Awakening

Little darling, I feel that ice is finally melting,
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear.
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say,
It's all right.

The Beatles, "Here Comes The Sun"

In the blinding expanse of snow, where winds howl among the jagged peaks of Mount Aetna, seasons do not change. Like snowdrifts, they eddy and twist, with little to distinguish between spring and autumn, summer and winter. The aloof splendour of the mountain is timeless, separate and removed from the oblivious humans scurrying about their lives below. They plough their fields, scream in childbirth or war, dance at harvest festivals – then die, to be replaced by others just like them, to scurry and die in their turn. The slopes of Mount Aetna are not so different then to the timeless splendour of Olympus, with its marble-gold halls and endless feasts, and the two humans entombed within its frozen heart are no less eternal than the pantheon of gods.

It had not always been that way.

Ares, God of War, stood at the foot of a sheer cliff, looking over the scarred landscape that opened up around him. Impassive, his dark eyes swept the scene, from the soaring peaks – a dazzling, eye-watering whiteness edged with blue – to the pock-marks of caverns and the weathered remains of rockslides below. He was not mortal; the thin air did not make him dizzy, and the frost could not touch his skin around the customary black of his armour. A long exhaled breath clouded the air. How he hated this place! Hated it, fought it, and kept coming back.

Ares turned slowly, his boots crunching on fresh, untouched snow. There was nothing to see. The cliff-face towering over him was a vertical wall of ice. His own power had long ago sealed the entrance to the cave; there was no one, no mortal and no god, who could disturb it, or would be fool enough to try. At least in death, Xena could be as eternal as he, hidden away from time and from curious eyes. The ice casket he had carved for her would hold her forever. Ares felt absurdly jealous of it – of the dark cold that could touch Xena's skin, her black hair, her slender long fingers. Once she had been warm and alive, full of fire, beautiful in her fury. He never could understand her when she wasted that fire in self-sacrifice, burning herself up when she could have taken cities and empires instead – but then Xena had always done things her way.

They had made a child, once. A daughter. Mortal like her mother. She was gone, too, taken by fire rather than ice, burnt to ash on some deserted beach in Thrace. It did not matter how mortals died – only that they did. Sometimes Ares wondered if Xena or their child had existed at all, or whether it mattered if they had.

He bent down and scooped up a handful of icy snow. It sparkled in the sunlight with a shifting rainbow of colours. Funny; he'd never noticed how different each of the flakes was, when seen so close. His breath melted the crystals, turning them into identical droplets of water. He threw the rest aside and brushed his hand on the side of his vest. He'd had enough of eternity, for now. He turned and walked back into the world of mortals.

A small whorl of snow formed in the dip where the God of War had touched it. The disturbance was tiny, hardly even noticed by the ancient mountain. A tiny fissure ran down from it, then stopped when it reached the rock. Below it, where the cave walls had been cut to form two caskets, the ice gave a soft clink. Another fissure had awakened. It threaded its way upwards invisibly, slowly zigzagging higher with every shift of the mountain, with each wind-dislodged stone that skittered down the cliff to the plateau below. At last, it reached the ceiling. Trapped there, it began to expand into the rock itself, blossoming with more hairline cracks, like a sombre colourless spring that was nevertheless as real and unstoppable as the spring that came to the world below. The filigree of fractures embraced the icy rock; it collapsed inwards in a glittering shower of stone, mirroring the glittering showers that watered the plains far below.

Like them, it heralded life.

The rocks tumbled onto the two caskets on the cave floor. No single stone was large enough to shatter the lids, but many were quite sharp enough to send fissured blooms across the sheets of ice, making them opalescent and fragile.

Spring had come to the mountains. Inside the caskets, just as in the tilled earth below, life quickened, stirred, and broke free.

* * *

Cold – she was far too cold, every breath seemed laced with ice and her body felt stiff and unresponsive. Xena tried to open her eyes, but that single movement seemed to require an inordinate amount of energy. She persevered, an effort of will, rewarded not by the opening of her eyes, but by a shuddering spasm of numb muscles that twisted her body in a rapid convulsion. Her fist connected with the smooth surface of something above her. Xena cried out with surprise; her arm continued upwards, smashing whatever it was into useless shards, punching into the void above until her elbow locked with a jolt.

It was then that her eyes finally obeyed her command and opened, then closed immediately: for the briefest of moments, it seemed she had looked directly into the sun.

Where was she? And why was it so cold?

The next time Xena opened her eyes, it was with considerably more care, shielding them first with her hand and turning her head sideways as far as she could. She sat up too quickly, dizzy from fear and the sudden movement, more fragments falling around her – ice. Ice everywhere – blue-white, lit into blinding brilliance by the sunlight streaming in from above, forming what had once been a box of some sort around her. Xena kicked its remnants to the floor and tried to blink away the tears that blurred her vision. Her teeth were chattering uncontrollably, but the rest of her body protested every movement.

She was sitting on some sort of platform, in a cave. An icy cave, with smooth walls and a ceiling fringed with rainbow-glittering icicles. Which was patently ridiculous, because she should have been on a beach, waiting for Ming Tien to appear ... And he had. Xena followed that thought, prodding stubbornly at disjointed memories that refused to make sense. Ming Tien had appeared; she'd feigned death to lure him close enough to destroy him with Lao Ma's power. Using the power was supposed to exhaust her, and perhaps play tricks on her memory, too – but it was certainly not supposed to deposit her in a cave full of ice!

A part of her wanted to believe it a dream. Her stiff cold body assured her otherwise. Xena set her jaw to stop her teeth chattering, making her entire body shiver instead, and slowly turned around. Then she stopped. What she saw made her forget all about the beach and Ming Tien: a scant few paces away, on a platform like the one on which she sat, stood a coffin. It was made entirely of ice, its lid littered with rocks and debris. A dark shape was visible inside its translucent walls. With a sickening lurch, Xena realised what the 'box' around her had been – and what the second one implied.

"Gabrielle!"

Ignoring her screaming muscles, Xena stumbled towards the ice coffin and fell to her knees, sweeping the fragments of rock aside with hands made clumsy by cold. The lid crumbled as though it had been waiting for her touch; its frozen shards flowed through her fingers to the floor, cutting her hands. There she was!

Gabrielle lay inside the casket, her eyes closed, her face purplish with cold, her lips almost black. She wasn't breathing.

"Gabrielle!" Xena's hands, numb and awkward, reached inside to grip her friend's shoulders, shaking her. "Gabrielle, wake up!" She was not dead, she wouldn't believe it... She hit the casket, "Wake up, dammit!"

Gabrielle's eyelids fluttered, her lips parted slightly ... then she yawned. She was alive!

Xena tore at the ice around Gabrielle's limp body, lifting her up into a sitting position, trying to support her head. Gabrielle's short blonde hair felt damp, Xena brushed it back. "Breathe," she thumped her back lightly, "Breathe, damn it! Talk to me!"

Gabrielle drew in a ragged breath. Her eyes opened and closed, and then she squinted into the light. "Xena?"

Xena's shoulders sagged in relief. "Yeah."

Gabrielle raised a shaking hand to her head, missed, tried again, rubbing her forehead and the bridge of her nose. "I'm awake..."

"Yeah."

"Why is it so cold?" Then she opened her eyes fully and looked around, puzzled. "We're in a cave."

Xena gave her a tense smile. "Looks like it."

"What are we doing in a cave?" Gabrielle looked down at herself, then over at Xena's hands, criss-crossed with a dozen small cuts. "What happened?"

Xena shook her head slowly. "I don't know." She closed her eyes briefly, remembering. "It worked ... Ming Tien's gone."

"Ming Tien?" Gabrielle fought to stay calm. Ming Tien was dead...

"And," Xena glanced aside uncertainly, then looked sadly at Gabrielle, "so is Lao Hsu. She's dead, Gabrielle. The power we used against Ming Tien destroyed her."

Dead. The word rang against the cavern walls. Gabrielle listened for the echoes to soften into silence. Lao Hsu, the young empress of Ch'in. She had not meant to bring back Ming Tien's ghost, but he'd been too strong for her. Gabrielle remembered feigning death on the beach to trick Ming Tien's ghost into getting close enough for Xena to destroy him. But ...

"Lao Hsu wasn't supposed to be there!"

Xena's voice softened. "She followed him. I think she wanted to protect us."

"Gods..." Gabrielle shook her head slowly.

Xena's eyes grew suddenly wide, as though she had been jolted awake. "Eve! My baby!"

Gabrielle broke off. "She's not here?"

Xena jumped to her feet, looking around wildly. "She's gone! She – they took her!" She was shaking all over, her hands grasping wildly at her shoulders where the straps of Eve's baby carriage used to be. "Eve's gone!"

Gabrielle rose with difficulty and gripped Xena's arms, then her cold face, trying to still her shaking. "Xena. Xena, look at me!" When Xena's frantic eyes found hers, Gabrielle spoke as clearly as she could, trying to ignore the dull horror in her own heart. "Who took her?"

"Romans! Soldiers – I heard them leave, back on the beach; one called Marcus, I didn't hear the other's name... They said something about a commander named Octavius." Xena's voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, shaking along with her body. "I tried to break the spell, but I couldn't do it, Gabrielle. I couldn't stop them. I couldn't save her!"

Gabrielle stroked Xena's arms, trying to soothe her – "You will. It's okay, we'll find her, the Romans couldn't have gone far ... Xena, please ..."

Xena stilled abruptly, her whole body stiffening. Puzzled, Gabrielle followed her gaze to one side of the cave, and saw what Xena was looking at. Her weapons. Her sword had been driven vertically into the floor, the single emerald atop its hilt catching the light to shine a vivid green. On the sword-hilt was balanced the circular blade of the chakram. A tablet of blue ice carved with some sort of inscription was propped up against the sword.

"What is that?" Gabrielle asked, eyeing the arrangement nervously. It resembled an altar.

Wordlessly, Xena went over to her weapons and picked up the tablet. She glanced at the writing briefly, as though she already knew what it would say, then turned it towards Gabrielle. The engraved angular script shone a brilliant white in the cold light. Gabrielle felt her breath catch.

"Xena," she read out in a whisper. "Eve. Gabrielle."

A tombstone. Their tombstone; hers, and Xena's, and little Eve's. Gabrielle stared at the writing, but could not take it in. So many times she had come close to death, had seen its shadow in every fight, had once returned from the very brink of eternity... Never, in all that time, did she imagine seeing her own name on a grave. It made her feel intangible, ghostlike, as though she could simply cease to exist.

"Eve."

Xena's hollow voice dispelled the strangeness, but not the cold that kept pressing on Gabrielle's chest, making it hard to breathe. She found she could do nothing but watch as Xena kicked the altar apart with savage precision, replacing the chakram at her hip and the sword on her back. When she turned around again, her face was oddly empty, and the blue of her eyes was ice.

"Ares," Xena said. "That's how we got here."

Not knowing how to respond, Gabrielle tried to reach for her hand, but Xena ignored her.

"He thinks we're dead. You, me, Eve, all of us." Xena turned and began to pace the chamber, her footsteps crunching on the crushed ice and snow underfoot. "He buried us here, with full honours, the way the leaders of his armies are buried when their time comes." She looked at the hole in the ground where her sword had been, then ran her hand along the rim of the chakram. "We won't be seeing him again."

Gabrielle stood in utter silence, gripping the edge of the ice platform for support. It numbed her hands. "Can you ... try to call him?" she asked at last, but knew the answer even before she heard it.

"No point," Xena said dispassionately. "He thinks I'm dead. He won't be listening."

"But Eve's name, on the tombstone..."

"Eve is alive." Xena whirled around, continuing her circuit of the cavern. Finally, she stopped and looked up at the breach in the ceiling. "We'll get her back."

Gabrielle wrapped her arms around herself, trying in vain to stop shivering. "If you did reach Ares, somehow... Would he help...?"

Xena froze for a moment, still looking up. "No."

She removed the chakram from her hip and launched it upwards at the opening. It hit one side, then the other, ricocheting off a wall before she caught it again. The opening widened, sprinkling ice and rocks, then cracks ran down from it along one wall, and a whole section crumbled inwards, helped by the force of an angry whistling wind. Gabrielle sprang back as the rocks tumbled around her.

Outside, it was even brighter, and colder. Cliffs and snow-covered slopes were mercilessly bright against the blue sky. Gabrielle and Xena pushed their way forward along a sheer wall of ice, fighting the stinging wind. It was a clear, cloudless day; far below, fields were visible, toy-box buildings and people around them.

"We have to get down there," Xena raised her voice to carry above the wind.

"How?" Gabrielle screamed her response, barely able to make her numb lips move. The way down seemed to consist largely of gorges and sharp rocks slick with frost.

Xena pulled her behind an outcrop and the wind abated slightly. "Carefully."

She tore strips of linen from her underrobe, twisting the material, then snapped it taut to test the strength of the rope. "It'll have to do." She passed one end to Gabrielle and showed her how to tie it around her waist.

