Disclaimers : For full disclaimers see Part 1, but this is a non-explicit altfic. Enjoy!
"Oops...Sorry." - Gabrielle responded, blushing and edging away.
- What should have been said in Tsunami*****
Hercules awoke abruptly, feeling a crawling sensation running down his spine. "Ares," he said grumpily, sitting up slowly, "can't you come back at a decent hour? I'm not in the mood right now." He looked around the darkness, being careful to look away from the embers of the fire in an effort to preserve his night vision.
"Sorry, Hercules, it's only me," Gabrielle said, crouching down next to the demigod.
"Gabrielle? What are you doing here? Where's Xena? And..." he broke off, then reached for some firewood, abruptly wanting to increase the light to see better.
"Never mind all that," she replied, waving a hand and causing a glowing green ball to appear in midair. "Neat!" she exclaimed, "I didn't know I could do that." She smiled happily up at the glowing sphere, then remembered what she wanted. Gathering herself, she said, "Look, I need some help."
Staring first at the glowing orb, then at Gabrielle, he utterly failed to think of anything to say. Finally, he said only, "Um, your eyes are glowing."
"Oh, sorry," she replied, grimacing in embarrassment and covering the offending orbs with one hand. After a moment, she removed the hand to reveal her eyes had returned to normal. "I'm kind of new to all this." She grimaced, then muttered, "They should give you a manual or something."
"Look, it's late, I'm tired, and I'm very confused. What's happened to you?" the demigod asked.
"Well, I kind of had a little trouble, and now I need a big favor."
"And um, when exactly did you get changed into a god?" he asked, his irritation from tiredness leaking through slightly.
Shrugging, she replied, "About a half-candlemark ago." She looked around at the darkness, then said, "I thought...but when did it get dark? I couldn't have been at that bar for more then..."
Finally, unable to deal with the lack of information and the confusing details she mentioned only in passing, he interrupted. "Enough. Just start at the beginning, alright? Tell me what happened."
Nodding, Gabrielle sat down next to him, "Well, this morning we, Xena and me, I mean," she paused. When Hercules motioned to her to continue, she did. "we got word that a warlord was attacking a village. Argo had a sore hoof, and we had been travelling all night, so she was too tired to carry both of us, so Xena left to help the village, and she sent me on ahead to wait for her at a crossroads."
Hercules nodded; he'd done similar things from time to time with Iolaus. "And then what?"
"Well she was late, and I was really starting to worry, and then this guy shows up, only it wasn't a guy, it was Apollo."
Hercules raised one eyebrow, but said nothing, so after a moment she continued. "Anyway, he wouldn't leave me alone, and starts using these really tired pickup lines; finally, I tell him my friend is coming soon, but then he just gets angry and zaps me to some bar on Mount Olympus, only I didn't know it was Olympus at the time. It's a little strange, but it's a nice place."
"I know. I've been there," he replied drily.
Gabrielle smiled at that. "So we're on Mount Olympus, and one of his friends? cronies? servants?"
"Whatever."
"Right, he gives me this little orange sphere."
"Ambrosia."
"Well I didn't know it was ambrosia - every other time I've seen it, it was a different color and sort of wriggly." Seeing Hercules' raised eyebrow, she looked briefly indignant, "Hey, I've seen it a couple times before, alright? Is it my fault he makes his look different from every other piece of ambrosia in existence?"
He soothed her with a calming gesture. "I'm sure. So then you changed into a god?"
"Not yet," she denied. "Anyway, Apollo was in a really bad mood about something - I don't know what - and sent me to get a drink. The bartender offered nectar," Hercules winced, but relaxed after she continued, "but I had water instead. Anyway, I was hungry; I had been waiting to eat until Xena returned, but he zapped me to Olympus before I could grab my bag, so I asked if I could get something to eat, but all he offered me was a golden apple."
"You ate a golden apple of the Hesperides?" Hercules looked surprised.
"Of course, not! I am a bard you know," she looked briefly indignant. "I know what they do."
"I should hope so..." he paused, then continued. "So you wouldn't eat the food, and Apollo was ignoring you..." he raised an eyebrow questioningly.
"And there was this bowl of those spheres sitting there like nuts, so I..."
"So you ate a bunch of it," he sighed.
"The whole bowl," she confirmed. "I mean, I was hungry, and I'd already had one, so I thought it was safe. And that's when I became a god," she concluded triumphantly.
Hercules sighed and leaned back. He could already feel a headache coming on. "So what did Apollo do?"
