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Because KT and I are working on a project about the Xena/Gabrielle love, I decided I'd like to tell the story of Xena and Gabrielle for those who had never seen the show, so they'd believe in the love.
This is what I wrote - beta'd by
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Not Even Death
By Xie
Xena needed to undo the wrong she’d done. So she tried to undo the person she’d become, the one who’d done it.
But there was trouble, the way there always was. This time trouble she didn’t cause, not her trouble, so she tried to walk away.
But this particular trouble was blonde and pissed off and in way over her head, and there was something… troubling… about how she felt when their eyes met.
And you know, the sword just felt right in her hand again. For a minute.
The trouble was over and Xena tried to leave, but the in-over-her-head blonde didn’t get it, had no idea what she was thinking, saying, or doing, and followed. She trotted along behind Xena’s horse and looked at her with those trusting eyes, and made Xena feel slightly like going out of her skin and slightly like being a hero.
And after all, it was just a little blonde girl riding on the back of her horse. It didn’t mean anything. She’d certainly figure out Xena wasn’t who she thought she was soon enough and then she’d go home and be the girl she was supposed to be.
Only Gabrielle wouldn’t go. She kept looking at Xena with that hero thing in her eyes, and nothing draws trouble like the hero thing. And Gabrielle thought a hero should have someone at her back, and finally Xena gave in and showed her what to do about trouble when it found her. Even though she hoped it wouldn’t.
Although, of course, it did.
It wasn’t that Xena didn’t know Gabrielle should go. It wasn’t that Gabrielle didn’t wander off a time or two. It wasn’t that darkness didn’t touch them both, the darkness inside Xena, and the darkness that comes from outside. Gods and warriors and demons and the familiar touch of home, all of it brought trouble, brought war, and death, and lies. Brought reproach, and broken trust, and grief and blood and lost innocence.
But the thing that Xena saw in Gabrielle’s eyes that first day, the thing that looked like trust and hero-worship? It turned out to be the other half of her soul, recognizing her across the clearing, even with that sword between them.
Not all the trouble in the world could break that.
Not even death.