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This page was last updated: August 31, 1998
(c)August 1998
URL: willow7.htmlThe following is a bit of alternative fiction based on certain characters from the Xenaverse It is not meant to infringe on anyone else's rights. If you don't agree or disapprove, please go read something else.
This story is part of an Altaverse based on Bite Me and the Fonder Heart. It can be found, along with other such stories, at The Realms of the Xenaverse, under Blood and Roses. Xena is Ares' Daughter and Gabrielle is Bacchus' Daughter
Characters from Buffy: Vampire Slayer have also been borrowed for the purposes of this story. All of this is written with the utmost affection and the no desire for renumeration (except for possible emails). The same above disclaimer is in effect. There are certain changes that have been made to accomadate this particular Xenaverse. Buffy's Vampires are really part of the Kin, renamed for purposes of this story
Xex Alert: Yes, there definitely will be, between two consenting immortal women even. Maybe even more
Violence Alert: Yes, probably, given that this is a story involving slayage and Xena.
In the hours that she had spent with the immortals, her slayer instincts had finally calmed down... or maybe they had just exhausted themselves. Buffy could still feel each one of the women distinctly, but they weren't setting off any alarms now... Her feeling for Gabrielle was a weirdly warm pulsing in her chest now. That startled her, because usually demonspawn turned her cold. While the warrior's buzz had slipped down her body... further south than she wanted to contemplate. What was worse, it felt oddly like the sensation she got whenever Angel was near... Used to get, she corrected herself... Now seeing him just makes me want to puke... She didn't know why her instincts about the warrior and not the bard echoed those she had for Angel, after all Gabrielle was the closest to what her former lover was. Might have something to do with tall, dark brooding thing. And I thought he had it down pat. Course she's had a couple thousand years to work on it, huh?
"B-u-f-f-y..." Willow was calling in that politely exasperated tone she got whenever she realized her slayer friend wasn't paying attention.
"What?" Buffy rolled her eyes. "We were talking about world domination. Been there, done that," she sighed. She glanced around the room at her team. Buffy noted with astonishment that Giles' hair actually seemed rumpled, as if he had been running his hands through it. Maybe the immortals were setting off some bizarre "Watcher-sense" that she hadn't known about. Willow, on the other hand-- who also usually had a pretty good feel for things like this-- seemed pretty calm. Of course, Gabrielle was her aunt. Boy, that's weird... Makes sense... But weird... Out of all the people in the room, Willow was the one she realized she could count on through anything. Not that Giles wasn't there for her, but he just didn't seem to get how hard it could be being a slayer, when really all you wanted to do was go shopping with your friends. Hunting every night for ghouls took a lot out of a girl, and Willow was always there for her. She smiled at her red-headed friend, who smiled hopefully back. Buffy could almost read Willow's thoughts in that smile, "Please don't be angry..." her whole expression seemed to say. Buffy sighed softly. She never really could be mad at Willow. "Okay... So what makes this immortal--" To appease her friend, she deliberately chose the least derogatory description of the bard she knew. "So special?"
"Well..." Giles paced agitatedly... or at least as agitatedly as the teens had ever seen him. "According to my textual sources... The Ancient Bard.... The Sunwalker..." He glanced worriedly over at the bard, who smiled reassuringly back at him.
"Why don't you just call me Gabrielle?" she suggested. "Most people do."
"Ah, yes. Very well." He nodded. "Gabrielle... is..." He looked at her again. "Are you sure you don't want to tell the story?"
"You're doing fine," she encouraged him. Really, whenever people talked about her role in the Twilight World, she felt like they were talking about someone else. It had taken her hundreds of years, but she finally understood why during their mortal life together Xena had always hated hearing the bard's stories of the Warrior Princess. No matter how accurate the details.... the stories would never be her.
"Well, as simply as I can put it..."
"Simple is good," Xander chimed.
"Gabrielle is the linchpin for the entire existence of the world. She is the balance between light and dark. One of the sources cites an ancient message, 'As she goes, so goes the world.'"
Gabrielle shuddered at the memory of her daughter's eerie words. Hope hadn't even known about her mother's immortal heritage... and it was probably a good thing considering that she and Dahok would have probably tried to enlist Bacchus' help. Just like they did Ares. And that might have changed the whole ballgame. The call of the Blood was different for Xena that for Gabrielle... unlike her lover, the bard has physically needed blood to exist early on in her immortal existence. They could have starved her... and then the call of her sire-- already hard to ignore... She shuddered again, and then felt a golden warmth surround her. Xena's long arms wrapped around her lover's slender form from behind, providing strength, compassion and anything else in the dark warrior's power to offer. Reassured by the silent comfort, Gabrielle linked her hands with Xena's and smiled sadly. "Actually, your sources are wrong about the quote," she said.
A spark of interest lit in Giles' eyes. He had talked to ancients before.... but usually he was trussed up and about to be sacrificed in another attempt to destroy the slayer. It was so... odd... to have one smiling at him. Especially such a beautiful one. Not that other immortals weren't beautiful... indeed they had a seductiveness that was part of their evil strength... but this one... this Gabrielle... seemed almost lit from within. There was a quiet courage about her, a centered assuredness that soothed his agitation.
Since Jenny's death... he felt like... well, he didn't have words to describe how he felt. Everything was a sixes and sevens... Buffy was probably the most reluctant and unlikely slayer in history... plus she was in love with a vampire who was now determined to kill her... With Angelus' help, the demonspawn had come closer than they ever had before to destroying the world. Only Xander's quick thinking had come up with a suggestion that had actually worked. The gods knew his research had proven ineffectual. Of course, the masters had never been confronted with such... unconventional... circumstances, but Giles had been forced to realize that he was a very conventional man. He was beginning to wonder if he was even cut out to be Buffy's Watcher. Especially now. "Oh? It's not accurate?"