"He hit on me again."
"He would," the demigod sighed.
"So anyway, I slapped him through a pillar...What?" she asked.
"Nothing," he replied quickly, then urged her, "go on."
"So I slapped him through a pillar, summoned my staff somehow, then we fought, and after I beat him..."
"You beat Apollo?" he asked incredulously.
"Yes," she admitted, a little embarrassed. "He's strong, but he doesn't use his strength very well." She thought for a moment, trying to gather her thoughts. After a moment, she tried to explain what she had meant. "Do you remember that time you gave up your strength? How you had so much trouble fighting - even against those wimpy men at arms? It was sort of like that. He's so strong he doesn't need much skill, so when I fought him, well I mean, I practice with Xena, so he seemed almost...easy by comparison. But...he teleported away before I could make him bring me back and fix this whole mess."
"You...beat Apollo," he murmured.
"Yes," she confirmed again, a little exasperated by his lack of clarity. "Now what are we going to do about this?"
"About what?"
"Being a god!" she looked at him funny, then asked, "Haven't you been listening to me? I'm a god. Now, how do I fix that?"
Shaking his head, Hercules slowly let everything sink in. "Have you talked to Zeus yet?"
Gabrielle looked a bit aback at that. She hadn't considered going all the way to the king of the gods...not first thing, anyway. "No."
"He can take away godhood...I know that for a fact, and probably some of the other gods can as well."
"Oh Hades," she grimaced, "sorry, I mean, what do I do, go up to the king of the gods and say, 'oops, help?'"
"I'll try to convince him to see you," he said easily, resting one hand on her shoulder in a gesture of support. "Have you told Xena yet?"
"No," she looked away, unable to meet his eyes. "I've been... trying not to think too much..." she began, her hesitation clear in her voice. "I mean, every time I start to think, I tend to realize things I don't want to know - like what the sun really is - but... I haven't been able to think of a way to tell her. And the way she and the gods get along...I'd rather not face her until I'm back to being a mortal. Besides, after Brit...I mean Hope...Solon...if I show up with my eyes glowing, she'd...I mean...oh, Hades. I don't know what I mean," she turned away in frustration, eyes glimmering in the dim firelight.
"I'll find her and let her know what's happened." He tried to reassure her by adding, "With any luck, you should be back to normal soon. Now, where is she?" Hercules asked, trying to be encouraging even while rubbing the last of the sleep out of his eyes.
"Great!" she enthused, cheering up instantly as the big demigod's confidence was clearly projected. She smiled, then told him how to find Xena. "Can I give you a lift?"
"Actually, no. It's a... half-god thing. At least she's relatively close..." he murmured to himself. After a moment, he added, "Gabrielle? Your eyes are glowing again."
"Thanks. I'll get the hang of this yet." The glow faded. "Can you talk to Zeus soon? I feel very weird. I want to get this over with, and get back to being mortal as soon as I can; it's all well and good to be a god I suppose, but... it's just not me."
"Sure, Gabrielle."
"Thanks again!" she faded from sight in a flash of green light.
"Gabrielle!" he called out, then reminded, "the light?"
A disembodied nervous giggle flitted across the campsite. "Sorry, I forgot," Gabrielle's voice said, then faded, along with the glowing orb.
"Thanks," he said drily, before looking up at the heavens and calling out, "Zeus!" startling Iolaus awake.
Gabrielle reappeared near the crossroads where she had vanished, finding her bags missing, and Argo's hoofprints leading away. With a mental shrug, she vanished again, reappearing near Xena's campsite. Xena was asleep, but was having a nightmare, thrashing about in her sleep and muttering angrily while clenching her fists so tightly her knuckles gleamed whitely in the firelight. "Oh, Xena," she murmured, sinking down onto a nearby boulder and watching her uneasy sleep.
"Gabrielle," Xena moaned, thrashing harder and causing Argo to nicker in disquiet.
"Everything will be alright soon, Xena," she murmured, setting aside her staff and reaching down to gently soothe her troubled sleep. Humming a lullaby, she tried to banish the nightmare. Before long, Xena had sunk into a deeper slumber and was resting peacefully, soothed more by Gabrielle's simple presence than by any sort of divine power she had used.
Rising, the new goddess walked over and petted Argo on the nose. "Take care of her, girl," she whispered, "it'll just be you and her again, for a little while. But don't worry; before long I'll be back, and things will be back to normal again."
