FIC: Cursebreaker (Xena: Xena/Ares) [PG-13]
not_primetime authors have been revealed! My fabulous SCC gift turned out to be by raktajinos - thank you again!
My own entry was a Xena fic, and I really rather like how it turned out. (But oh dear, do I suck at summaries. Any suggestions for a better one welcome!)
Title: Cursebreaker
Pairing: Xena/Ares
Characters: Xena, Ares, Gabrielle
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "I take it you're here for the helmet."
A/N: Written for
hydrangea as part of not_primetime 2013. Many thanks to wojelah for brainstorming help above and beyond the call of duty, and for fluffyllama for last-minute betaing!
Originally posted here at AO3. Comments welcome in either place!
~*~
The noonday sun weighed warm across Xena's back as they rode along the small stream up into the Pangeon foothills. In summer there would only have been an empty bed of gravel, the stream's spirit "gone to fetch more stones," as Gabrielle had put it in one of her scrolls. Now, there was fresh water flowing aplenty, and the stream's sides had for a brief time exploded into a riot of green.
Neither of them had been here before, and it was good to leave familiar lands behind for a while, to ride through a landscape not buried with memories. Xena let out a whoop of joy and slid her heels up along her mount's side. With a quick tensing of muscles she propelled herself into the air and came to stand on Argo's back. The horse didn't react; she was well trained, and used to Xena's eccentricities by now.
Xena could feel Gabrielle's eyes on her, fond warmth radiating, as she catapulted herself from Argo's back, turned a somersault in the air and came to a crouching stand on the water's edge. She threw Gabrielle a quick grin, then bent forward to scoop up some water. Fresh mountain water tasted like nothing else.
Gabrielle dismounted in a more sedate fashion and came to the stream beside her. Side by side they drank.
It was then that she felt it: a tingle at the base of her spine, the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. Her face tensed; her muscles tightened; but she didn't turn. Her hand went toward her chakram as her eyes met Gabrielle's, and a moment later Gabrielle had her own hands on her sais.
Xena shook her head. "Ares," she muttered under her breath, and in a smooth movement came up from her crouch, the chakram flying in an underhand arc. It split in mid-air, and she watched as both parts converged on Ares's position.
With a crackle of blue light, Ares's form shaped itself out of the air even as he plucked the chakram's halves from where they flew. He looked down at them with a strange expression, then smirked at her and propelled both parts back at her. They united in the air less than a metre from her, and she snatched it out of the air whole, reattaching it to her belt with a scowl.
What could there be happening in this area that might interest the God of War? But he was here; he was clearly up to something again. Of course he was. It's what I do, he'd reminded her, not so long ago.
Even so, it was almost good to see him again, to see the wash of blue light as he stepped out of the aether. She'd been fond of him when he'd been human - he'd still been Ares, after all, and without the worst parts of him, the parts that tied him to the kind of darkness she herself had worked for so many years to leave behind. But she couldn't deny that there'd been something missing, and that part of herself was glad to see him restored to his full glory.
She wasn't proud of feeling that way.
Xena smiled grimly to herself. "Ares. What do you want?"
He scratched fingernails through his beard, then walked up to her. The intensity of his gaze was a magnet; she had to force herself not to be pulled in. After a moment, he looked away, as if he couldn't quite meet her gaze.
"Xena," he said, his lips wrapping around the sounds of her name with pleasure or challenge or both, "don't keep going up there. Nothing good can come of it."
Beside her, Gabrielle snorted. Ares turned toward her. "I mean it. Take my word for it, just this once. This isn't a game."
"You can't -" Gabrielle made to reply, but he was already disappearing in another flicker of blue. "Damn you, anyway," she muttered, then to Xena: "Is he gone?"
Xena nodded, grimly. "Let's get going. This I have to see."
Whatever he was up to, she'd stop him. That was what she did.
~*~
"What do you think Ares meant?" Gabrielle broke the silence. They'd been riding quietly for a while, each lost in her thought.
"I don't know." Xena rubbed at her temples, where a headache was beginning to form. "But there's something up there that we need to see. That was so ..." She trailed off.
So much like things used to be, with Ares trying to pull her into his schemes. She'd hoped those days were behind them. He'd always plot, of course; she knew that. And she'd always try to stop whatever of his schemes she could - he was the God of War, after all, and that was what his influence led to: war. She'd stop it where she could. But she'd thought he'd given up on trying to pull her into his schemes. The last time they'd done this dance - with Varia and the Romans - they'd only stumbled into things because Eve had become involved. And she'd believed him that he'd never meant for her to.
But this, now ... "I never know where I am with him," Xena muttered, frustrated.
"Mm." Gabrielle seemed to be contemplating her own reminiscences. "We were going up here anyway, you know."
A sharp glance at her friend. "Yes?"
Gabrielle screwed up her nose in thought. "If he wants you up there, he really didn't have to lure you."
"You don't think he actually meant it?" Besides, even if he did - who'd put any weight on what he thought would lead to no good?
"I think ..." Gabrielle's voice grew stronger, more animated, as she spoke. "I think he knows by now that if he tells you not to go somewhere, you'll go just because of that." A quick, grin. "I think that means it can't be that he was really trying to get you away. But he also didn't have to go out of his way to make you go where you were already going. I think ..." She threw her hands into the air. "I think that I don't know what to think!"
Xena smirked. "Very eloquent. And you call yourself a bard?"
~*~
The village was barely that: no more than five houses. A gaggle of children, goats, and chickens had swarmed them as soon as they'd arrived, leading their horses along. Soon Xena discovered that her fame had preceded her even here; there were excited cries of "Xena!", and more than one child darting looks at her in awe. Gabrielle hid a smile; Xena tried her best not to feel too embarrassed.
An old woman had been sitting on a woven mat next to the entrance to one of the houses. Now she pushed herself to her feet, leaning heavily on a wooden stick. She came out to meet them, slow step by slow step. Her hair was grey and mostly hidden by a scarf knotted under her chin; her skin was wrinkled. But her eyes were sharp as they honed in on Xena, seemingly searching her for something.
"Xena, Warrior Princess," the woman said. "And the Battling Bard, yes?"
Xena held out her hands. Something about the woman demanded respect. "Yes, mother. We're only passing through. I hope you don't mind our disruption of your peace."
Another silent examination of both of them. "I'm Agin." The woman's tone was curt. "And I take it you're here for the helmet."
Xena and Gabrielle looked at each other.
