Solitude
by
sHaYcH
Disclaimer: Xena: Warrior Princess is the property of MCA/Universal and a bunch of others. I'm just playing.
This drabble is based on the opening sequences of the episode, "The Bitter Suite".
There were, Gabrielle mused sadly, better ways to end. Wafting waves of incense rolled over her, caressing her with the promise of summer’s bounty. Inside her head, the echo of her heartbeat kept time with the throb of the Amazon drums that pounded just outside the purification hut door.
It was, she decided, an awful way to seek absolution from a crime for which there was no redemption, no forgiveness. She felt sick; infused with nausea for each and every breath that she drew and Solon did not.
She felt broken, but not shattered – a million pieces would be easier to handle than the great, gaping hole in her gut that bled a thousand apologies that would never be heard.
Drumbeats pounded at her skull. A thousand half-heard conversations bounced off the walls. Ephiny’s voice; Joxer’s voice; words that she understood but did not listen to picked at her ears.
Her skin smarted with every slap of the shaman’s grass scepter.
It was not enough. There was nothing here that could reach through; could break the ice that crept over her heart, glacial and freezing, and leave her anything more than a fragment of the person they loved.
She was alone, and Xena hated her.
Madness was an intriguing answer to a question she hardly dared to ask.
fin
06/20/07