Gabrielle looked into her friend's blue-lipped face, trying wordlessly to offer some comfort. Xena turned away, looking down the mountainside. Then she shook herself.

"Come on."

* * *

The climb down proved difficult, but not as bad as Xena had expected. At least they managed to avoid slipping on treacherous rocks, and the more insidious dangers of frostbite. Nevertheless, both she and Gabrielle were on the verge of collapse by the time they had reached the small settlement at the foot of the mountain, long after nightfall.

The noisy drinking hall was warm and dark with smoke, and smelled strongly of ale and burnt meat. A spit was turning in the fireplace, an orange-gold fire roaring over the charred meat. Although the heat seared Xena's skin, it did not penetrate any deeper. Inside, in that place where she harboured her baby's laughter, her eyes, her sleepy murmurs – there was only ice. It was easier that way, Xena thought with some measure of gratitude. Easier, too, not to wonder whether she should have let Ares in on their plan to play dead. A vague discomfort surprised her; she tried not to imagine the scene on the beach, the way he must have found her and Gabrielle in the wreckage of a carriage under the cliff, his face when thought he understood. A darker part of her wished she had seen it.

Xena shook her head; there was no point pondering the what-ifs. The dreams she'd had in Ch'in, of a dark figure hungry for Eve's life, had not exactly inspired confidence in Ares. By the time she'd realised the threat was not Ares but Ming Tien, it had been too late. Things might have been different if she could have trusted him in the first place.

It didn't matter anyway. What mattered was the present. The legionaries who had taken Eve had been on their way back to Rome; if she could find this Octavius, she'd find Eve. Xena wondered how much of a lead the Romans had on her.

Opposite her, Gabrielle gazed around the place curiously. She pointed to something on the wall, "What do you think that is?"

Xena looked in the direction she had indicated and shrugged. "A scroll."

"I know it's a scroll," Gabrielle frowned, "I mean - what is it?"

"That's your department," Xena said, fighting impatience. "A scroll's a scroll to me." Where was the food? She wanted to be on the road, moving, getting closer to Eve.

Gabrielle slipped out from behind the table, and went over to investigate the scroll. Xena could not help a flicker of envy. Even at a time like this, Gabrielle had such a zest for life. She somehow managed to find everything about it fascinating – right down to filthy old pieces of parchment decorating a tavern wall, probably pinned up to mask a hole.

"By the gods!" Gabrielle exclaimed, startling an old man nearby into spilling his ale over the table. He gave Gabrielle a nasty look, which she ignored, squeezing past him back to Xena.

"You're not going to believe it!" she said, eyes bright with excitement.

"Try me," Xena smiled up at her sourly. She tried not to sound irritated. Unless that scroll was a map of the shortest route to Rome, she didn't want to hear about it – but it didn't look as though she'd have much of a choice. Gabrielle took no notice of her indifference, smiling broadly.

"That is my scroll, Xena. Mine! And that one, too..."

Xena shrugged, stretching her legs under the table. "So they bought some of your scrolls. Good for you."

Gabrielle waved an impatient hand. "There's more, all along the walls, look! My scrolls on a wall, Xena! I wrote them. That one is all about Eli..."

A merry laugh tinkled behind her, and a buxom red-haired serving girl appeared with soup and ale in wooden kegs. She set the steaming tray on the table and put her hands on her hips.

"I'm sorry, but that's not possible," she said with an air of absolute authority. "Those aren't your scrolls."

Gabrielle gave her a haughty stare. "I believe I know my own work."

"That," the girl waggled a plump finger at the scrolls, "was written by Gabrielle – the Bard of Potadeia." She breathed the name reverently. Both Gabrielle and Xena stared at her. "Ma says it's very old," the girl added proudly. "At least as old as this place – twenty-five summers."

"Doubt it." Xena pushed the a soup bowl closer and dipped in her spoon. "Gabrielle wrote about Eli last year. If she says it's her scroll, then it's her scroll."

"Thank you!" Gabrielle said triumphantly.

The serving girl looked from Xena to Gabrielle in consternation. "You're saying that you... you're Gabrielle of Potadeia?" She spoke slowly, as though confirming that Gabrielle had two heads and breathed fire. "The famous bard?"

Gabrielle's cheeks reddened. "Well, I don't know about 'famous', exactly – but yes, I'm the bard of Potadeia. Gabrielle. Nice to meet you, –"

"You're crazy," the girl said shrilly, taking a step back. "Or a liar. Everyone knows that Gabrielle of Potadeia disappeared twenty-five years ago." Warming to her topic, she continued more certainly. "Grandma used to be friendly with Cyrene of Amphipolis – you know, the mother of the legendary Xena. Went over to comfort her when she heard Xena and Gabrielle had disappeared. I bet they died fighting some horrible monster," she added with relish. "It must have been a terrible battle."

Xena stopped eating, the spoon halfway to her lips. There was something macabre about hearing this girl spout such nonsense. And yet...

"Broke her heart, the poor woman," the girl continued, wiping a tear with the corner of her apron. "Grandma says she never recovered. Died ten years ago, bless her memory."

Xena's fingers locked around the girl's hand like a vice. "Repeat that!"

"Uh... Cyrene died ten years ago?" The girl pulled at her wrist. "Let me go, lady!"

Instead, Xena only gripped tighter. "How long ago did you say Xena and Gabrielle disappeared?"

"Twenty-five years this summer. Hey, Bibulus –" the girl called over her shoulder to a man behind the bar, – "how many years since Ma bought them scrolls up on the wall?"

"Bout twenty, I imagine," he called back over the general din without looking up from the mugs he was filling, "four of five years after we opened here. Got a real nice bargain on that blue one with all the Indian mumbo-jumbo!"

Vindicated, the girl looked back to Xena and Gabrielle. "There, see? Now let go." Her wrist released, the girl covered it with her other hand protectively. "And that's five dinars for the food."

Gabrielle counted out the coins mechanically, handing them to the girl, who glared at her strange customers and left, muttering to herself about drunks and maniacs.

"Twenty-five years," Xena repeated quietly. "I don't believe it." Her eyes met Gabrielle's appalled stare. "But it all makes sense: the tombstone, the caskets, your scrolls... And my mother..." All colour drained from Xena's face, her fingers trembled so badly that she had to clasp her hands to still them. She licked her cracked lips and forced them to form the word – "Eve."

Unable to comprehend it, Gabrielle just shook her head – again and again, but it did not seem to make any difference. The silence was long and unbearable. From somewhere far away, her own voice asked, "What do we do?"

Xena did not answer for a very long time. When the reply came, her voice was calm and clear, but there was a foreign note in it that made Gabrielle feel cold droplets of sweat trickling down her back. "Nothing has changed, Gabrielle."

"But..."

"We go to Rome."

She said no more, but picked up her spoon again to attack her food with a deliberate ferocity. Gabrielle looked at her for a moment, before starting on her own meal. Some autonomous part of her mind began to compose a ballad. It happened all the time in ballads. You could say that sort of thing – twenty-five years later – like it didn't matter what happened in those twenty-five years. The entire span of her life, almost doubled in what seemed like a night, and Eve... How could they ever find a twenty-five year old woman they did not know, among all the people of the Roman empire? Where would they start looking? Octavius and his legion would be long gone.

Everyone would be long gone. And everything.

The impossibility of it was lost in the impossibility of everything else – Gabrielle pushed all thoughts aside and followed Xena's example. The food was simple, and real. She clung to that.

* * *

Later that night, when Gabrielle was asleep, Xena went into the small peristyle garden of the inn. It was a rectangle of flower beds and evenly spaced trees, still bare of leaves after the winter. Xena touched the smooth, sticky bark of a nearby linden; she could almost feel the sap rushing inside. It did not calm her in the way she had hoped. Every person she and Gabrielle had talked to had confirmed the serving-girl's story, adding new details Xena did not want to see, making this world real. Impossible as it was to believe, it was equally impossible to deny it. Twenty-five years had passed while they had slept – and her baby, her daughter, was lost as irrevocably as the rest of the world.

But not Ares. What if he had searched for Eve, found her? What if the tombstone lied? The thought held too much fear to be a wish.

Xena glared at the dark sky. She had to talk to him! There were so many things to say, to demand. Whenever he'd pull one of his tricks, he'd at least stick around to watch her fight her way out of the mess. But he wasn't here now. She couldn't sense his presence, not even the potential for his presence. It was as though it had been sliced from her mind, amputated. Gone. If she had needed further proof of the passage of time, this was it. It was hardly surprising that her awareness of Ares would be gone after twenty-five years – but the need to feel it was irrational, almost animal in its intensity, like wanting to breathe underwater. The harder Xena had tried to ignore it, the stronger it became, until she was convinced that Ares was standing just behind her and had started to turn at each noise, real or imaginary.

Xena bit her lip; this was crazy! What was the point of trying to call him? He thought she was dead, so much the better. She was just reaching out for something to cling to in this world gone mad, that was all. Hoping it was just another game of his. She could handle that.

She'd grown used to having to deal with his none-too-subtle manipulations, double-edged words and plans she would be obliged to foil – and more recently, those other things, too. Like the way he would glance at her when she let him hold the baby: tentative and a little awkward under the nonchalance. Eve would nestle into his arms and an inexplicable warmth would rise in Xena, watching them. It made her wonder – and it made her look squarely back at Ares when he caught her thoughtful stare. She couldn't let him see her doubts. Still, Eve had changed something in both of them; it was easier not to guess what. Perhaps that was partly why she had been so eager to travel to Ch'in – to get away from Ares, from being forced to deal with him constantly. It hadn't worked. Each time she'd pick up her daughter from the dragon-carved cot, she'd remember that hidden wonder in Ares' eyes – and then at night, she'd toss and turn, and wake up flushed with dreams that lingered in her body defiantly, still tasting the gasping light touches of his mouth...

"Damn." Xena expelled a breath, irritated at herself. Her skin was pounding hot in the chilly air of the garden. There was no time for this!

Before she could change her mind, she cleared her throat and said, "Ares."

She was pleased at how it came out – level and strong in the blue night.

She only said it once, and it made things easier. Her mind had tried to argue with the marker on her grave and the gaping hole in her awareness, clinging to doubts; mercilessly, Xena tore herself free. Whatever her link with Ares had been, it was gone.

The only sounds in the garden belonged to the night; Xena pressed her back to the cool stickiness of the bark and listened to the near-silence. So. After all the years of trying to escape Ares, she had finally managed it. At long last, she was free.

It was a curiously empty feeling.

Fortuna's Champion

Fortuna [was] the Roman goddess of fortune,
and one of the most fervently worshipped
deities of the Roman pantheon.
The favour of Fortuna mattered tremendously
to politicians and generals.

Colleen McCullough, "The First Man In Rome"

Athena shook her head, in that irritatingly patronising way of hers. "I thought you'd grown past all that, Ares." The looped braids that decorated her golden helmet bounced with every move of her head and the shine on her armour put Hera's best cutlery to shame.

Ares grimaced. "Are you here to lecture me on my personal growth?"

The two of them were seated at a corner of the long table in the main dining hall on Olympus. After the gossip and clamour of the 'quiet family dinner', the empty room reminded Ares of a marble-and-gold crypt of ridiculous proportions. He much preferred it this way.

Athena drummed her fingers on the tabletop and tried again. "Livia is good, even very good. But she's not great. You know that. I know that. So who do you think you're kidding?"

"See, that's the best part. She doesn't need to be great."

Athena looked at him in disbelief. "You'd pledge your support to a run-of-the-mill mortal?"

Ares' eyes widened in mock horror. "What, and intrude on your territory? I don't think so. I've seen your new champion," he went on conversationally, "Ilainus of Mycenae. Interesting proportions – she certainly needs all the support she can get."

Athena pressed her lips together. "Much as I love your talent for innuendo, Brother, it's your other talents I'm concerned about. Starting senseless wars, for example."

Ares drew his dagger and ran a fingertip along the blade. "You're missing the point, Sis. This war wouldn't be just another bloodbath."

"More like a whole bathing pool." Athena shook her head. "Besides, whatever happened to your other 'champion'? Varia, the Amazon queen-in-waiting? You keep telling me you don't play favourites, Ares."

"I don't. Varia's not great either."

Ares rather enjoyed watching his sister's sceptical expression dissolve into incomprehension. He returned the dagger to his belt and stretched in his seat.

"There hasn't been a really good battle for years. Livia can give me that – and so can Varia. Rome goes up against the Amazons, or the Amazons rise up against Rome" – he shrugged. "Either way, I win. And who knows, once the dust settles, maybe I'll end up with a great champion after all."

"Ares." His sister's voice became softer, the mocking self-importance in her pale blue eyes replaced by something like sympathy. "Don't try to look for another Xena. It won't work."