It was Gabrielle who finally spoke for the both of the. "Excuse me, but we don't know anything about a helmet. What helmet?"
Agin's eyes narrowed, disbelieving. "The helmet of Ares."
~*~
They told the story all together, the children speaking half over each other as they recited the obviously familiar tale. Occasionally Agin stepped in to bring order to the riot of voices.
It was a deeply familiar tale, even though it was new to Xena in all its particulars: a precious object; the rivalries of the gods, battles and trickery and curses. The helmet was Hephaestus's work, a forging of his special metal, and Ares and Athena had been the rivalling gods.
"But Ares would not concede victory to his sister," a pigtailed girl continued in the sing-song voice of memory.
Of course. The God of War had been the first to resort to trickery.
"And so he took a fraction of his own spirit and sent it into the helmet, making it useless to Athena."
Suddenly the vague dread Xena had felt from the moment she'd heard the words "helmet of Ares" concentrated into a spike of genuine fear. Her chest tightened, and she had to force herself to breathe evenly. A fraction of Ares's spirit.
She could feel Gabrielle's eyes on her, but she didn't look back.
Xena only listened with half an ear to the rest of the story, of Athena's furious retaliation, the curse she'd crafted, making it equally useless to Ares: if she couldn't have it, neither would he. Siblings, after all. Of how the cursed helmet had been placed inside these hills.
"And the story goes -" A girl, not eight years old.
"And so they say that -" An even younger boy.
"The story goes, only an exceptional warrior can lift it from its plinth," one of the older boys outshouted the smaller children. "Then he must put on the helmet, and if he survives the burn of the spirit of Ares, only then will the curse be broken."
Gabrielle leaned forward, but Xena was quicker to speak. "I've never heard that story before." She sounded sceptical even to herself, but she didn't apologise. She liked no aspect of this tale, and better that she sound disbelieving than even half as horrified as she felt.
Ares couldn't have planned it better. His own spirit - he'd love seeing it burn into her, awakening the deep-buried darkness inside her. And she'd thought he was bad for her just by being himself, just by admiring her former evil as much as he admired her hero's deeds now. This? This was so far beyond "bad".
But she didn't have to take this on. She told herself that firmly, though relief refused to come. The villagers weren't in any real danger from the helmet. Come to think of it, Ares could easily have engineered that ...
"We don't tell it, except amongst ourselves." Agin scowled. "We've no need of warriors swarming our hills, trying to win that helmet."
"Though sometimes warriors come anyway," a teenaged girl - one of Xena's more obvious admirers - injected.
Xena raised her eyebrows, but this time Gabrielle was the one who asked. "And none of them could lift it?"
"Oh, one or two could. But they weren't strong enough after all - the force of it burned them to ash when they put it on. So the curse still stands." Another shrewd look at Xena. "Though you probably can. We'd be glad to be rid of the thing."
Xena suppressed a shiver.
"We're just passing through," Gabrielle said apologetically, almost instinctively shifting closer to Xena. "I don't think we can help with this."
The spirit of War - no. But Ares had been here; this had to be why. There had to be more going on. She had to find out what it was.
Xena forced out the words. "Let's take a look."
~*~
Cool air from the mouth of the cave shivered over Xena's skin as she looked into the darkness. Gabrielle lit a torch, then a second one from the first, and handed one of them over without a word.
"I will show you," Agin said beside them, and Xena nodded. The gaggle of kids was staring at her in something like awe, and she didn't like it one bit. Shifting her shoulders a little as if to dislodge the discomfort, she stepped forward into the cool, damp-smelling dark.
The cave was deep, and there were paths and huge rock-arcs leading in various directions, but Agin, slow but without hesitation, led them on a winding path into the deep.
"We sometimes have to go fetch children who get lost in here," she said with a smile, wrinkles shadowing her mouth in the flicker of their torches. "We know the ways pretty well."
After a while, the air began to smell more damp, and small trickles of water ran down the sides of the rock. Then the narrow path they'd been taking opened up into a wide, domed cave.
"Oh," said Gabrielle, stunned.
The light from their torches just barely reached into its centre, for dark-adapted eyes, glinting off pale, wet-looking spires all around. Stalagmites grew from the ground in circling rows, and stalactites dripped their shapes down from the high limestone ceiling with a small but audible plink, plink. The air tasted of chalk and darkness.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Agin said, sounding proud and perhaps a little smug.
But Xena only had eyes for the space in the middle of the cave - a perfect circle of clear rocky ground with a plinth in the middle, on which sat ...
"Can you feel it?" Xena breathed, her eyes wide, her tongue darting out of her mouth to lick her lips.
The others shook their heads, throwing shadows flickering over the forest of dripstone spires and onto the walls of the cave.
The helmet on the plinth was shaped like a skull, even to the etched teeth on the mouth-guard. It shimmered gold under the fire, empty eyeholes staring at them in silent dare.
It was more than metal. It thrummed against her senses, a siren lure of blood and steel and sweat, of muscles straining and victories won, the exultation of battle.
It was dangerous. It couldn't stay here. She'd have to find a way to destroy it, curse or no curse.
"Leave," Xena said quietly. "Please." Her eyes never left the helmet.
Agin narrowed her eyes, then took firm control of the children and herded them out slowly. Soon, everyone had retreated into the passage they'd come from. All of them, except ...
Xena turned toward Gabrielle. "You, too."
"Not on your life."
Gabrielle's smile was wry, but the determination in her eyes was firm, a steadying lifeline. Xena took a deep breath and, impulsively, reached out to briefly grip her friend's shoulder. Solid beneath her grasp. Here and now. Not of darkness. She could face this. With Gabrielle beside her, she walked through the narrow path among the stalagmites, straight toward the centre and the helmet.
When they stepped into the clear circle in the middle, Gabrielle gasped.
Xena's attention swivelled immediately. "Gabrielle?"
Her friend was staring wide-eyed at the helmet. "Now I know what you meant," she said, sounding a little shaky. "That's what you feel? That's what's in him?"
Of course. Gabrielle was a warrior as well. It stood to reason she would be susceptible to at least part of the spirit of war. "That's what's in me, too," she said, trying to ignore the bitter taste on her tongue, the perverse pleasure part of her felt.
Gabrielle's hand clenched around her arm. "There's got to be another way to get rid of this."