"The quote is accurate... but the attribution is wrong. They were talking about Xena, and in a totally different context. The..." She stumbled over her words. Even after two milennia, it was hard. "The... person... who said that had no idea that Xena and I were immortals. At that time, Xena didn't even know herself.
"Bet it was a red letter day when you found out, huh?" Xander asked with a grin. If all immortals were like these two, he could really dig it-- babolicious and nice. He was really tired of all these hot chicks trying to kill him.
The blue eyes staring coldly back at him wiped all traces of mirth from his face. "It was one of the worst days of my life," she answered softly. A dark silence hovered over the room.
"Can we nudge this discussion back into the world of revelance?" Buffy asked curtly. "Why is Gabrielle the balance between light and dark?"
Willow knew the answer to that one. Miss Calendar had first clued her into the Sunwalker and directed her to several neo-cyber-pagan kind of web sites that talked about her role in the Twilight World. "Because she claimed her soul and that of her lover away from the darkness that their Blood promised them. She defied her father...." She glanced with wide-eyed astonishment at her aunt and the dark woman holding her. "Because of a love stronger than the call of the Blood. She walks in the light in spite of the Blood... not because of it. Their love changed the balance of the world."
"How?" Buffy asked, as enthralled with the story as the others in spite of herself. This story was like reading a Harlequin romance on acid... blood, evil, darkness and in the middle of it all, love triumphing. Crazy.
"Like Giles said, she's the link between good and evil. She's known evil... she gave birth to evil... she betrayed her love because of it..." Her eyes flickered involuntarily to her aunt, and the quiet pain she saw there made her want to cry. "I'm sorry," she said. She had been so caught up in the story, she had forgotten that she was talking in the presence of the women to whom this had happened. This is real... she realized suddenly. This happened to them... and they're my family... Xena and Gabrielle... Suddenly, Willow felt stronger than she had ever imagined, and doubly sorry for causing these remarkable women more pain.
Gabrielle released herself from her lover's embrace and crossed the room to enfold Willow in a soft embrace, oblivious to the others watching. "It's okay," she whispered, her voice a little raw. "That happened a long time ago."
"It still hurts you," Willlow protested.
"Yes it does," Gabrielle replied evenly. "But it's the past... Xena and I forgave each other..." It was true-- they had. The claim the warrior and the bard had on each other's souls had proven too strong to separate them, even when they both desperately wished for it. For so many years they had travled in a sort a desolate bondage to each other... Illusia had healed their physical wounds, had released the truth and stopped the festering of the wounds on their hearts. Healing the broken trust, however, had been far more daunting. Perhaps if everything had happened eariler, before Gabrielle had revealed her secret to Xena and been accepted into the warrior's heart, it would have separated them. And, she realized now with thousands of years of hindsight, evil would have ultimately triumphed. She would have commited her body to the fire, and Xena would have returned to the darkness.
"So... she betrayed her lover to evil... Don't leave us hanging here." Xander pressed eagerly. "What happened next?"
"She didn't give in to it. She and Xena overcame it with their love for each other. And because of that love..." Wilow beamed at her aunt who was now smiling openly back at her. "They will always defeat the demonspawn's evil. They don't stand a chance against her."
"Waitaminute!" Xander objected. "She and Xena? I thought your aunt just met her last year. Isn't she supposed to be a hooker?"
Blue eyes narrowed once again, and Xena wondered if anybody would object to her stuffing the lanky youth in the small trash bin sitting next to Giles' desk. There was, however, something annoyingly appealing about him that reminded her of.... Ewwww, she realized. Joxer. Only Xander didn't seem quite as dense. Of course, rocks weren't as dense as the long dead warrior-wannabe. "It's a long story," she answered. "And one you really don't need to know. Got it?"
Xander gulped. "Got it."
"Good," she purred.
Cordelia now spoke for the first time. "Wait, I don't get it." She pointed at Gabrielle. "If she's at the top of the immortal food chain... and everything that we fight comes from her..."
"Why doesn't she just do a little housecleaning?" Xander finished, picking up on her train of thought. "Kick a little demon booty and rid the world of evil. Put old Buff here out of a job."
"I'm afraid it's not that simple," Giles said softly.
"Why not?" Buffy asked. As much as she hated to admit it, Cordelia had a point. If Gabrielle was as all-powerful as Willow and Giles-- honestly, the man was almost genuflecting at the bard's feet-- seemed to think, then this should be a piece of cake. She was certainly running out of ideas for handling Druscilla and Co. The Judge had just about taken all her ingenuity. The slayer found herself startled by the rich golden brown gaze fixed firmly upon her.
"Because without darkness, how would we know what the light is?" Willow answered. Gabrielle patted her niece gently on the shoulder as if to say "Good job."
"Willow's right," Gabrielle continued. "And without evil, how could we be able to choose good?"
Seeing the slayer's irritated confusion, Xena cut to the chase. "If Gabrielle did what you were suggesting, one of two things would happen. One: a new, stronger strain of evil would arise to fill the void."
"Or?"
"Or the world as you know it would cease to exist," the warrior answered bluntly. "So, as you can imagine, we're a little reluctant to discover exactly which one it would be."
Blood and Roses Realm | Fan Fiction Site | Home Page
This page was last updated: August 31, 1998
(c)August 1998
URL: willow7.html