Ares flinched. Hearing that name, its particular combination of sounds, ripped into the empty spot inside him and poked around, searching for something he'd never had. It was none of Athena's business, anyway.

"Xena's dead," he said almost easily. "I'm moving with the times. Livia wants to fight for Rome, Varia wants to fight against it – can't say I see the appeal, but hey, a fight's a fight."

"Xena hated Rome."

"Xena is dead," Ares repeated.

Athena smiled slightly, without humour. "You want to pretend you don't give a damn – go right ahead. I'll even pretend to believe you." She rose to her feet, the gold baubles on her helmet clinking together. "But you know as well as I do that when the dust settles, the only thing left behind will be dust. No great champions."

"I guess they just don't make 'em like they used to." Ares stood up as well. "Is there a point here somewhere?"

"Yes – which is more than can be said for this war."

"Think of it as recreational warfare."

"I'd rather not."

Ares shrugged. "In that case, you're going to have to find another way to occupy your time. I've got business in Rome." He had started to disappear when he heard Athena call out.

"Wait! What kind of business?"

Ares grinned, and fell back into the waiting aether – "A triumph."

* * *

The square in front of the imperial palace was alive with people – thousands upon thousands of faces, a humming, merry crowd. People jostled on either side of the rope barriers, new arrivals trying to press into an already full square from the surrounding streets, eager for a glimpse of the action. Guards prodded and pushed them back, but without hostility; they, too, were in a remarkably good mood today. Rome loved a celebration – and what better celebration could there be than the triumph of a Roman general?

At last, the noise abated, and the guards managed to force the crowd back from the barriers, carving an undulating alley in the centre of the square. Those fortunate enough to have found themselves with an unobstructed view had to fight off the less lucky spectators.

"Get your fat carcass back!" panted a sandy-haired man, trying to hold on to his toga with his left hand, while thrusting his free right elbow into the heaving mass of humanity that threatened to knock him into the point of a guard's spear.

"Nice... nice way to ... greet a fellow old legionary, Gaius Pompeius!" wheezed another man behind him.

The sandy-haired man turned his head, recognising the voice. "Jupiter! I don't believe it!" He reached back and pulled his friend from the crowd, struggling to keep his balance against the rope barrier. "Marcus Sergius!" He gripped the man's forearm in a soldier's greeting, "You dried-up old fart! Where've you been all these years?"

Marcus Sergius' dark craggy face came alight with a grin, made lopsided by a scar running along one cheek to his earlobe. "Now that's more like it! Out and about, provinces mostly," he said, still wheezing. "Business." He followed his friend's example and clung to the rope barrier, bracing himself against the onslaught of spectators behind them. "It is good to see you again, Gaius. How long has it been? Seven years? Eight?"

"Twelve summers since our last campaign."

"That long?" Marcus shook his head. "Damned if I know where the time went." The two men craned their necks to look back along the long gap in the crowd. "I see you've got more grey in your hair than old Octavius himself," Marcus grinned.

Gaius shrugged dismissively. "Augustus, he calls himself these days, and if a bit o'grey hair's all right for the Emperor of all Rome, what's an old soldier to complain?

Marcus began to reply, but the shrill sound of trumpets drowned him out. This was followed by a growing rumble in the crowd and, finally, an explosion of cheers as a detachment of mounted guards appeared, the red plumes of their helmets swaying in time with their horses' steps. But it was not them the crowd was cheering.

At the head of the lavish procession rode a young woman on a glorious white stallion. A general's thin red sash was knotted above her waist, her cuirass blazing in the sunlight with cold fire. Long strands of brown hair flashed gold as they caught the reflected glint. The haughty tilt of her chin and the challenge in her eyes emphasised her youth, but dared anyone to judge her by it.

"There she is!" cried Marcus, and indeed, at the sight of the young woman, the crowd went wild. Screams and cries of adulation thundered through the air, incomprehensible at first, then resolving into "Livia! Champion of Rome!!" and "Fortuna's blessing!"

"Some blessing," Marcus lamented fondly, a proud smile on his scarred face as Livia and her guard rode sedately towards the Imperial palace. "Little horror of a brat if you ask me – and I ought to know!"

"Ah, stop your posturing." Gaius' own eyes were taking in the procession just as eagerly. "You haven't seen the girl since she was sixteen!"

"True, and I hear her parents' house has been blissfully quiet ever since. Blessing, indeed! Fair like a Fury, drove us all to distraction with her temper."

"Hush your scarred mouth, you old heretic," laughed Gaius, "you'll piss off Fortuna – and even a stupid hulk like you may yet have use for the Goddess of Luck!"

Marcus laughed uproariously. "If anyone can deal with my Livia, it must be Fortuna herself! No wonder the girl toppled off that cliff unscarred – even Pluto didn't want her in the Underworld!"

Gaius shook his head in grudging admiration. "Nine years on the battlefield, Marcus my friend, and not a mark on her, they say. Well you may sneer, but the girl is charmed, and that's a fact."

"Oh, no argument from me," Marcus raised his voice to carry over another cheer that had erupted around them – the procession was now level with where the two men were standing. "Fell smack onto an old battlefield – if that's not a sign, I don't know what is."

Livia acknowledged the crowd with a curt nod, but her eyes did not leave the palace balcony just ahead. Straight-backed and solemn in her general's armour, majestic in the saddle of her mount, there was something about her that left no doubt in the mind of anyone watching – they were looking at the Champion of Rome, symbol of Fortuna's love for her people, the goddess's love for Rome. New waves of cheers swelled in the distance as the procession continued past, parading the spoils of the campaign: gold, Gaelic slaves, more gold. The chained prisoners were muscular, tall, fair – sullen and heavy-browed men and women who looked exactly the way a barbarian was supposed to look to the fascinated eyes of a Roman: Livia picked her trophies with care. The crowd loved it. Livia raised a hand to another thunderous cheer.

"Livia of Rome," Marcus Sergius said with a reverence that denied his earlier flippancy. "A true Livia, for all that she is not truly of Livian blood. She'll be Empress yet, mind my word, Gaius."

Gaius watched Livia's red-cloaked back for a moment, remembering the foundling baby he and Marcus had presented to their commander, Octavius, all those years ago. Even then, the girl had had a determined look about her. Empress?

"I don't doubt it," he said.

A hush fell over the crowd – up ahead, the purple curtains that concealed the palace balcony were opened.

"All hail Augustus Caesar, the divine Emperor!" screamed the guards, as a togate man wearing a laurel crown stepped up to the parapet. Below, Livia bowed her head a fraction, but continued looking at the Emperor. The throng in the square erupted once again in a deafening cheer – this time, for the Emperor.

Augustus held up his hands and the crowd subsided into silence.

"Once again, Fortuna has smiled upon her favourite!" His voice carried over the square, taken up into the distance by heralds, faithfully repeating the Emperor's every word. "She has smiled upon Rome! Rome is great, citizens – Rome is glorious! And her glory has been magnified a thousandfold by the woman before you – the chosen of Fortuna herself! Hail Livia – Fortuna's Champion and the protector of Rome! Livia!"

The crowd picked up the name and screamed it, while Livia remained where she was, not moving a muscle; only her face glowed with a satisfaction so private and fierce that even high on his balcony, Augustus felt its force with a shock of fearful pride. He looked down at her: so beautiful, so terrible, her barbarian eyes shining as though she truly was a goddess. She was his own tamed panther that was neither of those things – never tamed, and never, ever, his own. But that could be changed.

Augustus smiled down at his champion, trying to ignore the flutter in his heart at the predatory curl of her lips – those lips! – and made up his mind. Fortuna sent Livia to him, after all. It was high time to accept her gift.

He made a small gesture with one hand, all the while waving to the crowd with the other, his benevolent smile never faltering. "When the ceremony is finished, bring the general to my palace," he said without glancing in the direction of the servant who had appeared at his command. "I will be dining with the Champion of Rome tonight."

The Ascent

She had a niece's privilege of kissing and caressing [him], and
exercised it with a noticeable effect on the emperor's passions...
The wedding took place without delay...

Suetonius, "Claudius"

Another inn, another night. Exactly the same as the dozens – hundreds? – of other inns they had seen along the way from Mount Aetna, and now here, within Rome itself. Men sang drunkenly, wooden spoons clanked against bowls. Gabrielle stared down at her red, chapped hands, cradling a cup of something that passed for wine. Worrying. Days had slipped into weeks, yet there was no sign of Eve anywhere. It was hard to believe that there ever would be.

The festive air in the city was cloying, but there was a curious comfort in feeling invisible among all the faces. And Xena was right; a military celebration would draw the right kind of crowd. All those soldiers hanging around town, their families, friends, whores – what better chance could there be of finding a child taken by a couple of legionaries?

Rome, as usual, was in the midst of yet another fad: a triumphing general who was said to be beloved by the goddess of Fortune. There were strange stories about the woman's origins. They varied widely, but agreed on one thing: the infant Livia had been found by some soldiers, showed incredible aptitude for all things military at an early age and was now a favourite of the Emperor.

Had Gabrielle heard these tales a few weeks ago, she would have probably shared Xena's suspicions; as it was, there had been so many disappointments that it was too painful to get her hopes up every time, and even more painful to see Xena's face close up a little more as each one was crushed.

Still, it was certainly worth checking out. Just to be sure. They had not managed to get a good view during the parade, so the only thing to do now was to stake out the inns most likely to be frequented by Livia's soldiers. This was the fifth one for the night; Gabrielle had no doubt that by now, Xena would have tried at least as many, with as little luck. The plan was to meet back here, but there was no sign of her yet.

* * *

"Ah." Augustus raised himself up on his elbow as the door to his dining room swung open. He moved a scroll he had been studying off the narrow table before his couch-seat. "Welcome, my dear."

"Augustus." Livia smiled slightly in greeting before striding over to the low table, set for two. She knew her gown slinked around her as she walked, and knew that Augustus noticed.

The chamber was a large square, the walls covered with tapestries depicting the glory of Rome: here, Remus and Romulus, suckled by the she-wolf as babes; there, by the window, the triumph of the great Scipio Africanus... Livia's gaze flickered to a new tapestry hung over Augustus' couch, its threads still bright and free from dust: Fortuna, resplendent in her guise as Fortune of the Present Day, crowning a general with a wreath of laurel. General? A little thrill of pleasure surprised Livia as she looked closer – it was her! Her own head was being crowned by the goddess in the woven scene: Fortuna's Champion.

"Do you like it?" Augustus asked eagerly, following Livia's gaze to the wall behind him. "I ordered it made as soon as news of your victories in Gaul reached us."

"It's perfect." Livia tore her eyes from the scene with some regret. She wondered whether he would have been as eager to welcome he back had she lost her campaign, then dismissed the thought as useless. Losing formed no part of her plans. "I'm flattered, Caesar."

Augustus winced in distaste. "Drop the 'Caesar', Livilla, do." He opened his mouth to say more, but Livia came around the table to the head of his couch and put her arms around his neck, bending down to plant a kiss on his clean-shaven cheek. She felt Augustus catch his breath and tightened her hold on his neck.

"Consider it dropped," she whispered, kissing his other cheek, lingering a little longer than was warranted by mere gratitude for his patronage. She allowed him the diminutive only because she knew it made him feel closer to her – and that illusion was so very useful. No one else had dared to call her that in years. Not since she turned sixteen, and... Well, since she stopped being Livilla.

Augustus wanted something from her, something serious.

"Uh... Sit down, my dear," he found his voice at last. "I would like your opinion on something."

Livia sat on the straight-backed chair opposite Augustus' couch, folding her hands carefully in her lap to disguise their trembling. Anticipation made her giddy. "What is it?"

* * *

Gabrielle glanced around the drinking hall again. She and Xena had combed the city, and every town on the way here – but what was the point? All Xena knew was that the name of one of the men was Marcus, but that was as useless as knowing that their commander had been Octavius. It had taken days to discover that Octavius was none other than Augustus, the current Emperor, but that was more hindrance than help: he had been the commander of the entire army. He might know something about this Livia, of course, but they could hardly storm into the palace and demand an audience – not that Gabrielle would put that beyond Xena if all else failed...

"Hope you don't mind my rudeness, miss, but this is no place for a pretty young lady like yourself."

Gabrielle looked up – into the dark, wine-flushed face of a stocky fifty-ish man, holding a cup of wine like her own. Despite the puckered white scar that split his cheek from nose to ear, he looked friendly enough, and Gabrielle searched for a smile.

"I've seen worse," she shrugged. Behind him, the door opened and shut, letting in cold night air and another customer. Not Xena. "I'm waiting for a friend."

The man motioned at the seat across from her questioningly, and Gabrielle nodded, momentarily aware of the reassuring weight of the sais concealed in her boots. The man sat.

"You're not from around here, are you?" He set his cup down, looking her over curiously. "All alone in a Subura inn like this." He glanced at Gabrielle's silver-gauntleted wrists. "A fighter, then?"

"You could say that."