She would have said more, but an indefinable summons tugged at her consciousness. "I guess that's my cue." Sighing, she bent over to brush an errant lock of hair off Xena's forehead, kissed her gently on the same spot, then vanished in a flash of green light.
Xena awoke with a start. "Gabrielle!" she cried out, convinced beyond reason that she was back. When she looked around and discovered she was still alone, she sank down to the ground again, devastated. She touched a spot on her forehead that seemed to tingle, but found nothing there. Argo nickered quietly, and when Xena rose to comfort her, she spotted the bard's staff lying on the ground as though it had been simply forgotten while her companion made a quick trip to the woods.
"Ares," she muttered angrily, thinking she was being mocked by the war god. She picked up the staff and gripped it so tightly that the seasoned wood creaked. "You'll pay for this. If it's the last thing I ever do, you'll pay."
*****
Gabrielle followed the summons and appeared on a balcony overlooking a frightful abyss and surrounded by images from the world below being displayed on devices her newly divine mind told her were called video display monitors - among other things. She tried to keep the flood of new knowledge away by concentrating on the only other person there.
A bearded man in an elaborately embroidered purple robe, fairly glowing with an aura of majesty and power stood next to her gazing into the display screens. He waited until she had adjusted to her new surroundings before speaking. "Welcome, Gabrielle," Zeus said, finally turning to face her. "Welcome to Olympus."
"Thank you for seeing me, sir, um, your majesty, um..." she trailed off in confusion, unsure how to continue. She'd encountered gods before, but it was usually when they were in trouble and needed help - or were mortal themselves. This was a new experience for her - being a petitioner before the king of the gods on his home territory, especially after the problems with Apollo and her new...state. Truthfully, she was unsure which was stronger : her nervousness or her fears.
"Zeus is fine, though I appreciate the respect you showed me... seeking an audience, rather than simply appearing and demanding my assistance. I like that; the simple courtesies are so rarely seen these days, particularly amongst the gods," he smiled briefly, and Gabrielle began to hope.
"Thank you. Did Hercules tell you...I mean..."
"I already knew about your...elevation." He gestured to the surrounding monitors, and said simply, "I do try to keep tabs on my children and mortals of interest, and watching from this vantage is much easier than running invisibly around the world - even if it is a little untraditional."
"Then you will help me? Return me to normal, I mean?" hope glowed in her every word.
Zeus was silent as he seemed to weigh her request. After a time, he said, "Let's have a look at you, shall we?" He walked around her, eyeing her carefully and scrutinizing her with all his divine senses, seeing her outer form with only the least of them.
"Apollo always did have an eye for the ladies," he murmured appreciatively.
"I hope you don't take this the wrong way," she said softly, "and I'm sorry if it offends you, but I'm not interested, thanks."
"I know," he retorted. Behind him, a four by four bank of monitors lit up to reveal a scene of Xena and Gabrielle bathing together in a hot tub, their soapy hands running along each others bodies. Although there was nothing explicitly sexual about it, the sheer sensuality of the mutual caresses had a heat all their own. "I told you I watched," he explained simply.
Blushing at such a revealing depiction of one of their rare moments of intimacy (and the fact that Zeus had been spying on them), Gabrielle fell silent while Zeus continued his inspection.
"Magnificent," he said at last. "I am very pleased."
"So you'll take away my godhood?"
He didn't hesitate an instant. "No," he said flatly.
She almost cried. "But...why not? It was an accident, I swear! I'm not worthy of godhood...I don't want it..."
"That," he said, holding up one finger and returning to her front, "is where you are wrong. Unlike most of us, you ARE worthy of it, and your desire to remove your new godhood is perhaps the best indicator of your true worth."
"I don't understand," she finally said, confused by his reply.
"You are a wonderful person, Gabrielle. Despite your years of travels, all the fights, the conflicts with men and gods, and the... actions of the one great evil, you remain largely pure and unsullied. You are human, true, but do not overlook your essential goodness with excessive modesty or self-loathing."
Her blush of embarrassment and still unconvinced look made him reconsider his phrasing of his explanation. The king of the gods thought for a moment, then asked, "Many people over the years have irritated you or made you angry. You have faced danger and even death many times in the course of your journeys with Xena...now that you are a god, are you going to seek revenge?"
On the monitors while he spoke, many different images were displayed: Kleopatra flirting with Xena, many different warlords holding her at knifepoint, Joxer telling her memory-blanked body that she was his sidekick and that she liked to dance naked...more warlords holding her at knifepoint, and then some of the villainous and lecherous thugs who had accosted her in taverns - and finally ending with Ulysses' face smiling in deceitful friendship (and perhaps more) at Xena; a face that even now caused her to frown in distaste.
