreamed that Gabrielle and Ares were caressing her at the same time, kissing her neck, stroking her breasts and legs, making her weak with pleasure -- until she woke up and sat in her bedroll gasping for breath, glancing about her wildly in harsh gray light of dawn. They were both asleep.

Often, she missed the old times when it was just her and Gabrielle. What was unnerving was that once in a while, she also caught herself wondering what life with Ares might have been like if ... no, not if Gabrielle hadn't been there at all, but if she and Gabrielle had remained only friends. She never allowed herself to dwell on this long enough to actually picture it -- not only because to do so would have felt like a final betrayal of Gabrielle but also because she didn't like to ponder the what-ifs; there were too many of those in her life.

Over dinner at an inn one evening, Xena watched as the grey-haired innkeeper, still beautiful despite the fine wrinkles on her face, greeted her daughter and granddaughter, and it struck her that it should have been her and little Eve, coming to see her mother at the inn in Amphipolis. She didn't even know what her daughter had looked like at that age. She sensed Ares' eyes on her and looked at him. It occurred to her that if she'd only let him in on her and Gabrielle's plan to convince the gods they were dead, everything would have been different: no ice cave, no twenty-five year gap in her life. With a twinge of guilt, she remembered the horrified look on Ares' face as she slumped in his arms after drinking the fake poison. What a twisted joke it all was: She had missed her daughter's childhood and her mother's old age, Eve had grown up to be the murderous Livia and now carried a burden of guilt too much like her own, Joxer was dead, Gabrielle had lost her parents --. all because she had been determined not to give in to Ares ... and now, here they were.

Xena saw Ares' face twitch a little, and wondered if he was thinking the same thing. But there was no point in questioning her choices, really. She could have never given in to that Ares, the arrogant, seductive War God who had loved her in his own way, to be sure -- far more truly and deeply than she had suspected -- but who had wanted to bend her to his will, to win her love as one would win a battle, through force and manipulation. She must have gone mad, she thought, to ask herself if she had been wrong to resist him; if anything, she had far better reasons to ask if she'd been too quick to forget the past, to believe that Ares had really changed, even now that he was mortal and humbled.

She turned again. The woman was now talking to her mother now while the child was prancing around, twirling and tapping her feet. Then, as if sensing Xena's stare, she stopped for a moment and gazed at her gravely with those huge eyes before resuming her little dance. It occurred to Xena suddenly that it wasn't too late to get it right; now, she had another chance. She closed her eyes and saw Ares cradling a baby in his arms, its tiny hand wrapped around his finger, and herself standing next to him stroking the soft fuzz on its head, and Gabrielle... In the same instant, she pushed it out of her mind; she didn't even want to start thinking about all the reasons it was -- impossible.

A couple of nights later in bed with Ares, she wasn't thinking about anything as she lay half-slumbering in the gentle heat of his body, her breasts tingling from the touch of the hair on his chest, when his whisper brushed her skin and she heard him say, "Let's have a child..." Instantly alert, Xena felt ice-cold with terror, as if he somehow had the power to give her these thoughts the way he had given her passionate dreams about him once, as a god; but the chill melted away in a surge of aching tenderness -- toward him, toward this child that could never be. Before it could flood her completely, she moved away from him and said, "You're crazy." They lay like two strangers forced to share a bed and trying to keep as much distance between them as possible, and she was glad that it was too dark for them to see each other's faces. The memory came to her of a day long ago, when she was being hunted by three temple armies intent on killing her baby; Ares told her he'd make it stop if she accepted his bargain, and his deep smooth voice in her ear was captivating and insistent: Give me a child. She wondered how she could have put it all behind her -- why, even now, she longed to hold him again.

After a while she got up and said she had to go. Later, when it was almost dawn, Ares came to her room; "I love you," he said, kneeling by her bedside, and that hopeless tenderness washed over her again. She held him and kissed him, and told him it was okay, knowing that nothing was really okay and probably wouldn't be.

She didn't like to think about the way it was likely to end: she would have to do right by Gabrielle and leave Ares behind somewhere and break his heart one more time. Just like he said to her in the tavern that night: Chewed it up and spat it out. Maybe she could still come back and see him after that. If he'd have her.

Or else he'd regain his godhood. And then -- what? Would he go back to being his old self, the way he had after his first brief experience of being mortal, losing his humanity in the intoxicating rush of power? Would he use her own emotions against her, use the vulnerabilities she had let him see in his next scheme or game? Would there be anything left of --

Xena took a deep breath and rubbed her forehead. Just a few hours left until daybreak, and she had yet to get any sleep.

She could go to bed, or --

She got up, went to the small window and pushed the shutters open, resting her hands on the wet windowsill. The night smelled of grass and damp wood; in the darkness, her eyes could just make out the clumps of the trees, the outlines of the houses and the stables. A gust of wind sprayed her face and arms with a thin mist of cold droplets, but the rain was already tapering off. She wiped her face and looked up at the pitch-black sky.

There was still time.


Continued in Chapter 5