"An Amazon!" the man grinned, chipped teeth flashing. He stretched out his arm in greeting – "I'm Marcus Sergius, by the way."

Marcus?

"Gabrielle." She shook his callused hand, looking at him more closely. Definitely an old soldier, grown paunchy around the middle, but there was no mistaking the military bearing.

"And yourself?" she asked lightly. "I can see you were in the legions."

Marcus grunted. "Once a legionary, always a legionary."

"The you've served under Livia?" Gabrielle probed further. He was no doubt too old to be in the current force, but she deliberately steered the conversation in this direction. If he knew anything at all about the commander...

Quite unexpectedly, Marcus sighed. "Haven't been on campaign in over a decade, miss. Came to Rome for my girl's triumph."

Gabrielle tensed. "Your girl?"

"Livia. Champion of Rome, they call her – but to me, she's still the snotty-nosed little thing I found, screaming among the dead bodies on some gods-forsaken battlefield."

Gabrielle's mounting excitement shattered into anger at herself. Once again, she'd made the mistake of starting to hope, and once again found herself staring at a dead end. Eve had not been left on a battlefield. Just another disappointment.

No big deal, she reminded herself. She had heard this sort of tale often enough in her short time in Rome. Every soldier seemed to have found Livia at one time or another, and she had nothing to lose by listening to yet another version. It could come in useful.

"You found Livia yourself?"

Marcus laughed. "True as I live. Such a little thing she was – only the goddess's favour could have saved her. Amazing. I scooped her up with my own two hands," he held out his rough palms for Gabrielle's inspection, "and took her to my centurion."

Gabrielle imitated an indulgent laugh. "You know you're the sixth man in Rome who told me that he had been the one to find Livia? And every story is different."

* * *

"Please, help yourself first," said Augustus, indicating the richly laden table with a sweep of his hand.

"Thank you." Livia curbed her impatience to hear whatever it was Augustus had in mind and reached for some bread, seasoning it with a little olive oil. She ate sparingly, too fidgety to have much interest in food, feeling sorely out of place in the opulence of the palace after the long months in the field.

It would never do.

Livia straightened her spine and tried to look well-bred and restrained, two qualities she had long since learned to feign when required. She added a little sensuality to her bearing, not too much. Augustus had to be cultivated with the greatest care. A mistake now would be disastrous.

Surreptitiously, she studied Augustus from under dark, deliberately lowered lashes. He had aged somewhat since she had last seen him, but nevertheless remained a striking man – soft-eyed and a touch weak perhaps, but not entirely unattractive, when his power was weighed into the balance. Power and weakness. A potent combination.

Augustus cleared his throat. "I have a proposal for you, my dear."

* * *

"Well," said Marcus, "In that case, I won't bore you with yet another retelling."

Gabrielle started to protest that she really did not mind hearing the story again, but Marcus continued. "I used to visit her, just to see how her foster family was treating her. They were good to her, the Livii, but that girl always did have her sights set on greater things."

His eyes grew sorrowful and moist, the glistening stare of a man mellowed by a bit too much wine and warmth. "She'd tell me things – trusted me, I think. Then she turned sixteen, and said, just as we're talking now, she said: 'I've decided what my future will be, Marcus Sergius.' What's that, I said? Livia looked me in the eye and declared: 'I'm going to lead the Roman army.'"

Gabrielle listened intently, exactly as she had listened to every other man who had told her this kind of story. Marcus had a certain honesty about him that, once upon a time, would have enticed her into trusting him implicitly. She looked into her dark wine, then sipped it. There was a bitterness in knowing better.

"What happened then?" she asked.

"Damned fool that I was, I laughed at her. Livilla, I said, that's no job for a girl. What'd you want an army for?" Marcus shook his head sadly. "She fixed me with this cold stare she has, like she used to do with her parents, but never with me, and said, 'I will do it.' And that was the last time I saw her – until the parade."

Gabrielle could not help feeling for the man, and she had to remind herself, sternly, that the storytelling had nothing to do with the truth of the tale. Still, her sympathy was genuine. "You really loved her, didn't you?"

"Love?" He chuckled. "She's not an easy kid to love – wicked claws and a brain to match. If you stand in her way, it's because she put you there." Marcus drank the last of his wine, and got up. "But I watched her take her first steps, taught her to read a map. Gave her her first dagger – the Livii nearly kicked me out when they found out, but she always did get her way. So, when she closed that door on me, it was my kid locking me out, you know?"

Gabrielle rubbed her face. It was all getting too much. "Yeah, I know." She shook the man's hand in weary farewell. "Thanks for the story."

* * *

"You want to marry me." Livia fought to keep her face impassive, but it was difficult – so very difficult! – when inside, her mind screamed victory. Rome! Empress of Rome!! She thought she tasted blood on her tongue and looked away, lest Augustus see her triumph.

"That's right, my dear," the Emperor said pleasantly. He was sitting up now, reaching across the table between them to take Livia's hands into his own. "You see, politically, it would be a wonderful union. Fortuna's chosen Champion, and Rome herself – what could be more natural?"

"I see," Livia managed, still not trusting herself to look at him. There was a hot pulse in her temples that she had never noticed before; delightful shivers of energy rushed to every muscle in her body.

Augustus misread her tone as uncertainty. He gripped her hands tighter, massaging his fingers into her palms, stroking her wrists. Each touch pierced her nerves with a thrill, curling her fingers into fists. "That's reason enough for the senate. But that's not why I want you for my wife, Livilla."

Livia looked up.

"All those years ago, when you were brought before me as a baby, I knew you would be special. So when I saw you again, grown to womanhood and telling me that Fortuna and War were yours to command – well, I didn't have to think too long. I knew you had it in you."

Augustus sat forward; Livia felt him touch his fingers to her wrists, then move gently upwards, along the exposed skin of her arms. "I waited for every victory, Livilla," the emperor whispered, "for every tribute you brought to Rome..." He paused in the crook of her elbows, manicured nails impressing his point. "But what I really waited for was this. Seeing you."

Livia closed her eyes, savouring the moment. Finally! All her pains, all her plans, everything she had worked for – it had been worth it! Ares was so right. She would have Rome at her feet.

She opened her eyes to allow Augustus to see that they were bright with unshed tears. He rose and walked over to Livia's chair, kneeling before her, holding her hands. "I love you, Livilla," he said. "Marry me."

Livia wanted to laugh, scream, find Ares' temple and offer a sacrifice like any old mortal, to kiss him and feel the rush of power his kisses held... None of it would have been enough, the sheer sweetness of this moment surpassed anything she had imagined in her wildest dreams. The Emperor of Rome, kneeling at her feet like a lovestruck fool! It was insane – and it was hers. All hers. Everything.

"I will marry you, Augustus," she said, and looked into his upturned face: so powerful, and so weak.

The Emperor rose again, offering Livia his arm with the utmost solemnity to draw her to her feet. "I will speak to the Senate as soon as possible," he said. "We will be married."

"But not just yet."

Augustus looked startled.

Livia put her other hand on his. "Delay the announcement a little while, Caesar. I wish to make you a wedding gift. "

* * *

Marcus nodded. "You're welcome – and take care of yourself in this city." Gabrielle watched him weave his way expertly through the narrow spaces between tables, watched as a lumbering drunk staggered out of his seat in front of Marcus...

"Hey! Watch where you're going, dumbass!" There was a crash, and the two men fell in a tangle of tunics and limbs; the table squeaked along the floorboards as they struggled to get up in the cramped space. A spattering of curses was swiftly followed by the dull thud of a punch.

"Marcus!" Gabrielle was there instantly, offering the soldier her hand. Marcus got to his feet, breathing hard. Seeing the barkeep coming, the other man scrambled away.

"Like I was saying, miss," Marcus smiled painfully, blood pooling in the corner of his lips and trickling out, "the Subura is not the prettiest place in Rome."

A drop of red off his chin hit the floor; Gabrielle looked down after it. There was something there, a small, ragged-looking object... She bent down to pick it up – and gasped.

Marcus's hand closed over hers swiftly, squeezing the soft little thing from her grip. "Thank you," he said, turning to go.

"Wait!" yelled Gabrielle, then remembered to lower her voice. "How... Where did you get that from?"

Marcus opened his palm, looking at the thing thoughtfully. In the low, flickering light of the tavern, the beaded tassels and strips of braided leather looked small and useless – but Gabrielle's heart beat faster, certain now of what it was. The symbol of an Amazon right of caste. Her own right of caste, in fact. Or, rather, Eve's.

She felt light-headed and ill, there was a thought beating down the doors to her conscience, and Gabrielle couldn't let it in. From somewhere beyond her own mind, Marcus's voice drifted into her: "I want to give it to Livia," he seemed to be saying, "It's the only thing I have left of her..."

The torchlight swam in bright pools before Gabrielle's eyes. Of course, an old battlefield! How could she have forgotten that the beach where they had lost Eve had been strewn with mangled steel, broken arrows... In a corner behind her, someone started to sing.

"Good-bye," she heard Marcus' voice. The cold air from the doorway slipped icy fingers around her neck, making the warmth of the tavern unbearable.

Xena would be back soon.

* * *

It wasn't until later that night that Marcus discovered the little pendant gone. He thought about retracing his steps to the tavern, but knew that it would be useless. Perhaps it had been selfish to keep it, not to have returned it to Livia all those years ago... Now... Now, he had no pretext to see her – and nothing left.

He stopped in the stinking Subura street, heedless of the scurrying rats and people around him, and looked up. The narrow strip of sky was a starless black, and the moon looked pale and lost, the way it always did in the city. It had been a mistake to come to Rome.

To Have And To Hold

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed – see here it is –
I hold it towards you.

John Keats

Grim-faced guards patrolled the palace square, their presence rendering it silent and deserted, an island of wary calm in a city given over to revelry. The triumphal feast in the evening had melted without pause into the bacchanalia at night; the music surged out of the beating heart of the palace, bypassed the guards and pulsed through the paved veins of roads, the venules of alleyways and onward into the night.

Xena pressed herself into the shadow of an awning hidden in the mouth of a tiny street and watched the square. Two lines of torches marked the entrance; the marble glowed gold where more torches stretched right and left along the façade. A pair of guards strolled across the flagstones, their hobnailed boots echoing the rhythm of the music within. There, in the palace, a woman who had never known her mother was celebrating her victories. Outside, in the chill spring wind, a mother who had never known her daughter could not bring herself to leave the shadows.

Perhaps it wasn't her after all. Not Eve. A coincidence, a mistake... Xena's hand flew to her waist, brushing almost accidentally the frayed leather of the Amazon pendant, but closed over the coldness of the chakram instead. Yet another little pang of unease prickled at her – Gabrielle... She had a right to be here too, didn't she? Gabrielle had found the pendant, had given it to her... Was she hurting Gabrielle by insisting that she wait back at the inn? She must be. But this, Xena had to do alone, she couldn't, wouldn't, let Gabrielle see her right now. Like birth, like death, there were moments where no other could follow... She would understand. She had to understand.

The guards came closer, and every muscle in Xena's body tensed in a familiar, comforting way. Thoughts ended, and a primaeval instinct of the hunt took over. She was a predator, poised for the kill so that her young could live.

Everything happened very quickly then, with the efficient precision that was second nature to Xena, or perhaps first. A throw of the chakram, a distraction, two faces turned in the same wrong direction, a metallic twang, heavy thuds followed by two helmets rolling on the stones... And then, silence again.

The men sprawled on the ground; Xena checked the results perfunctorily, more from habit than a fear that she had missed her mark. Concussed, but not dead – she had minutes, precious minutes before they woke up and she would be forced to deal with them more permanently.

She dragged the unconscious guards into the gutter, well out of sight. Her cloak followed, stuffed into a hollow in a wall. The armour had been left behind at the inn, her sword, too; Xena thought about leaving the chakram here, but decided against it. The glint of the weapon reminded her of Ares, unwelcome feelings for which she had no place and no time. She pushed them aside, and concealed the chakram as best she could under her servant's dress. The sheer fabric was insufficient protection from the night, but the only plausible costume for a strange woman at the royal bacchanalia.

As an afterthought, she unwound one of the dark gauzy scarves from her waist and draped it around her face, concealing her nose and mouth. The disguise would not stand up to close scrutiny, but it would be sufficient precaution against curious Roman eyes. Xena hated giving in to the need for it. She always felt naked in Rome.

A sound at the far end of the dark street alerted her to the approach of another patrol, but Xena was across the square and in the shadow of the palace before they came into view. She waited for the guards to continue past, their measured strides infuriatingly slow. Now that she was finally moving, all remaining hesitation had fled, to be replaced by urgency – she had be sure that this Livia was her Eve, right now. She didn't think she could stand another moment of uncertainty. Then, she would deal with the consequences. Later. Animal-like, she squeezed her entire awareness into the now, deliberately forcing memories of the past and fears of the future from her mind. Later.

