From the Hands of Rome
By Absinthe
For Disclaimers seePart 1
Part 6:
They were scheduled to arrive in Alexandria in two days. Cleopatra, though extremely self-contained by nature, was showing a case of nerves. All reports from the capital indicated that the people were growing nervous about the oncoming famine.
Xena stood at the rear of the barque, hands held relaxed in front of her, blue eyes closed. Her knees were slightly bent, but her meditations had taken her mind far from her body. She was using some of the mental techniques that Lao Ma had taught her so many years before in the hopes that they might take her closer to the unity that her soul so desired.
Gabrielle, laying not far from her lover, was in the position of the snake. Despite the pressure on her diaphragm, she kept her breathing deep and even as she had been taught. She was supposed to be working towards stillness, towards being able to empty her mind completely, but today her thoughts drifted rebelliously back towards Xena. They had spent a lot of time talking about Rome and Caesar and Egypt and Cleopatra, but she had a feeling that those were not always the topics that they were REALLY talking about.
Peace versus war, love versus hate, moderation versus excess, stillness versus violence; these were the things that Gabrielle understood to be underlying many of their conversations. Xena was still drawn to the ways of war. Whether in this particular case it had more to do with ripping Caesar's heart out and eating it while he watched, than it did with destroying an empire that was assimilating and destroying cultures all over the world, the bard wasn't entirely sure. She was, however, leaning heavily towards the former. But not even Gabrielle could blame her for that desire. There was, however, a difference between wanting revenge, and dragging entire nations into war in order to get it.
It was apparent to her that Xena was struggling to keep her more belligerent impulses at bay. The bard was learning, slowly, and only through the harshest of lessons, that Xena's dark side as not the disease that she'd once thought it to be. From what she'd witnessed in the dark last night, there was more going on than usual. Xena was never one to talk to anyone, much less herself.
Dropping pose in frustration, Gabrielle stood up and rested the heels of her calloused hands on the gilded railing. Xena sensed the change in her lover and quickly dropped her hands, her mind returning with split-second velocity to the present.
"What's wrong?" the warrior asked, not ungently.
Gabrielle flexed her shoulders, putting more of her weight experimentally onto her hands, trying to decide how to phrase her response. Sometimes she hated having to walk on eggshells with her lover, but this topic was particularly sensitive, and she respected the warrior's right to privacy--to a point. The bard wasn't inclined to let it go, nor did she want to start a feud.
"I'm worried about you, love," Gabrielle finally said.
"Well don't," the warrior replied, moving to wrap a casual arm around the bard's surprisingly trim and well defined waist.
"How can I not? Xena . . . I know this is about the Caesar thing, but there's more to it isn't there."
"I'm fine Gabrielle. It's fine. I just need you to be here, and not ask me. Just for now. Please," the warrior pulled Gabrielle a little closer, breathing in the comforting scents of the river, and her love.
Gabrielle bit back the demands she wanted to make and just listened with her body to the strange rhythms of Xena's. This trip had been a strange mixture of stress and relaxation, but Xena was usually calm in such situations, her knowledge of right and wrong secure and certain.
At the moment the voices were all but silent, Gabrielle's presence and the hot light of day were enough to drive them back. It was only a matter of time before they started up again though.
The barque was met by a roaring crowd on the shore at Alexandria. Cleopatra met her people with relief, pleased to be home and safely in the hearts of the Egyptians. Xena and Gabrielle stayed only three more days with her before they disembarked. They would take a ship as far east as possible, and from there they would move out on foot.
Gabrielle insisted that India would be the best place to look for spiritual guidance. She wanted to find a better way, explaining to her lover that she felt like she was doing things wrong. Xena knew without being told that Gabrielle had never been meant for the kind of life they lead. She had known from the beginning, but those green, pleading, hopelessly blind eyes had stopped the warrior from sending the innocent farmer's daughter home where she belonged.
Xena stared at the decking in between her feet whenever the bard went off on one of her introspective kicks. The warrior blamed herself for all of the suffering that their journeys had caused for Gabrielle, and had agreed to undertake the hard voyage to India supposedly for her sake.
But the truth was, she was hoping to find the glue to rebuild her shattered mind, and the sledgehammer to break down the stone walls.
Author's note: This story takes place, improbably enough, between "Paradise Found" and "Devi". I realize that this makes NO SENSE, but that's OK, because what it IS is a lead in to Xena's apparent spiritual reawakening at the end of "The Way". Her questioning of her ability to kill and to use the power of her dark side (heavy Darth Vader Breathing) at the beginning of "The Way" and then its resolution all in the same episode just seemed to be lacking in something...
That's not to say that many of us haven't been aware of a gaping hole in Xena's defenses of late. She'd been taking a lot of blows recently, until "The Way" that is. It seems that Krishna and Rama's reaffirmation of her calling helped her overcome something that'd been bothering her for a couple of seasons of the show, cuz she sure was in top form for "The Play's the Thing" and those great fights in "The Convert". OK, now somebody better E-mail me and tell me if this sucked or not.
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Email: absinthe@earthling.net