"My thoughts exactly." Ares's voice came from the opposite side of the plinth, and in the semi-darkness the flash of blue light shaping his form into being was almost blinding. "No one can get at it without breaking Athena's curse. It's not doing anything here. Xena - you don't have to do this."
It was exactly what she'd told herself. She hadn't believed it even then; from his mouth, how could she? Even if it was true; perhaps especially then.
"And leave this here? For someone else to take it one day? I'm sure you'd like that." She sneered. "Though I'm sure you like it even better, having me do it."
"This isn't what I wanted!" Ares shouted, then shook himself and rubbed a tired hand across his face. "Okay, maybe at one time I did. But that's over, Xena, I swear." He stepped around to look her directly in the eyes. His own eyes burned with something as deep and bloody and exulting as the helmet on the plinth, but there was no glee on his face, merely tired resignation. "Look. If someone ever takes it I promise I won't let him keep it. Or her - whoever. I promise if anyone breaks the curse I'll take it away. Just don't."
Xena bit her lip. It was tempting, so tempting - to trust him just this once, to leave this to him, to not have to dive into that stream of blood. Her hand came up almost despite her will, gliding along his bare upper arm.
So much of it was in her already. She never wanted it to take her over again, not even for a moment. But a moment was all it had to be. She'd put it on, break the curse, and take it off again. She'd find a way to destroy it for good then, before it could touch anyone else.
"Ares ..." she whispered, and the space between them seemed to fill with a presence all its own. "I can't." A brief hesitation. "I believe you, but I can't. I'm sorry."
She could accept that he hadn't wanted this. But that didn't mean part of him wouldn't enjoy it. Part of her would, and the darkness had its roots and hooks in her far less deep than him.
She'd only have to resist for a moment. But a moment might be too much. In a flash of sanity, she plucked her chakram from her belt and held it out to Gabrielle. "If I get out of control, stop me."
Gabrielle nodded, helpless determination in her eyes and her stance.
Ares's hand gripped her shoulder. "I can stop you."
He could. But would he? That he didn't want her harmed, she had no doubt. That he loved her, he'd more than proven. But could he resist a Xena drenched in the spirit of battle, filled with his own purpose? How could she dare trust that?
"I believe that you want to," was all she could manage, and she felt absurdly guilty when he looked away.
Xena steeled herself, and handed her torch to Gabrielle. Then she stepped forward toward the plinth. "Here goes nothing," she muttered under her breath.
~*~
The metal felt warm in her hands as she lifted the helmet from its resting place. It was thrumming through her fingers and up her arms, vibrating with alien yet familiar power, and when she held it up in front of her, something was looking back at her from the mask's empty eyesockets.
When it slid into place on her head, its force went through her whole body like a jolt, neither pain nor pleasure but pure intensity of a kind she'd never felt before. The mouth guard locked into place almost of its own accord. Something was building behind her eyes, pooling in her belly, radiating from deep within. Xena felt every hair on her body rise.
Her mouth was open behind the mouth guard, her eyes were wide and unfocused, and she was gasping. With sheer will she snapped her jaw shut.
"Xena ..." She whirled to find Gabrielle staring at her, and looked down along her own body. She was glowing. Deep and red, Ares's own glow, over and inside her, encompassing her wholly. She threw her head back in ecstasy, her lips spreading wide, her teeth bared and her eyes falling closed as Ares's essence burst open from within like fierce joy.
Laughter came up from her belly, and she spun around, exulting in her strength as her feet kicked against the plinth, again and again, until it fell over and the stone shattered into pieces. She watched the pieces fall, the sound and the dust and the breaking itself a pleasure. Her eyes arced around the cave, wildly. What else could she break?
She drew her sword, loving the glint of firelight on steel, loving the use of it. Something needed to shatter. Xena sprinted a few steps, raising the sword, slicing it against a stalactite -
- and found herself stalled in mid-move by Ares's hands on her shoulders, holding her in place, and a sai's metallic crash against her sword's blade, hitting in just the right place, knocking it from her hand.
Ares and Gabrielle looked at each other for a moment; then Ares's eyes were on her again. "Xena," he said quietly. Just that; just her name.
She looked at him wild-eyed, then leaned toward him, feeling the warmth of his body, feeling his godhood call to the part of itself within her. Irresistible. "Ares," she breathed against his skin. She rubbed her helmeted face against his neck and pushed closer, studded leather vest against breastplate. Still not close enough.
Then she was flung backwards onto the rocky ground by a boot around her ankle, a firm hand against her shoulder. She gaped up at him for a moment. Everything was swirling. She needed ...
... needed ...
Worry and dismay on Gabrielle's face. Something almost like fear on Ares's.
Xena stared at her own hand, glowing red from deep within, for a long moment. Ares's godhood was all heat and desire.
Stop willing. Stop desiring. Stop hating.
She remembered the words, remembered the woman who'd spoken them. They were like a rush of cool water, clean and clear.
She submerged herself in that water, letting it flow through her. She thought of Lao Ma, of that calm, inner strength she had achieved only twice in her lifetime, that place beyond all want or need.
It still burned around her, within her. It burned deep. But when she struggled to her feet again, she had found a well of something deeper. Xena lifted a hand, slow, unhurried, and unlocked the mouth guard. She was smiling as she lifted the helmet from her head, and she looked at it for a long moment, almost tenderly.
Then the calm left her, and she dropped the helmet as if it had suddenly grown too hot to hold.
Next to her, Gabrielle breathed a sigh of relief and threw her arms around Xena. Xena buried her face in her friend's shoulder, and let out a shivering breath. She'd done it. She had.
~*~
When she finally found the strength to straighten and look for the helmet she'd dropped - it still needed destroying, after all - Ares was holding it in his hand, scowling down at it with an unreadable expression. Red glow was seeping from it into his hand.
He was taking it back. He was taking away the helmet's power. And he'd tried to stop her, Xena remembered.
"Ares ..."
"Yes?" He didn't meet her eyes.
"Does it ..." She hesitated. "Does affect you, taking it back?"
He snorted. "It's a tiny fraction of the force that makes my godhood." A dismissive wave of the hand, and an almost weary shake of the head. "It's a drop in the ocean, nothing more." Then his face came up, and his eyes met Xena's after all. "Well, that was that," he said abruptly, and she could tell he'd be gone in another moment.
"Wait."
Ares tilted his head at her, questioning, perhaps expecting one of those old familiar barbs sharp as a dagger dipped in Hind's Blood.
No. "I'm coming with you."
His eyebrows went up. "You are?"
