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I have no idea who currently owns Xena and Gabrielle – I don't think even RenPac knows - but (unfortunately) it definitely isn't me.
Post FIN. Femslash.
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Gabrielle gave up. She couldn't sleep. Again. And it really wasn't worth trying. She couldn't remember when she'd last had a good night's sleep, she only knew that it had been before finding Xena's body. On those few occasions when she did manage to sleep, all her dreams were nightmares. She hadn't written a word since then either. Xena had been her inspiration, without Xena there was nothing. She would have fallen onto one of her sai if she had been certain she would end up where Xena was. Wherever Xena was now, Gabrielle reasoned, she was trapped. She must be. Gabrielle hadn't seen her ghost for days.
She thought she should try and eat, though she had no appetite. She dragged her pack towards her and opened it. As she reached inside for an apple she dislodged a small pouch,. spilling a necklace into her hand. For a long moment she stared at it, running her thumb repetitively across the surface of the pendant, and recalled the day that Xena had presented her with it.
They were in Chin, they'd said goodbye to K'ao Hsin and were waiting for the tide to turn for a ship to take them home to Greece. Killing time she'd dragged Xena to look at the market stalls cluttered around the dock. She'd lost sight of Xena for a moment. When Xena appeared beside her again she'd fastened the necklace around Gabrielle's neck and said, "Here. Present for you." Gabrielle had been reluctant at first, the symbol reminded her of Aiden's illusion, but Xena had taken her breath away with a simple explanation.
"It's us, Gabrielle. Oh yes, it means many things which don't fit but in this one thing it fits. This is the yang, the light, and this is the yin, the darkness. The light has a little bit of darkness in it just as the darkness holds a piece of the light, when the light is weakest the darkness is at its peak. But the two together are one circle, a whole, inseparable. You are the light to my darkness. You are the yang to my yin. We belong together, together we are whole." For once in her life Gabrielle had been speechless, she had simply kissed Xena, fiercely.
Gabrielle's thoughts returned to her present state. She threw the necklace to the ground, her fierceness now born of anger. "Inseparable are we? Whole are we? Yin to my yang are you? You lied to me, Xena. You lied to me. You lied to me and you left me!" Seizing the chakram from her belt she brought its edge down on the pendant as hard as she could. Hated symbol against hated symbol.
A burning pain in her hand and arm caused her to drop the chakram, which hit the ground and separated. The pendant hadn't shattered as she had expected it to, instead it had split. She bent closer to look. It had split exactly along the line of the symbol. "How..." She didn't finish the question. She had just noticed the chakram. Or rather chakrams. There were two of them. Just as there had been before Xena had fused them into one. In a daze she reached for one.
"Not that one, Gabrielle. It's the dark one, it'll burn your hand. The other one's yours."
"Thanks." She picked up the chakram and hung it on her belt before turning to face Xena. Xena's ghost , she reminded herself, bitterly. "What happens to the other one now?"
"That one's mine." Xena strode towards it.
"Yours? But you can't..." Once again Gabrielle left the sentence unfinished as Xena bent down, picked up the chakram and slipped it onto her belt-hook. "How did you do that? Oh gods, are you real?" Gabrielle, tears in her eyes, covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a sob. "Xena?"
"Yes." One word. The sweetest word Gabrielle had heard since before Japa.
"How?"
"Long story. You want the short version?
"They lied to me too; by the time I realised that, it was too late to fix it. One of their gods, a goddess called Kwannon, walks through the underworld from time-to-time. She stopped to talk and told me the yin & yang could bring us together, I didn't know if I would live or you would die but it didn't matter because I wasn't allowed to tell you. Kwannon said if you figured it out for yourself we would be re-united. You didn't work it out quite the way they thought you would, but Kwannon honoured her word."
"And you're here. Xena, promise me – promise me – you won't..."
"Gabrielle, I do promise. I will never leave you again. I promise that I'll never make a choice like that without talking to you, And I promise that if I ever have to choose to die we'll go together. Is that what you wanted?" Gabrielle nodded. Xena smiled and held her arms out. "C'mere." Gabrielle didn't need a second invitation.
Once she was securely wrapped in Xena's embrace she asked again, "You'll never leave?"
"I swear, Gabrielle. Never. We'll be together always. I promise you forever."
"Forever. Sounds perfect." Gabrielle murmured and Xena kissed her.
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