* * *

In the candlelight, the quill cast bluish shadows on the parchment in Gabrielle's lap. The air stank of cheap tallow: the search for Eve had eaten dangerously into their resources. Sitting cross-legged was making her back ache, but there was no writing table in the room. Gabrielle reread the single paragraph in her scroll, penned neatly across the top:

Who can know what the future holds? Not they who are adrift in the present, nor they who are ignorant of the past. The mother, she who wept for her lost daughter, weeps more bitterly still, having found her. And the daughter, what of her? She who never knew her mother grows like a lone pine upon a hilltop, embracing the changing wind and not the constant sun.

How romantic, Gabrielle winced. This scroll had the makings of a magnificent epic: an implausible plot; tragically noble characters fighting a losing battle against the currents of time – and meditations on the nature of mortality. Sometimes Gabrielle wondered whether she was, in fact, unwittingly writing fiction.

There would be no room in this scroll for another character. The story would not allow for the mother's pain to be shared, that would diffuse the dramatic effect. And besides, in what capacity would Gabrielle appear? Even the last resort, the simple role of confidante, was denied her now. There was a gulf between Xena and herself, one that Gabrielle longed to bridge, even felt she could, but did not dare. She had no right.

Now that they knew Eve was Livia of Rome, there was altogether too much reality to face. It had gone unspoken that Eve, grown up in a night, would have a life of her own, one in which Xena and Gabrielle would be outsiders. That alone would have been hard enough. Yet to know that every one of Xena's fears had been realised, that Eve's life had turned out so much like her mother's – that burden settled heavily between them and could not be moved. The unspoken had become the unspeakable.

It eroded Gabrielle's connection with Xena, widening the gulf; every day breaking them apart a little more. In this alien world, loneliness was somehow more frightening, and more complete, than ever before.

Gabrielle lifted her eyes. Across from her, the window was shuttered for the night. She knew that beyond it, the blackness stretched all the way to the palace. Out there, alone by choice, Xena would be trying to find a way in, trying to get a glimpse of Livia. Eve... Her daughter.

And a Roman soldier would be looking for the last remaining token of his own daughter, the little pendant that reminded him of the baby he had found twenty-five years ago. The pendant Gabrielle had stolen.

There. She admitted it. It made no difference that the right of caste had belonged to her before Eve, or that Marcus had been planning to return it to the rightful owner anyway. All those things were just excuses. The pendant would fetch scarcely a dinar at a market stall – a worthless trinket that had no value to anyone except those who knew what it represented... and those who had imbued it with their own meaning.

Gabrielle leaned over to dip her quill in the inkwell on the floor. After a moment's pause, she wrote:

And I, with no remedy for the mother's pain, why do I offer the daughter her past? The cost is great, and the payment is innocence. Is it not better for her to live as she is, unburdened by what cannot be changed? Walk away, walk away, speak the stars, for we have seen the future. Loneliness lies ahead for the outsider. The daughter will consume the mother, and the outsider will grieve alone. But I do not dare walk away. The cost is great and the way is lonely – but who can tell what the future brings, save those who know the past?

Gabrielle lowered the quill. The two short paragraphs stared at her forlornly from the scroll. It was hard, spending yet another night waiting. It hurt to be sidelined, to feel like the lonely tagalong who had clung to Xena years ago in Potadeia – perhaps hurt all the more because she was no longer that child and she didn't want to regret that. She could have demanded to go with Xena to the palace tonight, but pride, or anger, had stopped her asking, and Xena had not offered.

On the windowsill, the candle sputtered and died. Gabrielle watched the glowing tip of the wick redden into darkness. A final wisp of smoke, and the room was black. Fumbling in the dark, Gabrielle picked up the scroll by a corner, hoping that the ink would not run; she could not afford a new scroll right now. The bed creaked in protest as she got down and felt around for the inkpot, stoppering it by touch.

She could just as easily wait for Xena in the tavern, where there were tables to write on and more light. Gabrielle opened the door and was momentarily blinded by a lamp hung at her eye level, on what was the high ceiling of the drinking hall downstairs. When her eyes readjusted, she glanced down over the balustrade at the few remaining patrons, scattered around the tables below. Perhaps that was all she needed. Light.

* * *

The marble wall was cold and smooth against Xena's back as she made her way, shadow-like, along the perimeter of the building. The servants' entrance was a few steps away. She squatted in the lee of the stairway, not breathing, as a short plump slave propped open the door and propelled a covered cart inside – firewood. Another similar cart waited outside. The man and his load disappeared within; Xena could see a dimly lit storage room and beyond that, the colourful mural on a corridor wall.

She uncoiled in a catlike leap, landing noisessly to crouch beside the second load of firewood. A quick check assured her that the servant's back was turned as he unloaded the cart. The moment was all Xena required. When the man returned for the rest of the wood, she was already inside the storage room.

She watched him gather up the kindling for the hearth-fires, then noted the direction he took as he shuffled right past her and out into the corridor. He would be heading towards the party, to stoke the hearth for the guests. Currents of cold air swirled around Xena as the door swung shut, leaving the winds outside.

There were earthenware pitchers of wine in the storeroom, set out ready to be hauled up to the guests. Quite a few had already been taken, leaving dark circles in the dust. Xena lifted one of the remaining vessels with difficulty, feeling the liquid slosh heavily against the sides. Unwieldy as it was, it was still the best prop she could have hoped for. She adjusted the handle in her hand, then took a few breaths to ease herself into the role she had adopted, and went out into the corridor.

* * *

Gabrielle could see no reason why she should be unable to write, seated at a table with a good lamp and a mug of mulled wine. There wasn't much noise this time of night, just the whine of a mosquito above her left ear and the occasional plodding of a horse's hooves outside. No reason at all. But the words would not come.

She was drunk, just enough to realise it, not enough to find comfort in the fact. There was no false cheerfulness, and the resentful melancholy that had suffocated her in her room was only made worse out here. The tavern seemed spacious in its emptiness, and Gabrielle felt like she could fill all that space with her loneliness, and remain unchanged.

A young man came to sit at a table across from her. Gabrielle observed him idly, a single spot of movement in the sleepy tavern. He was tall and well-built, with warm brown eyes and dark, slightly unruly hair. A serving girl ambled towards him, stifling a yawn – he smiled and shook his head. The girl left with a shrug, obviously too tired to demand that he order a drink or move on. The young man pulled out a scroll and some quills from his pack and settled into his seat.

Gabrielle stood up. It occurred to her that he could be anything: a tax collector, a merchant recording the day's takings, a soldier writing a letter to his sweetheart – but she knew the moment she saw the quills that he was a writer. Not because the ink stains on his fingers showed any particular pattern, and not because he frowned at the parchment in some kind of special, writer's way. Gabrielle simply wanted him to be a writer.

She approached, clutching her own unfinished scroll, and glanced at the name scrawled at the top of the unrolled parchment. Virgil. He sat, absorbed in reading or thought.

"Virgil? What's that?"

Her voice startled him into looking up, his hands flying to cover the parchment as he saw the woman in front of him. "Nothing." His eyes narrowed, "How do you know my name?"

Gabrielle pointed to his scroll with a tiny movement that could have been a shrug or a smile. "Um – right there."

Virgil moved his hands aside and glanced down, then blushed. "Ah." He stared down at the writing as if seeing it for the first time. "I write poems," he admitted. He nudged the rolled-up part of the parchment and it spilled into his lap in a long ribbon of writing. "Epic poems." There was amused self-deprecation in his tone.

Gabrielle grinned and plopped down in the chair opposite him. "I knew it. You're a bard! What's your poem about?"

Virgil gave her a wary look, as though not used to genuine interest in his work. Gabrielle held his gaze honestly, and his wariness dissolved into a smile that warmed her heart and warded off the night's chill. A pleasant knot curled in Gabrielle's stomach at the transformation in his face.

"About a hero." Virgil paused. "My family isn't keen on the idea, so I write out here. I think they wish I was a real hero instead of writing about one."

"Epic poems," Gabrielle repeated slowly. "With an implausible plot, tragically noble characters and meditations about mortality?" Accepting Virgil's agreement, she bent her head over the scroll, feeling a wonderful thrill at being able to share another's writing this night – and a second thrill at his sudden closeness, guiding her hands to the beginning of the poem.

"It starts back here..."

* * *

There was a stairwell up ahead; lazy dance music flowed from the top floor, along with tendrils of smoke that curled in the air. The slave's plump figure bobbed up the stairs and faded into the thickening smoke; Xena hurried after him, keeping her eyes downcast and her posture carefully submissive in case anyone was watching.

The music became louder as she ascended the stairs, the smoke even thicker, red-tinged, eating at her eyes and the back of her throat. Its sweetness made her slightly light-headed, and for an instant she felt she was floating. She stepped onto the floor of the hall, strewn with plush red rugs that did not seem to dampen the noise of the music. The sound was harsh and at the same time lilting; its rhythm made Xena sway involuntarily. She checked the movement, her annoyance sufficient to clear her head for a moment. Eve. She was looking for Eve, she had to find Eve. Livia.

* * *

It was an immense relief to talk about writing, about ballads and odes and rhyme and meter, for the first time in so many years. It made Gabrielle feel very young to find again that passion of her adolescence, to feel it equally strong in this stranger. There was residual sadness that that time of her life was past, and anger, but it was distant and unimportant. Virgil's poetry was superb, his voice soft and caressing, making her ache for more. The night wore on and there was a hunger in both of them that would demand to be satisfied soon. A look at Virigl's eyes sent ripples of anticipation through her.

When the last of the patrons left and the tavern was closed for the night, Gabrielle took out her key. Virgil's gentle hand was a hot question on her shoulder, answered as the door squeaked on its hinges. The darkness of the room emboldened her, and the words came at last – not voice or letter, but an outpouring of touch, bursting from Gabrielle with a ferocity she had not expected. She welcomed it, sobbing, awed, welcomed Virgil's gasped response and quickening caresses, the bitterness of her tears and the roughness of the sheets against her skin. His scent was fire in Gabrielle's lungs; it melted the last of the ice within her and dissolved all thoughts of loneliness into the deep, accepting breath of the night.

* * *

It was difficult to see through the smoke. Dark, shapeless figures sprawled on the floor or reclined on long couches; Xena supposed most would have drunk themselves into oblivion by now. Slaves moved among the supine guests, drifting in and out of red haze like bog-spirits in steaming marshes. The haze scattered the music and hid the musicians from view. Disoriented, Xena felt her breaths come a little faster, adding to the gathering tension in her arm where she held the heavy pitcher.

She stepped over the shape of a man, his toga pooled around his prostrate body to reveal skinny shoulders and calves. Xena's mouth thinned in disgust. For some reason he reminded her of Caesar, but she stamped out that image almost before it could form. Eve. She had to find her.

* * *

"Your grace?"

The sheer inappropriateness of the title startled Ares from his thoughts. He looked up to see a young slave boy proffering a gold tray. The tray was laden with a pile of soft white feathers, a few floating off, whirling in the stale air of the dining hall, heavy with the sounds of revelling Romans, thick with the stink of wine and pleasure herbs. Belatedly, Ares realised that he had taken his goblet with him to the private room at the back of the hall, where a few richly garbed men and women were making room for the next course of delicacies. He handed it to the boy without looking, pushing away the feathers. Gods did not need this aid to endless feasting – limited stomach capacity was not an issue.

A heavyset woman in a bronze and purple number was making use of a feather nearby, purging herself from the last round of pheasant tongues and sturgeon livers. The sound was revolting, the smell worse. The slave boys, without raising their eyes, handed her a scented cloth to wipe her face. A stray drop of vomit fell from her lip, staining her tunic, but she was beyond noticing. Another slave helped her back into the hall, where someone caught her and settled her on a cushion.

"Beg pardon, your grace, but does your grace wish to make ready for the next course?" The boy spoke up again timidly, obviously uncomfortable with Ares' long silence. The god shook himself and shrugged the boy off, pushing the feather away roughly – he could not remember why he had come here in the first place.

He scowled inwardly. He liked a feast as much as the next god, but after a night in the company of barely-human mortals, he was starting to get a little bored. He considered an excursion – check on a battle or two, relax – but dismissed the idea. He had promised Livia to stay for the celebration of her triumph.

Ah, Livia. Whatever Athena thought of her, Livia was a fun little thing – so much rage and rawness in such a slender frame. As far as mortals went, she was a decent specimen. She really did hold some promise as a commander – perhaps with a bit more training... She was certainly ruthless and determined, even if there was something immature about that determination, like she had something to prove. Not like Xena. Oh, no. Not even close.

Ares turned on his heel and walked back into the swaying noise of the bacchanalia, heading for a pile of cushions to his left. Mild irritation brewed into fully fledged anger. It had been a mistake to think about Xena at all. Much as he hated to admit it, his desire to leave had been at least in part motivated by a desire – no, a need – to see the icy slopes of Aetna once more, pristine and cold, not a speck of dirt to sully what he preferred to think of as her shrine. Not her tomb.