"We're going to destroy this thing." Xena grimaced. "I need to see it." What she'd felt, with it on ... She needed to smash that, and if all she could get at was its vessel, that was better than nothing.
He covered quickly for his surprise. "Why, Xena, I thought you'd never ask."
Three long strides brought him to her side, and he wrapped an arm around her waist, smirking down at her. She didn't let herself react.
"Wait for me in the village," she told Gabrielle. "This shouldn't take too long."
Gabrielle nodded, uncomfortable, and with a disconcerting blur, everything faded around her as Ares moved them through the aether.
~*~
Xena found herself standing in front of Ares's throne in the Halls of War. His arm was no longer around her; he wasn't next to her at all. Instead, Ares sprawled at ease on the ornate throne, seemingly confident again. He was dangling the helmet from his left hand almost negligently.
The God of War on his throne.
Xena crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. She'd never had much love for the gods, and hadn't had any reverence at all left for them long before she'd met the first. But that didn't mean she could forget what he was. She'd stood up to him from the start, had challenged him at every turn. Fought him outright, several times. And she'd won, often enough. But he was still a god; they weren't the same. They couldn't be. She knew that now better than ever, having felt just a tiny fraction of his godhood.
He could have been a tornado of destruction. It was a miracle that he was merely this instead.
"Well?" she asked impatiently after a moment. "Let's get on with it, Ares. I don't have all day." But she felt a smile lurking under the surface of her skin. She'd felt that force, and she'd pulled herself back.
She'd felt that force, and he hadn't encouraged it.
She'd felt that force, and nothing bad had happened at all.
She'd always been afraid that the deepest part of her was still what it had been in her warlord years, that everything else, all the change she'd worked so hard for, her so-called "redemption," was nothing but a thin veneer of regret over a vast abyss of cheerful slaughter. But she'd been right there in the abyss, and she'd found something even deeper.
Ares sighed, and pushed himself off his seat, pointing toward an arched doorway to the side. "I have one of Hephaistus's hammers. That should do the trick."
They didn't speak. He held the hammer out to her wit a flourish, and she brought it down on the helmet, pounded it with all her strength until it was nothing but an unrecognisable slab of metal, until red-and-blue sparks had stopped fizzling out of it on impact. Her arms and shoulders ached from the bruising force when she finally stopped.
Ares's muscles bunched as he took the hammer from her again and hurled it away from them. Xena watched as it smashed into a display of swords hung on the opposite wall. The swords clattered to the floor in a cloud of dust. When it cleared, there was a large hole in the wall, straight through the tapestry and the stone.
"I get it, you know," Ares said eventually.
She turned to face him. "Get what, Ares?"
He wasn't looking at her. "That it was never just me you didn't trust." A helpless shrug. "I could ... You know it goes against everything I am. But for you, I could do almost anything." Ares rubbed a hand across his face, looking very tired. "Except it doesn't matter what I do, does it? Because it's not about me."
Xena bit her lip. "You always brought out the worst in me, Ares."
He looked up after all, stepping close - close enough she could feel the warmth of his body. "And you brought out the best in me," he said quietly.
At that, something inside her broke open. She reached out, fingers brushing along his cheekbone and into his hair. She leaned forward, gently.
"No." A hand closed firmly around her wrist, and he pushed her away. "We've done this dance before, Xena. Even a god can only take so much." Ares shook his head, as if to dislodge unpleasant thoughts, and his lips curled into a bitter smile. "That's not why you're here, remember?"
The sadness in his eyes seemed to stoke an answering pain in her own chest, a tightness that felt like regret, like guilt. How could it be that now that he wasn't pursuing her any more, she suddenly felt all the more tender about him?
"I was here to destroy that helmet. I've done that." She took his hand between hers.
Ares let her. But: "I am what I am. I can't change that. And you're what you are. We'll always be at odds. I know that. I just wish ..." He shrugged. "Nothing I can have, as usual."
She didn't let him move away. "You haven't tried to change me in a while. And even this - you didn't take advantage. You actually tried to stop me."
"This may sound like a cliché, but I happen to like you the way you are."
"Ares. Pay attention. I wore that helmet, remember?"
His lips pressed together into a thin, pained line. "Yeah."
"You're not hearing me. I wore it - I felt it, and you have no idea what that feels like to a mortal. But it didn't take me over. I didn't lose myself. I pulled back, Ares. I found ... I did nothing I'd have to regret, and I pulled back."
"Xena?" It was impossible to tell whether it was dread or hope in his voice.
"Maybe the God of War doesn't always have to be bad for me."
They smiled at each other for a long moment, helpless and tender.
Then, like the abrupt onset of battle, their bodies were crushed against each other. As if to a secret beat, their mouths met and devoured, lips against lips and tongue and teeth. It tasted of something deep and old, of wild joy.
Xena's head fell back as he mouthed along her neck, and she braced against the strength of his arms as he lifted her up to carry her, straddled against his hips, to an open window-arch a few steps away. She could feel his hardness against her with every movement, and she hissed with the loss when he put her down. A boot hooked around his waist drew him back in to collide with her.
~*~
Xena looked out of the window. The sun was setting, and the trees on the mountainside falling from the fortress's height were cast in an orange hue, a glow almost eerily reminiscent of Ares's force. She smirked, Gabrielle would have been appalled at the comparison.
Ares was standing behind her, an arm - bare of its usual gauntlet - wrapped around her waist. She leaned back into his touch, naked back against naked chest, her shoulders loose, her face turned down - relaxed as she'd never been with him before.
No regrets. The thought was stunning, a sudden epiphany, and she turned around with a bright smile to kiss him again.
~*~
Never mind that it had all turned out well enough: It felt good to ride away from that village, Gabrielle by her side, everything back in place.
She'd not told Gabrielle yet. What had happened between her and Ares - that wasn't something she could bring up amidst strangers. But she'd tell, even if Gabrielle would tease her mercilessly, even if she'd take some time to truly be at ease with it. After all, that was true for herself as well.
For now, though, Xena was simply happy.
Some time later, they were crossing another rocky stream-bed, and for an instant it was there again: She could feel his eyes at the back of her neck, his presence in the prickling of her skin. An instant only, then gone again.
Ares. Not so long ago, she'd have been irritated at his presence, suspicious of his motives. Worried she'd have to stop some plot of his again. Now, she was surprised to find herself smiling.
