**********

"Stand back, Gabrielle!"

"Xena don’t you think you’re being a bit-."

"No!" I seized her by her shoulder and forced her behind me. She stumbled from my rough and unexpected shove. My left hand shot out to steady her while the sword in my right never wavered. "It’s a wolf."

Gabrielle pulled away from me with a muttered curse. "It’s not a wolf. It’s a dog."

She stepped out from behind me and my gaze slid between the hungry, vicious eyes of the beast and her, staring down with a mournful gaze. She dropped into a crouch.

"Careful, Gabrielle-."

"Quiet, Xena." She held perfectly still, the embodiment of tranquillity and compassion as the animal danced skittishly around her, snapping and snarling.

Let him move one step towards Gabrielle and I’ll-.

"He looks frightened," came her voice softly. "And hungry. Out here all alone, who could blame him for trying to protect himself? Xena, I think we still have some food in one of the saddlebags. Would you-?"

"Forget it. I’m not moving until he does."

"Why do you always do that?"

It was later. After feeding the mongrel, he had followed after us at a safe distance for hours until I had chased him off with a yell and an angry slash of my sword.

"Do what?"

She shook her head in annoyance and took three steps then stopped abruptly, turning on me. "Why do you always feel like you have to protect me even when there’s no reason?"

"No reason? He was about to tear you apart."

"I’m not just talking about the dog, Xena. I don’t need you to stand between me and the entire world."

My lip curled derisively. "Yeah? Well maybe you haven’t gotten a good look at the world lately." The moment the accusation escaped my lips I wished I could take it back. But there it was. Of all the stupid, thoughtless…

"I know how to take care of myself. And believe it or not, Warrior Princess, I can take care of you too. Or was that someone else that saved you from being stoned to death by your own village all those years ago?

**********

"Sometimes I just feel like…"

Her voice trailed off as if she was grasping for the emotion. But this was Gabrielle. Her feelings were always close to surface. She could draw them out as easily as I yanked fish from the water. She was struggling to find the words. Words that wouldn’t hurt me. I could feel my defenses begin to rise.

My eyes fell to her lips pressed together thoughtfully and she turned slightly away from me, careful not to provoke a confrontation. "Sometimes I feel like you protect me because you feel you owe me…something."

I gazed at her steadily, refusing to let her see that she had struck a raw and painful nerve. I didn’t like where this conversation was likely to drift and crossed my arms, hoping that brevity would discourage her from taking this any further.

"I don’t want to see you get hurt."

"But where does it stop, Xena? Are you going to take on the whole world just because…" she shook her head, as if shaking off old hurts and resentments that she wasn’t willing to confront either. "When does it end? How much is enough?"

"I just think maybe you’d be better off with Eli."

It was a half-hearted suggestion at best. It had become a routine for us. Whether it followed the natural flow of our conversation or not, I managed to work it in almost daily. I needed to prove to Gabrielle…and especially to myself that I was willing to let her go if it meant her safety and happiness. And yet secretly, I always hoped that she would choose me instead.

"That’s just it, Xena. You think. I can do that all on my own." She paused a moment and then her hand reached out to stroke my shoulder, soothing the tension from it. "We’re together. That’s enough for me. Why isn’t it for you?"

**********

"Haven’t you ever heard of free will, Xena?"

Settling back comfortably against Argo’s saddle, I grinned and wiggled my toes, thawing them before the dancing flames of the fire. "Heard of it? I invented it."

"But you act like you’re the only one that has the right to exercise it. For the rest of us, free will is what you decide it should be. Gabrielle leaves home to travel with the Warrior Princes and phfft! That’s the last decision Gabrielle ever makes all on her own."

Unceremoniously, she dropped an armload of firewood in a pile at my feet.

"You have to stack the wood."

A pointed glare from blazing green eyes. "Don’t I always?"

Oh gods, I thought with an inward groan. She’s going off on one of her rants again. She’s trying to draw me in and I know the harder I resist, the worse she’ll get. I don’t want to, but I know I have to ask. "So what’s your point?"

"How come I always have to collect the firewood?"

Smugly, I tucked my hands behind my head and gazed up at her, a hint of mischief in my eyes. "Call it a lesson in humility."

"Oh, I’m plenty humble," Gabrielle sang in a mockingly sweet voice. "You, on the other hand, could use a lesson or two."

With that, she dove on me, digging her fingers into my ribcage. Okay, I was ticklish. It certainly didn’t lend dignity to the reputation of the Warrior Princess, so I never admitted that to anyone before her. Gabrielle had laughed and told me how ‘cute’ she thought it was. I had growled at that but she told me it was nice to see I was human after all. At the time, I thought she could be trusted with my secret. And now here she was, using my own weaknesses against me.