* * *

Xena stepped from body to body, faces emerging out of the smoke, ugly and distorted. She looked into each one, hoping and afraid to see Eve among them. The conscious ones were worst; they moved soundlessly, words drowned out by music, mouths gaping or drooping or kissing sloppily. Masks.

A hand slid up her thigh, tugged at the thin fabric of her garments – Xena jerked sideways in distaste and realised it had been two people, a couple, half-naked on the floor. The man's watery face leered in invitation, a hand paused under his partner's skirt. The girl could not have been much older than twelve – couldn't be Eve, Xena noted – then realised, belatedly, that the girl's youth should have angered her, horrified her. Yet she could not suppress the sigh of relief as the haze hid them again. Not Eve.

How could she find her among all these Roman faces? What if she wasn't here at all? A sudden panic gripped Xena, she fought it off like wounded men fight off the suffocating blanket of death. It was just the smoke, she thought, blinking to moisten her dry eyes. She'd find her, of course she'd find her.

A movement in the corner of her vision made her turn around. More black-red shapes, no different to the ones around her, but Xena kept watching the spot... There! Again. Not quite right, a movement that did not belong here stood out from the drugged stupor. Purposeful. Someone else here was not completely under the languid spell of music and wine.

Mindful of the revellers' bodies and of the occasional slave drifting between them, Xena moved towards the spot she had marked, her eyes never leaving it. Someone caught at her pitcher, she refilled the goblet without pausing, not caring that more wine splashed on the floor than in the cup. The angry rebuke died behind her as she stalked closer to the strange movement. Almost there...

As if on command, the haze parted and Xena gulped an unexpected lungful of clean air. It threw her off-balance for an instant, her vision blackened and her head swam, she took another breath – and saw her daughter.

Livia was leaning against a column, her head thrown back to drain a goblet of wine, the white of her face glistening with sweat. She was dressed in a long filmy tunic, folds of dark fabric clasped at the shoulder and below her breasts. The goblet was lowered slowly, the fine finger-bones shaking – Xena's breath shook with that hand – and then it happened. For a heartbeat, Livia's eyes met hers.

Recognition stabbed.

Xena almost cried out – then the smoke came back and ended it, hid the scene. Livia disappeared, all that remained was the harsh glitter of her jewelled brooches in the haze. Xena felt like a cold statue, unable to look away from those few points of light.

Time swayed to the music, and it sickened her, made her stomach feel tight. Xena found herself groping for the old uncertainty, but it was lost to her now. All that remained was the bright flash of that face, unmistakably her daughter's – not the narrow line of cheekbone and jaw, but the eyes: the hunger, the emptiness... The anger.

Xena closed her own eyes, then wrenched them open; she couldn't miss the next time the smoke cleared, the second glimpse of that face – and couldn't look.

So this is what it felt like. She had found her child. A warrior. A killer. Bleak despair pulled Xena under, crept into her ears and mouth with the smoke, stung her eyes. She had found her child.

She wished she had not.

The thought broke through the despair, white-hot anger smashing its thin crust, crushing Xena's chest. No! She hadn't found her child, not yet. Not yet. But she would, by all the gods, she would find her child in Livia! Eve was there, had to be. She just had to get to Livia...

It was then that the strange, sober movement she had noticed appeared again. Slow-motioned in the smoke, Xena turned her head, and a second hit, more forceful because she had no more support, drove the wind from her lungs. Another shape appeared in the shadows, sprawled on a pile of cushions. The top of a dark head and the broad shoulders of a man... or a god.

Ares.

Here. With Eve.

Connections she didn't want to make splintered Xena's mind and lodged there, bleeding. The familiar flutter in her chest was a foreign, gut-wrenching thing.

Without volition, Xena wrapped her fingers around the chakram hidden at her waist, palm folded over the thin blade, pressing too hard – far too hard, it would be either the hand or the weapon, human flesh no match for implacable steel – but it didn't matter, he was here, and Eve was here, and there was nothing else left to doubt.

Someone was approaching him – the girl she had seen earlier, on the floor. The smoke no longer bothered Xena, she thought she could see clear through it, or maybe it was no longer there.

It was like the end of a battle, a grey victory that was defeat, a wound so deep that it did not hurt. Xena looked dead ahead, at the scene before her eyes, the girl coming towards Ares and in the background, her daughter watching. She had always known it would be like this.

* * *

Ares peered into the smoke for Livia, but his view was suddenly blocked. A young, pretty girl with hollow eyes staggered into his lap half-intentionally, giving him a glazed wink, grotesquely highlighted by heavy kohl. Her tunic was undone, small breasts spilling out into full view. Before he could push her off, he felt a jolt – and the girl lay in a heap on the floor, her eyes rolled to the back of her head, horribly white.

"Whore!"

The growl, screechy against the background noise, belonged to Livia. Her smoke-induced fantasies of possessing him were definitely putting a strain on their working relationship. The thought was scrambled momentarily while she claimed his mouth in a short, violent kiss, pushing his arms out of the way. He pulled away, revolted by her taste, wine and regurgitated food, mingled with blood from an old cut on her lip that had reopened without her noticing.

"Ares..." she drawled, irritating him all the more, almost to breaking point. She sounded too much like Xena when she said his name. He was honest enough to admit that that was precisely what had drawn him to her initially: that voice, calling the God of War. How he had flown! If aether could burn, his wake would have been ashes. Xena! Back, back from the dead! In that split second, he did not question how this could be possible, he cared nothing for particulars – he obeyed the summons, like an instinct deeper than survival.

But no. Not her.

Just some gangly teenager with nothing going for her except those huge eyes, blue-bronze in the light of the temple torches – that, and the fact that she had been holding one of the temple guards at swordpoint. Oh, yeah.

Teach me.

How could he refuse?

She had been a quick learner. He had always wondered what it would have been like to teach Xena at that age – she had been much older when he met her. Not a child by a long shot. Livia... Livia was industrious, but dull. A goody-goody rich kid rebelling against life in general. She'd study maps and weapons until her eyes closed of their own accord, and do it all again in the morning. He snorted. Livia, Champion of Rome, was a nerd.

Just then, Livia leaned over to fix the cushions and settled herself beside him, treating Ares to a picturesque view of her cleavage. He smiled appreciatively and watched her preen, pleased at the response. Had she been Xena, he's be writhing on the floor in agony right now, god or no.

What a joke. This little bird was nothing like the woman Xena had been. He forced himself to stop the comparisons.

Livia took a sip of her wine, eyeing him over the rim of her goblet. He was amused by the transparent coquetry. She replaced the goblet into a slave's hand without taking her eyes off his. Ares inclined his head.

"Victory is yours."

Livia's lips stretched slowly. "My gratitude knows no bounds."

He had to bite back a smart reply, recalling once again that this was not Xena teasing, this was Livia. And she was deadly serious. Poor girl.

She eased herself closer to him, wrapping her slender arms around his neck, and leaned into his ear. Her breath was sour with wine. "Fuck me, Ares."

Pathetic.

Ares took her arms off him, one at a time. "Not in the mood."

She pouted, disgusting him further. "You promised. Tonight! I've been waiting... You won't help me celebrate?"

"I have." He decided he'd had enough. "But even you can't monopolise me forever, Livia," – especially not you, he added mentally – "There are wars to attend to."

"All work and no play make Ares a dull god." She simpered insupportably, like a cheap tavern whore. He inched further from her sweat-damp body, feeling her slide down, losing her grip. Blind drunk. Had Xena ever been drunk? He'd never seen it.

He grabbed a goblet and held it out behind him, trying to support Livia's light body with his free arm. Spiced wine should perk her up a bit. He couldn't stand the sight of her like this, no sense of control remaining, a sorry little mortal with those incredible eyes. "Hit me." He motioned with the goblet impatiently. Were the servants drunk too?

"Don't tempt me."

Shit.

That voice. That voice.

No.

Yes!

No - no, no, no, no. Shit, shit, shit. Not possible. Get a handle on yourself, you'll be sharing Livia's smoke-hallucinations next. Don't look up. But the voice!

By Olympus itself, how could he have ever thought Livia sounded like her? No. Nothing sounded like her. His gut compressed into a point, terrified beyond emotion.

She's right here. Wearing a veil for some reason – why? Doesn't matter. She's here, breathing right next to him, the pitcher in her arms shaking a little with each breath. Damn.

He raised his eyes slowly. Past the gauzy dress, past the veil. Her jaw was clenched; there was death in her eyes. Uh-huh. Whatever was in that wine, it was strong. Strong enough to turn a god into a frightened half-wit. To Tartarus with the wine!

He threw the goblet away. She kept looking at him over the veil, her lips invisible, fury radiating from her like a palpable heat. Of course – Livia! Ares pushed the girl off him roughly; her head lolled a bit, but she was too out of it to resist.

Something flashed in her hand. A curved blade – her chakram!

The sight of it shot through Ares' blood, awakening every fear, every urge, everything. For the first time in twenty-five years, he felt he could breathe. He rose, facing her, nearly gasped with another wave of recognition. It was her! How?

The chakram flashed red.

"If you were mortal," – the words came low and halting, like tearing flesh – "I'd cut out your heart."

Could gods tremble?

"Xena?" The voice was too small, not his. "How..." His mouth would not obey; his eyes took up all of his energy, watching that face... Alive. Xena was alive. Twenty-five years, and she was not a day older... or maybe, it hadn't been that long – but the cave, the ice...

Ares caught the air, the smoke, almost enough to speak. "I ... mourned you." A spark of anger exploded into sudden fury in his chest. – "For years, I mourned you!"

"Yes, you looked positively grief-stricken just now." Xena nodded at Livia's still form; she was gaping, a small rivulet of wine tracing a line from the corner of her mouth to her collarbone.

"What, that? You're not jealous."

"Of a Roman wannabe? Hardly." Her tone was icy, dead.

"Well, you're right," Ares was surprised at how easily the words came now, how easy anger made them. Like finding a well-worn track. "She's not you."

Of course not, no one could ever be her! Xena was dead. And now she wasn't. Now she stood there as if she had never died, and every old wound was torn, gaping naked before her. She had no right to do this! But even the anger was drowned by the gasping need to be sure... to know for sure.

Why was she looking at him like that?

Ares was peripherally aware that Livia swore, but that was his last thought of her – Xena moved in closer, dropping the pitcher and letting the wine spill out like blood, soaking into the carpets.

Her scent, he could smell its warmth, its closeness. It was unbearably familiar, but he needed more, couldn't stop now... He reached for her waist, all in slow motion, afraid to break the spell. When she did not resist, he pulled down the veil, revealing her cheeks and lips. Her heart was thundering against his chest, her skin was so hot, too hot – he felt her breath brush his mouth as he drew her near, touching her lips...

With dizzying suddenness, she pulled away.

"You soulless bastard!"

Her fist moved noiselessly; he staggered backwards. And there was the uppercut. No doubt about it – Xena was back. Ares clutched his jaw, but that was the least of his concerns. "Xena!"

It was too late. She was gone, a flurry of movement that did not disturb a single drunken body on the floor. He had lost her again. Again!

Why?

"Ares..." Livia was trying to rouse herself from the stupor. "Wh...th..." She dropped onto a cushion clumsily, her blue-bronze eyes fluttering shut. Those eyes.

Those eyes!

And in that moment, Ares' whole universe executed a perfect backwards somersault and landed on its spine. He knew why. And he knew, with a certainty that reminded him what divinity meant, that this time, he had lost not only her. He had lost it all.

Ares swivelled his body around violently and, for the first time in his long, long life, threw up.

Time Out Of Joint

The time is out of joint – oh cursed spite,
That I was ever born to set it right.

Shakespeare, "Hamlet"

Virgil propped himself up on one elbow and watched as Gabrielle opened her eyes next to him and smiled, stretching under the covers. Dust motes sparkled in the slices of sunlight which fell through the shutters, marking glowing stripes across the bed and across Gabrielle's face. Her hair was pressed into the pillow like a halo of gold thread, lit into something almost divine.

He wanted to remember her like this: the woman who believed in him, who had a gift far greater than his own and yet did not dismiss his work as the fumblings of a child or the laziness of a man shirking responsibilities at home. Gabrielle had listened to his poetry – appreciative, curious, asking questions he hadn't thought to ask himself – then read some of her own, taking his breath away. Later, entwined in each other with no breath left for poetry, they had turned lovemaking into another expression, their bodies speaking as freely as their voices had done.

Gabrielle wrinkled her nose against the brightness, squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again – and then she was human once more, and wonderfully close. Virgil cupped the curve of her small shoulder in his hand, then drew his fingers gently across her collarbone and her breasts, pushing the covers over the slightly swollen nipples and down to her waist.