Xena dug her heels into Argo's sides, spurring her on, and with Gabrielle following close behind, raced through the hilly mountainside, feeling almost impossibly light.
~end~
My own entry was a Xena fic, and I really rather like how it turned out. (But oh dear, do I suck at summaries. Any suggestions for a better one welcome!)
Title: Cursebreaker
Pairing: Xena/Ares
Characters: Xena, Ares, Gabrielle
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "I take it you're here for the helmet."
A/N: Written for
hydrangea as part of not_primetime 2013. Many thanks to wojelah for brainstorming help above and beyond the call of duty, and for fluffyllama for last-minute betaing!
Originally posted here at AO3. Comments welcome in either place!
~*~
The noonday sun weighed warm across Xena's back as they rode along the small stream up into the Pangeon foothills. In summer there would only have been an empty bed of gravel, the stream's spirit "gone to fetch more stones," as Gabrielle had put it in one of her scrolls. Now, there was fresh water flowing aplenty, and the stream's sides had for a brief time exploded into a riot of green.
Neither of them had been here before, and it was good to leave familiar lands behind for a while, to ride through a landscape not buried with memories. Xena let out a whoop of joy and slid her heels up along her mount's side. With a quick tensing of muscles she propelled herself into the air and came to stand on Argo's back. The horse didn't react; she was well trained, and used to Xena's eccentricities by now.
Xena could feel Gabrielle's eyes on her, fond warmth radiating, as she catapulted herself from Argo's back, turned a somersault in the air and came to a crouching stand on the water's edge. She threw Gabrielle a quick grin, then bent forward to scoop up some water. Fresh mountain water tasted like nothing else.
Gabrielle dismounted in a more sedate fashion and came to the stream beside her. Side by side they drank.
It was then that she felt it: a tingle at the base of her spine, the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. Her face tensed; her muscles tightened; but she didn't turn. Her hand went toward her chakram as her eyes met Gabrielle's, and a moment later Gabrielle had her own hands on her sais.
Xena shook her head. "Ares," she muttered under her breath, and in a smooth movement came up from her crouch, the chakram flying in an underhand arc. It split in mid-air, and she watched as both parts converged on Ares's position.
With a crackle of blue light, Ares's form shaped itself out of the air even as he plucked the chakram's halves from where they flew. He looked down at them with a strange expression, then smirked at her and propelled both parts back at her. They united in the air less than a metre from her, and she snatched it out of the air whole, reattaching it to her belt with a scowl.
What could there be happening in this area that might interest the God of War? But he was here; he was clearly up to something again. Of course he was. It's what I do, he'd reminded her, not so long ago.
Even so, it was almost good to see him again, to see the wash of blue light as he stepped out of the aether. She'd been fond of him when he'd been human - he'd still been Ares, after all, and without the worst parts of him, the parts that tied him to the kind of darkness she herself had worked for so many years to leave behind. But she couldn't deny that there'd been something missing, and that part of herself was glad to see him restored to his full glory.
She wasn't proud of feeling that way.
Xena smiled grimly to herself. "Ares. What do you want?"
He scratched fingernails through his beard, then walked up to her. The intensity of his gaze was a magnet; she had to force herself not to be pulled in. After a moment, he looked away, as if he couldn't quite meet her gaze.
"Xena," he said, his lips wrapping around the sounds of her name with pleasure or challenge or both, "don't keep going up there. Nothing good can come of it."
Beside her, Gabrielle snorted. Ares turned toward her. "I mean it. Take my word for it, just this once. This isn't a game."
"You can't -" Gabrielle made to reply, but he was already disappearing in another flicker of blue. "Damn you, anyway," she muttered, then to Xena: "Is he gone?"
Xena nodded, grimly. "Let's get going. This I have to see."
Whatever he was up to, she'd stop him. That was what she did.
~*~
"What do you think Ares meant?" Gabrielle broke the silence. They'd been riding quietly for a while, each lost in her thought.
"I don't know." Xena rubbed at her temples, where a headache was beginning to form. "But there's something up there that we need to see. That was so ..." She trailed off.
So much like things used to be, with Ares trying to pull her into his schemes. She'd hoped those days were behind them. He'd always plot, of course; she knew that. And she'd always try to stop whatever of his schemes she could - he was the God of War, after all, and that was what his influence led to: war. She'd stop it where she could. But she'd thought he'd given up on trying to pull her into his schemes. The last time they'd done this dance - with Varia and the Romans - they'd only stumbled into things because Eve had become involved. And she'd believed him that he'd never meant for her to.
But this, now ... "I never know where I am with him," Xena muttered, frustrated.
"Mm." Gabrielle seemed to be contemplating her own reminiscences. "We were going up here anyway, you know."
A sharp glance at her friend. "Yes?"
Gabrielle screwed up her nose in thought. "If he wants you up there, he really didn't have to lure you."
"You don't think he actually meant it?" Besides, even if he did - who'd put any weight on what he thought would lead to no good?
"I think ..." Gabrielle's voice grew stronger, more animated, as she spoke. "I think he knows by now that if he tells you not to go somewhere, you'll go just because of that." A quick, grin. "I think that means it can't be that he was really trying to get you away. But he also didn't have to go out of his way to make you go where you were already going. I think ..." She threw her hands into the air. "I think that I don't know what to think!"
Xena smirked. "Very eloquent. And you call yourself a bard?"
~*~
The village was barely that: no more than five houses. A gaggle of children, goats, and chickens had swarmed them as soon as they'd arrived, leading their horses along. Soon Xena discovered that her fame had preceded her even here; there were excited cries of "Xena!", and more than one child darting looks at her in awe. Gabrielle hid a smile; Xena tried her best not to feel too embarrassed.
An old woman had been sitting on a woven mat next to the entrance to one of the houses. Now she pushed herself to her feet, leaning heavily on a wooden stick. She came out to meet them, slow step by slow step. Her hair was grey and mostly hidden by a scarf knotted under her chin; her skin was wrinkled. But her eyes were sharp as they honed in on Xena, seemingly searching her for something.
"Xena, Warrior Princess," the woman said. "And the Battling Bard, yes?"
Xena held out her hands. Something about the woman demanded respect. "Yes, mother. We're only passing through. I hope you don't mind our disruption of your peace."
Another silent examination of both of them. "I'm Agin." The woman's tone was curt. "And I take it you're here for the helmet."
Xena and Gabrielle looked at each other.
It was Gabrielle who finally spoke for the both of the. "Excuse me, but we don't know anything about a helmet. What helmet?"