"Of course, not!" she denied, horrified by the seductively appealing thought. "I would never do that."
"During the course of your travels, you've had the opportunity to eat ambrosia before - several times, in fact - once even while dangling over certain death in a river of lava. Yet you didn't eat it...you either destroyed it rather than risk it falling into the wrong hands, or passed it over to others - both to restore Xena's body to life, and to Callisto - who you continue to feel sympathy for despite her murder of your husband and her involvement with Hope and the One Great Evil."
Her eyes widened momentarily at his intimate knowledge of her life, but she remained mute. He smiled briefly, then resumed his questioning.
"How would you feel about scouring the world to find the most beautiful men," he paused, looked at her for a moment, then added, "or women, and making them your personal slaves, their lives yours to command, and their very existence only at your sufferance?"
"Never!"
"And these reasons," he announced triumphantly, "are why you will remain a god. You care about the world, and the mortals that inhabit it. That is something we so often sadly lack. I don't expect that will remain...wholly unaltered once you are given a position, but it will remain in some form. You will serve as a fine example for the others, no matter whose ranks you join, and could shift the course of Olympus' destiny." His eyes (figuratively, this time) glowed with the power of his vision.
Satisfied with his decision, he concluded, "If you think about it, you will eventually come to understand my reasoning. You will make a fine addition to the pantheon, and will hopefully inject a healthy dose of what we - all of us - have become sadly deficient in. Besides - it'll be good to have some new blood around here," he smiled slightly, then concluded. "I have spoken," he intoned gravely, and the finality of that pronouncement was wrenching.
She was forced to resort to her last argument. "But...but didn't you once tell Hercules that if he was supposed to be a god, he would have been born a god? I don't want to fight the Fates, so..." she smiled somewhat hopefully.
Zeus was as interested in hearing his own words used as a defense as any adult is upon hearing their own words echoed back by a querulous youth. Which is to say, not at all.
Shaking his head, he turned down her final sally as he lifted one accusatory finger. "That situation was entirely different...and only subject to my whim. Since you know my son so well, I'm sure you'll remember that I eventually offered him full godhood despite my initial misgivings? The greater good was the final arbiter...and your divinity serves that admirably."
Slowly, Gabrielle nodded her head, understanding his reasoning, even if she didn't like it.
"My decision is final." He smiled briefly, his beard crinkling as his lips twitched. "Cheer up. It's not like this is a punishment." Zeus vanished in a flare of white light, leaving her crumpled on the balcony, weeping bitter tears of frustration and grief. How could she ever face Xena again?
After a time, when her tears had dried, she recovered herself enough to watch the monitors, trying to decide on a course of action. Zeus would not help her, but Hercules had said perhaps some of the other gods could do the same...A monitor suddenly flickered and changed scenes according to her unconscious will; now it displayed Xena, huddled miserably over her forgotten staff.
Forcing her turbulent emotions aside, she quietly strengthened her resolve; she would be restored to normal, and she and Xena would be together again. And if the gods wouldn't help her, she'd find a way to do it on her own. She turned away from Xena's desolate image, and quietly walked away from the abyss. Now the first step was to try and find a god who would help her...
Which of the gods they had encountered over their years of travelling would be inclined to help her, she wondered?
She could throw Bacchus out immediately. After the two had killed his demigod form, he had lost most of his freedom to influence the world. Although brought back to life and granted full godhood by his father, he was now bound by the same strictures as the other gods - but was too closely watched to overstep his bounds...unlike the others. So even though he was now more powerful, he was considerably less potent. Briefly she wondered how she knew all this, but dismissed it as another irrelevant quirk of godhood. Besides, even if the wine god did cure her, he would likely simply turn her back into a bacchae as punishment for her treachery - siding with Xena against the god.
Poseidon was another immediate rejection. Between the adventures with Cecrops and Ulysses (though she fully sympathized with him on that feud), and his past history with Xena, there was no way he'd help her, even if it was by returning her to mortality.
Cupid? He had potential...she and Xena - mostly Xena - had helped fix the problems Bliss had caused with his bow, and although their meeting had been brief, he had seemed reasonably fond of her. With a grim smile, she faded in a flash of green light and vanished, leaving the monitor room to itself.
Unnoticed by anyone, a monitor above the balcony changed views, showing her reappearing in an antechamber in Cupid and Psyche's home.
End of Part 2