In the gold stripes of sunlight, long strings of words danced on Gabrielle's skin, inked across her chest and abdomen. With a twinge of desire, Virgil knew they continued lower, to her hips and thighs, then broke off, only to pick up again on his own chest and arms and back. They had started writing when the night had faded from black to a smoky grey, laughing at the scratch and tickle of quill against skin, as if the night had freed them both.

Gabrielle looked down at herself, then at Virgil's similarly decorated torso. Her eyes twinkled. "Not much room left."

"No," he confirmed, slipping his hand over her waist and drawing her close. "But we don't need much room."

Gabrielle's small body stiffened against his. Virgil released her immediately, afraid he had offended her somehow.

"Virgil," she began carefully, moving her face back a little to watch his, "I had a wonderful night..."

He stopped her with a gentle finger to her lips. "So did I," he said. "Last night, when I came here to write, I thought it would be the last time... I thought that maybe my family was right, that maybe it really was just childish silliness – but now..." He paused, outlining the shape of Gabrielle's mouth with his fingertip. She met it with a quick dart of her tongue, a playful shock to his nerves.

"But now?" she prompted.

He smiled. "Now I know better. I could never thank you enough."

"You'll finish the poem?"

Virgil inclined his head, a promise. Gabrielle acknowledged it, putting her hands on his shoulders as Virgil untangled himself from the sheets. "You better," she threatened. "I'll be listening for minstrels singing it."

He bent to kiss her one last time. Her mouth opened to his, and no good-byes were needed. They hugged fiercely, once, and then Virgil was putting on his clothes and heading out the door.

He became aware that the writing on his arms and chest was visible around his vest, but it was suddenly funny and he found himself grinning at curious passers-by. He remembered a conversation he'd had with his father once, years before his death.

"If you want to write, boy," his father had said, amusing Virgil with his seriousness, "the writing's got to be a part of you." – "Part of me?" – "Yeah. That's what Gabrielle used to say." But then his mother had scowled at the mention of the name, and said "Joxer..." in a warning tone that put an end to the conversation. His father had spoken no more about the woman, whoever she had been, and Virgil had never asked.

He glanced at the words on his arms – the writing really was a part of him, it seemed to have poured from his heart to his skin. It struck Virgil as exquisitely ironic that it had been his own Gabrielle who had reminded him of his father's advice and had turned it into reality.

Gabrielle. He liked the sound of the name. You couldn't say it without smiling – which Virgil did, walking a little faster through the greyish morning. He wanted to be home quickly, to write.

* * *

Xena could not recall how she got out of the palace, or how she made it back across the square to retrieve her cloak. She only knew that she must have done it, and quickly, because the cloak was whipping around her shoulders as she ran through the streets, and the air was still dark.

She stopped only when she found she had reached the Tarpeian rock, jutting out from the Capitoline cliffs. A thin line of blue steel on the horizon was already encroaching on the blackness. The world dropped away abruptly at her feet, onto a tumble of jagged rocks and bleached bones far below, where generations of criminals and rebels had met their end.

Cold drizzle stung her face. She hunched her shoulders into the cloak and remembered the last time she had done that. After Solan's death. She didn't want to remember that time, it seemed so ancient now. Screaming her grief on a snow-covered mountain peak, and Ares beside her, urging her to kill Gabrielle... Snow. There had been snow all around back then, but the dawn of this damp spring morning seemed no warmer than the mountain's blazing chill.

There would be no more Illusia. Twenty-five years had dropped away, like pebbles skittering down the cliff-face from under her Roman sandals. Years which Ares had spent turning their daughter into what Xena would never be for him.

She looked down.

She felt dizzy, lurched backwards from the edge and sank down on all fours. Gravel dug into her skin cruelly, slicing through the servant's dress, and a screaming pain seared her right hand. Xena jerked it off the ground and sat, staring numbly at the cut on her palm. Her chakram. She had squeezed the blade too hard and the blood now welled into the cup of her hand, mingling with dust and bits of rock. It wasn't deep but bled profusely, ruby tears falling freely into the dust. Xena made a fist and let them fall, gritting her teeth against the pain.

Dawn echoed purple from the rocks below. It could all end here – but it would solve nothing. No, Eve would still be Ares' ... something. Something that did not bear thinking about, so Xena dropped the thought and tried again. Nothing came. No solutions, plans, no answers. Her body rejected reality – even her breasts still swelled slightly under the cloak, hurting with milk for her baby... Only there was no baby. Just an empty space in her arms, cradling a dirty, slowly bleeding cut.

A worm of a thought crawled through Xena's mind. Guilt. A feeling familiar like the rain on her skin or the receding pain in her hand. How many times had she silently resented Eve's night-time feeds? Or the thin cries which refused to be silenced, no matter what Xena tried? Or the changes in her own body?

I didn't love her enough.

Xena fought the thoughts half-heartedly. This was going nowhere. She saw Ares' face again, the way shock had splashed over it when he'd seen her at the bacchanalia. Was all this his fault? Or hers? How could she have trusted him with her baby's life, counted on him to save Eve when she couldn't? Motherhood must have addled her brains.

Ares had just done what he always did; took in the situation and made a few changes. Enough to take control. With sickening clarity, Xena saw it his way. A child of his own blood, even a mortal one, was a powerful tool. A warrior queen who would be intensely loyal, would never defy him the way Xena had done, would share his goals – and his bed. His own child! But what did it matter, to a god? Now he had everything he'd ever wanted. And she had allowed it to happen.

"You gotta tell me what happened."

She flew to her feet, whirled around.

Ares stood a few paces away, the flash of his appearance dissolving blue against the sky. Xena took a step backwards, more shaken by her inability to sense him than she cared to admit. It was like seeing a ghost. Her mind arranged the picture of him: the short black hair; the guarded dark eyes; the long fingers curling over the hilt of his sword, the silver on black leather... He probably thought he looked composed, but his mouth betrayed him; there were reddish marks on his full lips, as though he had bitten them.

For an instant Xena's heart hovered in weightlessness, then dropped. "Ares."

"See, I thought you were dead."

His sarcasm split something raw and Xena did not know what she wanted more: to hurt him, or to touch him. In this alien world, he was the same. The deep resonance of his voice, at the base of her skull and deeper, dispelled all notions of ghosts – no, this was Ares all right. Without warning, rage flooded back, filling her, drawing her mouth into the snarl of a wounded animal. He had mutilated Eve's life. Nothing else mattered.

"I am dead. I died the day you turned my daughter into your warrior whore."

The sarcasm crumbled into a stricken look on Ares' absurdly perfect features, a face that had not changed a jot in the intervening years. It felt good to see him hurt. He took a sharp breath, his nostrils flaring a little – "I didn't know." He swallowed, "We didn't ... I ... Xena, I swear, I didn't know."

Xena tensed her body, treading lightly towards him across the gravel, as if she was all right, not falling apart inside. "Didn't know what, Ares? That I'd be back to foil your plans? That I wouldn't let you corrupt my daughter the way you did me?"

"That Livia was – is – Eve." He tried to reach her hand; Xena snatched it back. "You got the wrong idea, Xena," his voice rose in defiance, "I never touched her!" He dropped his hand, and Xena looked despite herself. His fingers were shaking. Ares clenched them into a fist. "She's not my lover. Believe me."

Something was wound tightly in his searching face; to her astonishment, Xena found she did believe him. Or perhaps she just wanted to believe him... But she knew him too well not to notice the tension lines around his mouth, not to see how badly shaken he was. Dangerous relief washed over her. She clamped it down, remembering the victory parade – and the slaves brought in as spoils. He didn't need to sleep with a warrior to corrupt her. Bile rose at her own bitter memories.

"What did you promise her? What did it take, to turn her into your little warrior queen?" Xena looked away, past him. "How much power?"

"She's not."

Her eyes flashed back to where Ares stood. "I don't believe you."

Frustration strained his voice, "I told you – I didn't know she was our daughter! I thought you were dead, dammit! All of you!"

In the silence that followed, two thoughts sliced into Xena's mind. The first, a memory of Lao Hsu's tiny form in the flames, the body Ares must have taken to be Eve's. Dully, she realised why he had never suspected Livia's true identity. And the second thought – that had he known that Livia was Eve...

"And if you had known she was your daughter?" she looked at him in resignation. "You would have made her your warrior queen. Princess."

Ares set his jaw. "I might've tried harder."

Xena continued looking at him, numbly aware that the rain had stopped, and the sky behind him was no longer black, but the colour of ash. Ares' brows were heavy over his eyes, and his body as taut as her own, as though he wanted at once to reach forward and to shrink away.

"If I'd known she was our daughter, she would've had the best of everything, Xena. The world at her command." He spoke so quietly that Xena found herself taking another step forward to hear him. With detached surprise, she felt him raise the back of his hand to her cheek, warm against her wind-chilled skin. "She still can."

He moved his hand lower, to the curve of her jaw, barely even a touch. Xena began to shake. "Ares... I'm going to save her."

"From what – from me?" He stroked her neck and threaded his hand through her thick hair. Then he dropped his hand. "I don't think so. You saw her, Xena. She's exactly where she wants to be."

"In Rome!" Xena pulled away, her voice breaking. "I saw the slaves; she's a monster!"

"A warrior," Ares corrected, then the corners of his mouth tightened. "She takes after her parents. What did you expect – a Hestian virgin?"

"I'll tell you what I expected," Xena heard the shrill note of hysteria in her voice – "I expected to raise her myself! To show her a way beyond the violence..."

"So go ahead."

She felt the words bodily, like a blow. She stared at Ares. "You're letting me take her away? But she's one of your warriors..."

"So are you." He shrugged nonchalantly, but his gaze was too intense, holding hers. "I've missed you, Xena. For twenty-five years I've wanted you back – to see you in battle again, fighting beside me. To have things the way they were before..."

"That's changed," Xena said, but did not move when Ares took her hands. There was a peculiar tenderness in the gesture, a sort of warmth.

"That's right, it's changed. There is no going back; Eve has seen to that. So let's move on." He brought his hand to his lips, and Xena shook so badly that she thought she would fall. "Join with me, Xena. I'll take you and Eve someplace safe, away from Rome. I swear, I won't disappoint you. All I'm asking is your word that we'll be together – and Eve is yours. You'll be her mother again. I can make it happen."

"I see." She snapped back from him. "You'll give me back my broken dolly if I promise to fuck you?" Xena fought a wave of nausea. "To think that I had your child, Ares," she spat – "that sickens me!"

She watched his lips part incredulously, heard the soft exhaled air leave his lungs. There was no blood. Then she turned and fled, her cloak brushing past him, snapping as she ran downhill. Ares didn't try to stop her.

At the foot of the hill, she glanced up. His figure was black on the ashes of the sky, alone and unmoving as the rocks he stood on. Xena felt a new resolve steel her. Darkness would not claim her baby forever. Not if she could help it.

* * *

By the time the front door of the inn slammed behind her, Xena was at the top of the stairs.

"Gabrielle!" She tried the room door, but it was locked. She had to be in, she promised she'd be waiting – "Gabrielle, come on, there's no time!" She'd have to tell her everything, and it would hurt again, but everything would work out in the end, now that she had a plan... Livia would be in Ares' temple before going on campaign, she'd have to be – but she'd leave to join her army soon – no time, no time...

"Xena?"

A strip of morning light expanded into a white rectangle of the doorway, Gabrielle's figure silhouetted in the brighter room. She was clutching a sheet to herself. "Uh... give me a minute."

"We've got to hurry!" Xena came inside, blinking in the glare – then saw the writing.

It was everywhere. On Gabrielle's shoulders, chest, arms – inked characters disappeared under the sheet and reappeared on the other side, crisscrossing her like layers of parchment. Xena's eyes slid to the bed, she took in the rumpled sheets and the half-empty inkwell on the floor, a broken quill dripping blue beside it. The room smelled of wine and sex.

She looked back to Gabrielle. The sheet was marked blue where she was clutching it, there were blue streaks on her forehead and in her sleep-tousled hair. The sight reminded Xena of someone she had met in her pirating days, a boy whose skin had been tattooed all over in a spidery testimony to his own stupidity.

"Well, are you going to tell me?" Xena's voice refused the intended humour; the words came out as an impatient rebuke.

Gabrielle's face wavered in an uncertain smile. "Ran out of parchment." The smile died at Xena's hard expression. "It doesn't matter. I'll be ready in a minute, just ... wait."

"Gabrielle, I can't wait, there's no time to lose..."

"You can't wait?!"

Gabrielle's outburst threw Xena off-balance, she froze where she stood.

"You can't wait!" the bard repeated, louder, advancing. "And I can? Because none of this concerns me, right?! Because Eve isn't my daughter, so I can just wait until you need me for some plan of yours – to mind your sword or whatever else you happen to need?"

Xena rocked back, stunned past all anger. No. No, not now. She couldn't handle it now, not when Eve was Livia and Ares was back, and Rome was crushing her with its weight. She searched Gabrielle's face for a hint of the understanding she had been expecting, but it was hard and closed, lips drawn painfully thin.