Agin's eyes narrowed, disbelieving. "The helmet of Ares."
~*~
They told the story all together, the children speaking half over each other as they recited the obviously familiar tale. Occasionally Agin stepped in to bring order to the riot of voices.
It was a deeply familiar tale, even though it was new to Xena in all its particulars: a precious object; the rivalries of the gods, battles and trickery and curses. The helmet was Hephaestus's work, a forging of his special metal, and Ares and Athena had been the rivalling gods.
"But Ares would not concede victory to his sister," a pigtailed girl continued in the sing-song voice of memory.
Of course. The God of War had been the first to resort to trickery.
"And so he took a fraction of his own spirit and sent it into the helmet, making it useless to Athena."
Suddenly the vague dread Xena had felt from the moment she'd heard the words "helmet of Ares" concentrated into a spike of genuine fear. Her chest tightened, and she had to force herself to breathe evenly. A fraction of Ares's spirit.
She could feel Gabrielle's eyes on her, but she didn't look back.
Xena only listened with half an ear to the rest of the story, of Athena's furious retaliation, the curse she'd crafted, making it equally useless to Ares: if she couldn't have it, neither would he. Siblings, after all. Of how the cursed helmet had been placed inside these hills.
"And the story goes -" A girl, not eight years old.
"And so they say that -" An even younger boy.
"The story goes, only an exceptional warrior can lift it from its plinth," one of the older boys outshouted the smaller children. "Then he must put on the helmet, and if he survives the burn of the spirit of Ares, only then will the curse be broken."
Gabrielle leaned forward, but Xena was quicker to speak. "I've never heard that story before." She sounded sceptical even to herself, but she didn't apologise. She liked no aspect of this tale, and better that she sound disbelieving than even half as horrified as she felt.
Ares couldn't have planned it better. His own spirit - he'd love seeing it burn into her, awakening the deep-buried darkness inside her. And she'd thought he was bad for her just by being himself, just by admiring her former evil as much as he admired her hero's deeds now. This? This was so far beyond "bad".
But she didn't have to take this on. She told herself that firmly, though relief refused to come. The villagers weren't in any real danger from the helmet. Come to think of it, Ares could easily have engineered that ...
"We don't tell it, except amongst ourselves." Agin scowled. "We've no need of warriors swarming our hills, trying to win that helmet."
"Though sometimes warriors come anyway," a teenaged girl - one of Xena's more obvious admirers - injected.
Xena raised her eyebrows, but this time Gabrielle was the one who asked. "And none of them could lift it?"
"Oh, one or two could. But they weren't strong enough after all - the force of it burned them to ash when they put it on. So the curse still stands." Another shrewd look at Xena. "Though you probably can. We'd be glad to be rid of the thing."
Xena suppressed a shiver.
"We're just passing through," Gabrielle said apologetically, almost instinctively shifting closer to Xena. "I don't think we can help with this."
The spirit of War - no. But Ares had been here; this had to be why. There had to be more going on. She had to find out what it was.
Xena forced out the words. "Let's take a look."
~*~
Cool air from the mouth of the cave shivered over Xena's skin as she looked into the darkness. Gabrielle lit a torch, then a second one from the first, and handed one of them over without a word.
"I will show you," Agin said beside them, and Xena nodded. The gaggle of kids was staring at her in something like awe, and she didn't like it one bit. Shifting her shoulders a little as if to dislodge the discomfort, she stepped forward into the cool, damp-smelling dark.
The cave was deep, and there were paths and huge rock-arcs leading in various directions, but Agin, slow but without hesitation, led them on a winding path into the deep.
"We sometimes have to go fetch children who get lost in here," she said with a smile, wrinkles shadowing her mouth in the flicker of their torches. "We know the ways pretty well."
After a while, the air began to smell more damp, and small trickles of water ran down the sides of the rock. Then the narrow path they'd been taking opened up into a wide, domed cave.
"Oh," said Gabrielle, stunned.
The light from their torches just barely reached into its centre, for dark-adapted eyes, glinting off pale, wet-looking spires all around. Stalagmites grew from the ground in circling rows, and stalactites dripped their shapes down from the high limestone ceiling with a small but audible plink, plink. The air tasted of chalk and darkness.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Agin said, sounding proud and perhaps a little smug.
But Xena only had eyes for the space in the middle of the cave - a perfect circle of clear rocky ground with a plinth in the middle, on which sat ...
"Can you feel it?" Xena breathed, her eyes wide, her tongue darting out of her mouth to lick her lips.
The others shook their heads, throwing shadows flickering over the forest of dripstone spires and onto the walls of the cave.
The helmet on the plinth was shaped like a skull, even to the etched teeth on the mouth-guard. It shimmered gold under the fire, empty eyeholes staring at them in silent dare.
It was more than metal. It thrummed against her senses, a siren lure of blood and steel and sweat, of muscles straining and victories won, the exultation of battle.
It was dangerous. It couldn't stay here. She'd have to find a way to destroy it, curse or no curse.
"Leave," Xena said quietly. "Please." Her eyes never left the helmet.
Agin narrowed her eyes, then took firm control of the children and herded them out slowly. Soon, everyone had retreated into the passage they'd come from. All of them, except ...
Xena turned toward Gabrielle. "You, too."
"Not on your life."
Gabrielle's smile was wry, but the determination in her eyes was firm, a steadying lifeline. Xena took a deep breath and, impulsively, reached out to briefly grip her friend's shoulder. Solid beneath her grasp. Here and now. Not of darkness. She could face this. With Gabrielle beside her, she walked through the narrow path among the stalagmites, straight toward the centre and the helmet.
When they stepped into the clear circle in the middle, Gabrielle gasped.
Xena's attention swivelled immediately. "Gabrielle?"
Her friend was staring wide-eyed at the helmet. "Now I know what you meant," she said, sounding a little shaky. "That's what you feel? That's what's in him?"
Of course. Gabrielle was a warrior as well. It stood to reason she would be susceptible to at least part of the spirit of war. "That's what's in me, too," she said, trying to ignore the bitter taste on her tongue, the perverse pleasure part of her felt.
Gabrielle's hand clenched around her arm. "There's got to be another way to get rid of this."
"My thoughts exactly." Ares's voice came from the opposite side of the plinth, and in the semi-darkness the flash of blue light shaping his form into being was almost blinding. "No one can get at it without breaking Athena's curse. It's not doing anything here. Xena - you don't have to do this."