I tried fending her off but suddenly she seemed to have grown six arms and everytime I batted one hand away, another appeared to take its place. I was laughing so hard that tears were beginning to roll down my face and I had trouble catching my breath.

"Gabrielle! Stop! Oh gods!" Somehow, I managed to get out from under her and roll away. I lay there flat on my back on the cold ground with my eyes squeezed shut, clutching at my aching sides until the belly laughs subsided and my breathing turned back to a semblance of normality. I rolled over and saw her buried under my blanket, her head resting upon the saddle.

She yawned in an exaggerated fashion and snuggled in deeper. "Good night, Xena."

The realization slowly sunk in that I had been played, and Gabrielle rolled over to face me, her eyes gleaming tantalizingly. The grudging acknowledgment of her victory was there in the flush rising from neck to my cheeks. She was challenging me, daring me to retaliate. Well, she had thrown down the gauntlet. Far be it from me not to oblige.

I leaped to my feet and charged at her. Gabrielle’s hand shot out from under the blanket and she thrust it at me, wiggling her fingers in a tickling gesture. I couldn’t help it. I stopped short and burst out laughing.

"The saddle! That’s all you wanted all along!"

She nodded, her body wracking from the giggles she could no longer suppress. "I know how to play you like a lyre, Xena!"

It’s odd how it’s the small, insignificant things that take on larger proportions in your mind. The day had been too full of tension and resentment and sniping. No reason for it, really. Just the normal occurrence of two people spending so much time together that they can’t help but to inevitably work on one another’s nerves. It wasn’t enough to create a canyon between us that couldn’t be traversed, but a small gully had been dug. The laughter had served as a bridge. Those few moments of rough horseplay and our laughter were probably the most intimate I had ever shared with Gabrielle.

My head snapped to the left and my body instantly tensed into battle mode when I felt a presence on the perimeter of the camp . Instinctively, I forced my laughs back down my throat, deep into my belly. Listening, not daring to move a muscle until my senses could confirm or deny that there was something out there. A twig snapped.

"That damned dog again!" I grabbed for my sword.

"Xena!" Gabrielle jumped out from under the blankets and planted herself in front of me, her hands on my shoulders in a placating gesture. "Just leave him! He’s not doing us any harm."

"What is it with you and that mutt?"

Something in my tone made her step back and she shook her head. "Nothing! He’s just…would it hurt anything if we tossed him the bones from our dinner?"

"Then we’ll never get rid of him."

"Is that such a horrible thing, Xena?" She raised her head to look at me and I saw her eyes narrow in defiance.

Suddenly I realized this was no longer about the dog. I spun away from her.

Gabrielle could usually read my moods like a book. But some hidden, nasty thing had crept up between us and she mistook my turning away for a retreat. Over my shoulder I heard the sounds of her rattling around with the frying pan.

Resolutely, I turned back to her. "Don’t, Gabrielle."

She flinched, grimly recognizing the road we were on, as shocked and saddened as I was that we had never really left it behind. We could stray off of it, but never too far, always doomed to walk a path beside it.

"It’s only a dog, Xena." A soft murmur, a gentle challenge.

She walked the few dozen yards across the clearing, towards the trees where two glowing, hungry eyes waited apprehensively. She threw the bones at the edge of the clearing and stood motionlessly, patiently waiting for the mongrel to take those few cautious steps out from his shelter.

Never taking his wary eyes from Gabrielle and afraid to get too close, the dog stretched his neck as far as he could, gracefully plucking a bone from the ground. He paused a moment, as if assessing her. And finally, reassured by what he saw, he bent his head and dropped the bone to the ground, rewarding her by eating it right there rather than carrying it to safety.

With a snarl, I charged across the clearing, brandishing my sword over my head. "Get lost, you damned mangy mutt!" He took off quicker than a blur, leaving the bone behind.

I chased him far into the trees, driving him off, though I doubted it would be for good. By the time I had returned to the camp, Gabrielle was deep under her blanket, deliberately arranging herself so that she was turned on her side, away from me.

I should have said…something. But instead I lay awake all night, every so often glancing over at her, hoping to see more than the back of her head and the top of her shoulders peaking out from under the covers. Once I saw that, I would take it as a cue that all was forgotten.

**********

Finally, just as dawn was beginning to break I saw her shift her position in her sleep. When she rolled onto her belly and flung her right arm out towards my bedroll, I knew things were all right between us again. Forgiveness was still easily won from her. But where before she could offer it up freely, I saw that it cost her something now.

She needed time alone to reconcile within herself that she was no longer angry with me, and I made sure I was away, deep into the forest, when Gabrielle awoke the next morning.