"What's the matter?" Xena said, lamely, knowing that it would only make things worse.

Gabrielle reached under the bed with her foot and slid Xena's sword towards herself, flipping it into her hand. She shoved it towards Xena. The scabbard and armour followed. Xena took everything wordlessly.

"Get out," Gabrielle said. "Get out, and let me get dressed, then we can go and do whatever it is you've decided to do without so much as asking what I thought."

Something snapped inside Xena. "Thought? Doesn't look like you've been having many of those last night! Or have you learned to write poetry on your own back?" She gestured with her chin. "It's quite a piece of work – you could sell tickets!"

Gabrielle flushed an angry scarlet. "You sound like Ares."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Gabrielle laughed, a bitter sound. "You saw him, didn't you? Last night, you saw him!" Then, before Xena could deny it, "I don't recall you doing much thinking when you decided he'd make the perfect daddy for your child!"

Xena felt the blood rush from her face. You had to hand it Gabrielle. She didn't hit often, but she rarely missed. It was that carriage all over again – the one she and Gabrielle had pushed off the cliff before their world fell apart... Hurtling out of control into an abyss, far too late to stop now. She hit back. "How about whoever you were with last night? Would he make a good daddy for your child, if you have one? Or did you not think of that?"

Silence. Gabrielle remained where she was, breathing heavily, clutching at the sheet. Xena thought she had seen her look like that before – of course... Before Illusia. When she had tried to kill Gabrielle.

Shame flooded her heart. Not again. Please, anything but this... She could not lose Gabrielle again. But she had done it now, it was like waiting for an arrow to strike – and then she'd be alone. The panic at having done something irreversible rose in Xena's throat, she wanted to call the words back, but could not find the breath.

Gabrielle did not scream. She said, very quietly, "No."

For a moment, it made no sense. "No?"

"No," she said again, just as quietly. "I didn't think of that."

Xena remembered the way the wheels of that runaway cart had spun in the air, a second before it fell. "Didn't think of what?"

"Getting pregnant," Gabrielle said, just as quietly. "Because I can't."

"Can't think?" Xena said before she could catch herself – that's not what she means! – and then, the idiotic mistake broke through the tension, suddenly the last straw for both of them to cling to. "I mean..."

The corners of Gabrielle's lips quirked slightly, against her will – and then she burst into laughter. Hysterical, Xena laughed too, gulping shattered half-breaths – all the poison of grief and helplessness and loneliness had finally collected itself and burst from its own pressure, and though it would hurt worse than before for a little while, eventually, it would heal.

The laughter drifted away, and Xena was struck with how ludicrous the whole scene was. Gabrielle with her inked-over skin and tatty sheet – and her own servant's dress under the cloak, stained with mud and torn where the rocks had snagged at it. Evidently, the same thing had occurred to Gabrielle, because she reached out and fingered a corner of a scarf at Xena's waist, studying it with far more attention than it deserved.

Xena swallowed and took Gabrielle's elbows, forcing herself to say the obvious. "How long...?"

Gabrielle raised her eyes. "Since Hope." She smiled slightly, with the infinite sadness of someone who wished she could grieve. "When she was born ... She'd grown too fast, and I ... bled. Badly. But then it stopped. Eventually, so did the pain. With everything that happened, it seemed hardly surprising. Then later, in India... The physician asked me what manner of man tortured me so, to tear me up inside. She said there were scars, too many scars for my body to heal right. Too many to hold a child."

"You never told me," Xena breathed, dismayed. "You never said a word, not even when Eve was born."

Gabrielle's face was almost tranquil. "I was afraid to talk about it at first. Then, later, it was a kind of... consolation. A promise that there could never be another Hope. When things got really bad, I'd remember that, and it helped me, somehow."

Xena stared at her in appalled silence. Gabrielle... And she had never suspected, never asked!

Gabrielle bit her lip, looking at the floor between herself and Xena. "When you told me you were going to have a baby, I thought ... I thought we'd bring her up together. That it would be a second chance – for both of us."

Guilt assailed Xena. Ares may be her father, but Eve will never be his. She is yours and mine, Gabrielle. Our daughter. She hadn't made good on her word, she'd been so wrapped up in Eve, in everything that she had missed with Solan – and she didn't want to think about Hope, couldn't bear to face those memories... No wonder Gabrielle had never told her! Was it too late?

"Xena, I'm so sorry."

Xena flinched at the honesty in those words. "No – you have nothing to apologise for, I'm the one who..."

Gabrielle put a finger to Xena's lips. "I do. I resented Eve for coming between us, but it was so stupid. I was stupid. You mean more to me than anything in the whole world, and I let you suffer all this alone – what does that make me?"

"Human?" Xena said awkwardly, as a huge weight lifted from her chest.

Gabrielle sobbed, shaking her head, but her eyes were peaceful, as though a fever had broken. Xena drew her close, holding her, afraid to let go.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. "So sorry." She breathed deeply, inhaling Gabrielle's closeness, the smell of her hair, almost broken by the strength of her answering embrace. Only now did she realise just much she had missed this, how badly she needed to have Gabrielle beside her – and how badly Gabrielle needed her support, too. She'd been so selfish...

"I promise," Xena said, planting a kiss on the top of Gabrielle's head, "I'll never let Eve, or anyone else come between us." She wanted to add something, something that would tell Gabrielle that she understood how much she had sacrificed by choosing this life, how dearly she had paid for their friendship, to promise that it was not in vain, but all she could manage was – "I'll stand by you. Always."

Gabrielle looked up, narrowing her eyes. "You won't try to carry the whole world on your shoulders? 'Cause I've got shoulders, too, you know."

"I know." Xena held Gabrielle at an arm's length, pretending to consider it. "Then again, with scrawny little shoulders like that..."

"Oh-ho, watch it, Warrior Princess, or you just might get your ass kicked all the way to India!"

Xena grimaced in mock fear, letting Gabrielle extricate herself. Gabrielle nodded sharply. "Let's get your daughter back."

Eve... The events of the night finally caught up with Xena, her knees buckled. She stumbled forward, past Gabrielle's gentle hands, and leaned on the windowsill. What a crazy night. Beyond the shutters, the narrow lane bustled with awakening life. A woman's voice, berating her daughter for not hanging our the washing – Don't you take that tone with me, young lady, I'm your mother! – but the girl wasn't listening. I'm your mother, Eve...

Xena took a long breath. "No. Our daughter."

Gabrielle came to join her by the window and laid a warm hand across Xena's arm. "Let's hear the plan, then."

* * *

Ares appeared on a river bank in the woods outside Rome, his arrival startling a flock of sparrows into the sky. The place practically shouted that it was spring; it was everywhere, in the smell of sticky new leaves, in the relentless noise of birds, in the rush of the swollen stream. The water was clear here, although it turned turbid where it flowed into the Tiber further on – but Ares wasn't interested in the scenery.

He unbuckled his sword belt and yanked off his gauntlets, then, quickly, the remainder of his clothing. The bundle landed in the bushes. He waded into the water until the surface tickled his chest and arms, and he was stepping on soft silt. Broken morning light danced on green water. He stood, teeth clenched, naked and vulnerable like a mortal. Just like Xena.

He should have known better than to offer to help. She blamed him for Eve.

The water was unbearably cold, numbing his skin. It felt good, but the cold wasn't deep enough; he could still feel Xena's eyes on him, the revulsion in her face. Ares ducked his head under, trying to get rid of the lingering, sickening taste of Livia's wine-laden kiss, of the memory of her crumpled body on the couch, stretched out in drugged oblivion. His daughter! Xena's words scored his mind. It sickens me... He brought his face back up and stood stock still, willing the current to flow faster, to wash everything away. The air was sharp on his wet skin. Twenty-five years. He'd seen his daughter's death – so how could he have known that she was alive? That whatever he had seen burning had not been Eve's body?

How could he have not known?

Xena should have told him! Ares punched the water, sending a spray of droplets into the air. Why hadn't she let him take Eve away, instead of getting her involved in whatever the ill-fated plan had been? All those wasted years! The thought exploded in a watershed of rage, shattering the sounds of the forest in a cacophony of frightened creatures.

Silence returned. Reluctantly, Ares let the cold water calm him. He could not remember when he'd discovered it could do that, only that it was sometime after he buried Xena... The warm pools of Olympus had become revolting after that. Every time he'd try to immerse himself in their steaming, nectar-scented water, he could think only of Xena – purpled and lifeless, encased in ice – and no matter how good the wine, how attractive and willing the company, he could not bring himself to stay there. He'd seen more of the mortal world in the last twenty-five years than in all the previous millennia combined. It wasn't a pretty sight.

Now she was back, and she'd rejected him again. He'd tried to help, and she rejected him. She really hadn't changed a bit.

But dammit, he had! Why did she never believe him? He really was ready to give up Livia, all the plans he had for her, ready to confirm every word of Xena's story, even the parts he still wasn't too sure about, until their daughter became what Xena wanted her to be. He'd made the offer and he would keep his word, because there wasn't any more time to waste! How could she not see that? But no, the mere thought of being with him sickened her now! A rush of air tore from Ares' lungs, making him grit his teeth uselessly.

All right, he'd missed her. The world was deserted without her. The Fates knew, he'd had time enough for the whole seven-step mourning thing: numbness, denial, anger, lust for vengeance, despair, comprehension, acceptance... He'd managed to collect the whole set several times over. Except acceptance.

He wanted to punch the water again, to hit something, but let his fist drop, instead catching one of the tiny fish that kept flashing around him. It thrashed in his cupped hands as he brought it out of the water, cold rivulets running through his fingers. Finally it became still; only the pumping of its gills, frantic and futile, proved that it lived. Soon it, too, ceased. Disgusted, he flung the slimy creature back into the water. It floated for a moment – then its gills moved again and, with a flick of its tailfin, it disappeared below the surface.

It was a mortal, that fish. It had a will to survive, a deep-rooted instinct that made every mortal's life a useless struggle for immortality.

Except Xena's. Ares had lost count of the number of times she'd refused a chance to live forever. But even Xena had wanted it once, back when she'd embraced the primal within herself, honing her instincts instead of trampling them down. Immortality. The ultimate survival, an instinct deeper than desire, deeper than will – try as she might, even Xena could not erase it from her soul. Her awakening was proof enough of that.

Brightening a little, Ares regrouped his thoughts, beginning to see the new battle plan.

He was looking at things like a mortal. What he had to do was step back, take the god's eye view – which, come to think of it, wasn't all that grim. Xena was back, and he had a fully grown daughter who was more than competent with a sword and an army. A daughter, moreover, who was devoted to him, and was about to go to war in his name. Admittedly, so was her opponent, but that minor problem could be taken care of later. The important thing was that Xena wasn't keen on the idea. She wanted to take Eve away from the battlefield, and from him. Again.

Eve... Despite himself, Ares recalled the soft little baby he had held in his arms, her milky scent and gummy, childish smiles. Little Eve, and Livia. There was no link there, no connection. He could no longer see Livia as just one of his warriors, but neither was she that baby he had mourned with every fibre of his being, with every nightmare and scream on the battlefield, for years... No. Xena wasn't going to do this again. He wasn't going to bury either of them again, ever.

She wanted to get to Livia, tell her the whole implausible truth. Maybe she really expected the Champion of Rome to collapse into her arms, crying "Mummy!" – as though all those years had meant as little to her as they had to Xena. Well, he knew Livia. It wasn't going to happen. Whether or not she realised it, Livia was Roman to the core; her curiosity might make her listen to Xena's story of ice caves and missing babies, but her Roman pragmatism would win out in the end. She wouldn't believe it, not without evidence or the testimony of a witness she trusted. And that's where the God of War came in.

Xena needed him. She would see it eventually, and she would come to him for help.

Ares looked up at the grey-blue forest sky and felt suddenly dizzy with the depth of it. It seemed to go on forever. And yet he knew in a detached sort of way that it, too, ended, and other realms too strange for his knowledge began beyond it, and probably ended, too. Eternity was an illusion. It was a terrifying thought. It made Ares feel smaller somehow, insignificant; the sensation was a little too close to mortality. It reminded him yet again of way Xena had looked in the ice casket. There was a time he would have gladly parted with his own immortality just to be able to think about her like this – present and future, instead of forever in the past.

He looked back to the light on the water's choppy surface and made a decision. He'd waited long enough for a second chance. Now that he had it, he wasn't going to let it go, not without a fight. Xena didn't want their daughter at the head of an army, even a truly great army – fine. He didn't understand it, but he could live with it. He'd even help her. But if he was going to make sacrifices to her frostbitten principles, he deserved something in return. In fact it could be a win-win situation, if Xena could be persuaded to see it his way. Of course, persuading Xena to see things his way was always the tricky part, but this time the odds were definitely in his favour: Livia already did.

Abandoning the mortal charade, Ares emerged from the water fully clothed and walked directly into the aether.

Continued in Part 2