It was exactly what she'd told herself. She hadn't believed it even then; from his mouth, how could she? Even if it was true; perhaps especially then.
"And leave this here? For someone else to take it one day? I'm sure you'd like that." She sneered. "Though I'm sure you like it even better, having me do it."
"This isn't what I wanted!" Ares shouted, then shook himself and rubbed a tired hand across his face. "Okay, maybe at one time I did. But that's over, Xena, I swear." He stepped around to look her directly in the eyes. His own eyes burned with something as deep and bloody and exulting as the helmet on the plinth, but there was no glee on his face, merely tired resignation. "Look. If someone ever takes it I promise I won't let him keep it. Or her - whoever. I promise if anyone breaks the curse I'll take it away. Just don't."
Xena bit her lip. It was tempting, so tempting - to trust him just this once, to leave this to him, to not have to dive into that stream of blood. Her hand came up almost despite her will, gliding along his bare upper arm.
So much of it was in her already. She never wanted it to take her over again, not even for a moment. But a moment was all it had to be. She'd put it on, break the curse, and take it off again. She'd find a way to destroy it for good then, before it could touch anyone else.
"Ares ..." she whispered, and the space between them seemed to fill with a presence all its own. "I can't." A brief hesitation. "I believe you, but I can't. I'm sorry."
She could accept that he hadn't wanted this. But that didn't mean part of him wouldn't enjoy it. Part of her would, and the darkness had its roots and hooks in her far less deep than him.
She'd only have to resist for a moment. But a moment might be too much. In a flash of sanity, she plucked her chakram from her belt and held it out to Gabrielle. "If I get out of control, stop me."
Gabrielle nodded, helpless determination in her eyes and her stance.
Ares's hand gripped her shoulder. "I can stop you."
He could. But would he? That he didn't want her harmed, she had no doubt. That he loved her, he'd more than proven. But could he resist a Xena drenched in the spirit of battle, filled with his own purpose? How could she dare trust that?
"I believe that you want to," was all she could manage, and she felt absurdly guilty when he looked away.
Xena steeled herself, and handed her torch to Gabrielle. Then she stepped forward toward the plinth. "Here goes nothing," she muttered under her breath.
~*~
The metal felt warm in her hands as she lifted the helmet from its resting place. It was thrumming through her fingers and up her arms, vibrating with alien yet familiar power, and when she held it up in front of her, something was looking back at her from the mask's empty eyesockets.
When it slid into place on her head, its force went through her whole body like a jolt, neither pain nor pleasure but pure intensity of a kind she'd never felt before. The mouth guard locked into place almost of its own accord. Something was building behind her eyes, pooling in her belly, radiating from deep within. Xena felt every hair on her body rise.
Her mouth was open behind the mouth guard, her eyes were wide and unfocused, and she was gasping. With sheer will she snapped her jaw shut.
"Xena ..." She whirled to find Gabrielle staring at her, and looked down along her own body. She was glowing. Deep and red, Ares's own glow, over and inside her, encompassing her wholly. She threw her head back in ecstasy, her lips spreading wide, her teeth bared and her eyes falling closed as Ares's essence burst open from within like fierce joy.
Laughter came up from her belly, and she spun around, exulting in her strength as her feet kicked against the plinth, again and again, until it fell over and the stone shattered into pieces. She watched the pieces fall, the sound and the dust and the breaking itself a pleasure. Her eyes arced around the cave, wildly. What else could she break?
She drew her sword, loving the glint of firelight on steel, loving the use of it. Something needed to shatter. Xena sprinted a few steps, raising the sword, slicing it against a stalactite -
- and found herself stalled in mid-move by Ares's hands on her shoulders, holding her in place, and a sai's metallic crash against her sword's blade, hitting in just the right place, knocking it from her hand.
Ares and Gabrielle looked at each other for a moment; then Ares's eyes were on her again. "Xena," he said quietly. Just that; just her name.
She looked at him wild-eyed, then leaned toward him, feeling the warmth of his body, feeling his godhood call to the part of itself within her. Irresistible. "Ares," she breathed against his skin. She rubbed her helmeted face against his neck and pushed closer, studded leather vest against breastplate. Still not close enough.
Then she was flung backwards onto the rocky ground by a boot around her ankle, a firm hand against her shoulder. She gaped up at him for a moment. Everything was swirling. She needed ...
... needed ...
Worry and dismay on Gabrielle's face. Something almost like fear on Ares's.
Xena stared at her own hand, glowing red from deep within, for a long moment. Ares's godhood was all heat and desire.
Stop willing. Stop desiring. Stop hating.
She remembered the words, remembered the woman who'd spoken them. They were like a rush of cool water, clean and clear.
She submerged herself in that water, letting it flow through her. She thought of Lao Ma, of that calm, inner strength she had achieved only twice in her lifetime, that place beyond all want or need.
It still burned around her, within her. It burned deep. But when she struggled to her feet again, she had found a well of something deeper. Xena lifted a hand, slow, unhurried, and unlocked the mouth guard. She was smiling as she lifted the helmet from her head, and she looked at it for a long moment, almost tenderly.
Then the calm left her, and she dropped the helmet as if it had suddenly grown too hot to hold.
Next to her, Gabrielle breathed a sigh of relief and threw her arms around Xena. Xena buried her face in her friend's shoulder, and let out a shivering breath. She'd done it. She had.
~*~
When she finally found the strength to straighten and look for the helmet she'd dropped - it still needed destroying, after all - Ares was holding it in his hand, scowling down at it with an unreadable expression. Red glow was seeping from it into his hand.
He was taking it back. He was taking away the helmet's power. And he'd tried to stop her, Xena remembered.
"Ares ..."
"Yes?" He didn't meet her eyes.
"Does it ..." She hesitated. "Does affect you, taking it back?"
He snorted. "It's a tiny fraction of the force that makes my godhood." A dismissive wave of the hand, and an almost weary shake of the head. "It's a drop in the ocean, nothing more." Then his face came up, and his eyes met Xena's after all. "Well, that was that," he said abruptly, and she could tell he'd be gone in another moment.
"Wait."
Ares tilted his head at her, questioning, perhaps expecting one of those old familiar barbs sharp as a dagger dipped in Hind's Blood.
No. "I'm coming with you."
His eyebrows went up. "You are?"
"We're going to destroy this thing." Xena grimaced. "I need to see it." What she'd felt, with it on ... She needed to smash that, and if all she could get at was its vessel, that was better than nothing.
