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.