I hunted in a wide circle around the camp, threading my way in and out of the thick underbrush. After I was done, I sat and waited patiently until I smelled the rekindled campfire out where I lingered in the woods. I took that as a signal that Gabrielle had eased herself into the normal morning routine, getting the fire ready in preparation for whatever I may have caught for breakfast.

My approach back towards the camp was almost sheepish. Gabrielle had heard me coming-I certainly made enough noise to warn her-and she barely turned her head to acknowledge my return. She sat on a log poking at the glowing embers with a stick I had used the evening before to reach an unreachable itch on my back.

"Good morning."

"Morning." Dejectedly, she tossed the stick into the flames and leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees with a sigh.

I came around and stood on the opposite side of the campfire, apprehensively glancing across at her, unsure of what to say or do, hoping that she would give me some kind of opening. Words have always been Gabrielle’s domain, and this was one of those times that I was perfectly willing to let her take the lead. I’ve never been sure if she made me wait or that it really took her as long as it did to notice me staring down at her. It seemed ages before she glanced up at me for a brief moment.

"You didn’t sleep last night."

"No…I-uh…after what happened…" I wiped a hand across my mouth, stalling-feeling almost as if I was on a search and destroy mission for the right words. "About last night…I wasn’t very-. Well, I mean you were just trying to-I should have…"

She looked up at me expectantly and I could feel the mental tug of a rope between her hands and my lips, trying to pull the words from me. Gabrielle had given me so many gifts over the years. She had taught me compassion, tenderness, patience, how to love freely and unselfishly. But the greatest gift of all that she offered had been one that eluded me and probably always would.

I turned towards the trees and stuck two fingers between my teeth, letting out a high, piercing whistle that cut through the early morning stillness like a hatchet. I remained absolutely still, watching the shadow move deep in the trees, circling the perimeter of the camp. Finally, the shadow emerged into the sunlight, one hesitant step at a time. It took several moments for the dog to come completely out into the open of the clearing-and even then he still remained on the edges of it. I could see the tactics at play in his mind. There was still enough ground between him and me for him to make a quick getaway should I decide to charge at him again.

The dog’s ears pricked forward in curiosity and his head cocked to one side as he watched Gabrielle rise and slowly cross the clearing. She stopped and turned back to me, her mouth gaping open in shock. "Xena-how did you-?"

I smiled faintly and shrugged with uncharacteristic shyness. "I figured he wouldn’t stray too far from you. He was easy to track but I had a Tartarus of a time getting him to take food from me. Took even longer to get him to follow me back to camp. I guess he finally realized that, like it or not, I come along as part of the package."

Finding the dog had been my way of apologizing, hoping that my actions would speak louder than anything I could say to express my remorse. Words had never come easily for me. Oh, the biting, coarse language I used in a fight was easy. I could summon that up easily because it all centered around emotions I was all too comfortable and familiar with, anger, hatred, the desire the intimidate my opponent. Gabrielle had tried for so long to get me to draw the words from deeper within myself, from that place that I kept under almost constant lock and key. I always believed she thought I had a poet’s soul and that it was her job to unchain it. And even though I constantly berated myself for it, it was a part of myself I just couldn’t let free.

**********

"Sometimes I just wish…" At a loss, I drew my legs up to my chest, hugging them tightly.

Gabrielle, sitting cross-legged beside me on my bedroll nodded patiently, trying to coax the words from me. "Sometimes you just wish what?"

Suddenly, I was very intent on picking at the frayed end of my gauntlet. The dog had turned and run off for good that morning as we started our steep climb down a rise that looked over Amazon territory. We had camped beside a lake with good fishing, telling one another that if we waited long enough, he just might come back. But even if we didn’t admit it to one another, we both knew he wouldn’t. Perhaps that was for the best. He would only miss us later on when-.

"Xena?" Gabrielle reached out to touch my hand. "What is it? Tell me."

How? How could I tell her that lately I had been feeling this impending sense of doom? It had been there for months now, but laying in wait, skulking in the shadows, without a face, without a name. But lately, I had sensed it slithering up until I could feel its coils tightening around us.

How could I tell her that with so little time left and so much I’ve left unsaid between us, I was desperate to unleash that inner poet she believed in? A thousand things I wished I had said to her…and a thousand things more that I wished I could take back. They were all there brimming on the surface. And yet the words still eluded me.

Gabrielle’s fingers brushed over the back of my hand. "Tell me, Xena."

Her gentle prod made me realize that I had been holding my breath. I exhaled loudly, feeling myself sink a little deeper.

I shook my head and forced a lightness into my tone that I didn’t feel. "Nothing-never mind. Hey, I thought you were going to show me how good you’ve gotten with this new fishing technique of yours."