He covered quickly for his surprise. "Why, Xena, I thought you'd never ask."
Three long strides brought him to her side, and he wrapped an arm around her waist, smirking down at her. She didn't let herself react.
"Wait for me in the village," she told Gabrielle. "This shouldn't take too long."
Gabrielle nodded, uncomfortable, and with a disconcerting blur, everything faded around her as Ares moved them through the aether.
~*~
Xena found herself standing in front of Ares's throne in the Halls of War. His arm was no longer around her; he wasn't next to her at all. Instead, Ares sprawled at ease on the ornate throne, seemingly confident again. He was dangling the helmet from his left hand almost negligently.
The God of War on his throne.
Xena crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. She'd never had much love for the gods, and hadn't had any reverence at all left for them long before she'd met the first. But that didn't mean she could forget what he was. She'd stood up to him from the start, had challenged him at every turn. Fought him outright, several times. And she'd won, often enough. But he was still a god; they weren't the same. They couldn't be. She knew that now better than ever, having felt just a tiny fraction of his godhood.
He could have been a tornado of destruction. It was a miracle that he was merely this instead.
"Well?" she asked impatiently after a moment. "Let's get on with it, Ares. I don't have all day." But she felt a smile lurking under the surface of her skin. She'd felt that force, and she'd pulled herself back.
She'd felt that force, and he hadn't encouraged it.
She'd felt that force, and nothing bad had happened at all.
She'd always been afraid that the deepest part of her was still what it had been in her warlord years, that everything else, all the change she'd worked so hard for, her so-called "redemption," was nothing but a thin veneer of regret over a vast abyss of cheerful slaughter. But she'd been right there in the abyss, and she'd found something even deeper.
Ares sighed, and pushed himself off his seat, pointing toward an arched doorway to the side. "I have one of Hephaistus's hammers. That should do the trick."
They didn't speak. He held the hammer out to her wit a flourish, and she brought it down on the helmet, pounded it with all her strength until it was nothing but an unrecognisable slab of metal, until red-and-blue sparks had stopped fizzling out of it on impact. Her arms and shoulders ached from the bruising force when she finally stopped.
Ares's muscles bunched as he took the hammer from her again and hurled it away from them. Xena watched as it smashed into a display of swords hung on the opposite wall. The swords clattered to the floor in a cloud of dust. When it cleared, there was a large hole in the wall, straight through the tapestry and the stone.
"I get it, you know," Ares said eventually.
She turned to face him. "Get what, Ares?"
He wasn't looking at her. "That it was never just me you didn't trust." A helpless shrug. "I could ... You know it goes against everything I am. But for you, I could do almost anything." Ares rubbed a hand across his face, looking very tired. "Except it doesn't matter what I do, does it? Because it's not about me."
Xena bit her lip. "You always brought out the worst in me, Ares."
He looked up after all, stepping close - close enough she could feel the warmth of his body. "And you brought out the best in me," he said quietly.
At that, something inside her broke open. She reached out, fingers brushing along his cheekbone and into his hair. She leaned forward, gently.
"No." A hand closed firmly around her wrist, and he pushed her away. "We've done this dance before, Xena. Even a god can only take so much." Ares shook his head, as if to dislodge unpleasant thoughts, and his lips curled into a bitter smile. "That's not why you're here, remember?"
The sadness in his eyes seemed to stoke an answering pain in her own chest, a tightness that felt like regret, like guilt. How could it be that now that he wasn't pursuing her any more, she suddenly felt all the more tender about him?
"I was here to destroy that helmet. I've done that." She took his hand between hers.
Ares let her. But: "I am what I am. I can't change that. And you're what you are. We'll always be at odds. I know that. I just wish ..." He shrugged. "Nothing I can have, as usual."
She didn't let him move away. "You haven't tried to change me in a while. And even this - you didn't take advantage. You actually tried to stop me."
"This may sound like a cliché, but I happen to like you the way you are."
"Ares. Pay attention. I wore that helmet, remember?"
His lips pressed together into a thin, pained line. "Yeah."
"You're not hearing me. I wore it - I felt it, and you have no idea what that feels like to a mortal. But it didn't take me over. I didn't lose myself. I pulled back, Ares. I found ... I did nothing I'd have to regret, and I pulled back."
"Xena?" It was impossible to tell whether it was dread or hope in his voice.
"Maybe the God of War doesn't always have to be bad for me."
They smiled at each other for a long moment, helpless and tender.
Then, like the abrupt onset of battle, their bodies were crushed against each other. As if to a secret beat, their mouths met and devoured, lips against lips and tongue and teeth. It tasted of something deep and old, of wild joy.
Xena's head fell back as he mouthed along her neck, and she braced against the strength of his arms as he lifted her up to carry her, straddled against his hips, to an open window-arch a few steps away. She could feel his hardness against her with every movement, and she hissed with the loss when he put her down. A boot hooked around his waist drew him back in to collide with her.
~*~
Xena looked out of the window. The sun was setting, and the trees on the mountainside falling from the fortress's height were cast in an orange hue, a glow almost eerily reminiscent of Ares's force. She smirked, Gabrielle would have been appalled at the comparison.
Ares was standing behind her, an arm - bare of its usual gauntlet - wrapped around her waist. She leaned back into his touch, naked back against naked chest, her shoulders loose, her face turned down - relaxed as she'd never been with him before.
No regrets. The thought was stunning, a sudden epiphany, and she turned around with a bright smile to kiss him again.
~*~
Never mind that it had all turned out well enough: It felt good to ride away from that village, Gabrielle by her side, everything back in place.
She'd not told Gabrielle yet. What had happened between her and Ares - that wasn't something she could bring up amidst strangers. But she'd tell, even if Gabrielle would tease her mercilessly, even if she'd take some time to truly be at ease with it. After all, that was true for herself as well.
For now, though, Xena was simply happy.
Some time later, they were crossing another rocky stream-bed, and for an instant it was there again: She could feel his eyes at the back of her neck, his presence in the prickling of her skin. An instant only, then gone again.
Ares. Not so long ago, she'd have been irritated at his presence, suspicious of his motives. Worried she'd have to stop some plot of his again. Now, she was surprised to find herself smiling.
Xena dug her heels into Argo's sides, spurring her on, and with Gabrielle following close behind, raced through the hilly mountainside, feeling almost impossibly light.
~end~