Tears of a Goddess

by Ashleth (ashlee224@aol.com)

Author's Note: I'm also an obsessive editor, so please see AO3 for the latest revisions (and faster updating). This story and others linked to it can be found at: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashleth224/works Thanks again!

Summary: Faced with a heartbroken Gabrielle post-“A Friend in Need,” Aphrodite comes clean about the large part she played in the bard’s life behind the scenes. Then she and Gabrielle work to heal each other.

//

Who gave Hope her overpowering desire for her mother and ability to be reborn? Who actually conceived Illusia and rescued Gabrielle from the lava pit? Aphrodite. And why didn't Aphrodite kill Eve or stay in Greece? Gabrielle. Find out how, why, and more here.

 

Chapter 1: Downpour

Gabrielle collapsed to her knees. She had been running for days. Her eyes closed to try and shut out the memories swirling around her head, the demons that had chased her to the place her feet had carried her.

Eve’s stunned, heartbroken expression upon learning of the death of her mother, Sarah’s retreat behind her mask after the crib death of her and Gurkhan’s son, Lila’s pain at being unable to get through to her daughter, the remnants of the Greek Amazons leaping from the trees in their ill-fated last stand, the images of the previous year and more crushed the bard into the dirt.

“I am so sorry for all you have suffered, little one.”

Gabrielle turned her face from the gentle hand trying to uplift it. “Where were you?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“Right here-”

The mortal batted aside the hand reaching for her chest. “Don’t,” she warned at the edge of tears. “I’m not in the mood for-”

“So, no hot tub this time?” Aphrodite smiled hopefully through the pain in her eyes.

“Where. Were. You?”

“Little one, I was with you.”

“No, you weren’t. You’re never- Just like-”

“I was,” the goddess of love said just the tiniest bit more firmly. “I haven’t left you, Gabrielle.”

Wanting nothing more and nothing less, Gabrielle let her old friend pull her into a hug. Every bit as warm and comforting as she needed it to be, she hated it. The heart she had tried so hard for so long to keep together shattered into a million pieces, and she cried as if she would never stop.

“That’s right, sweet pea. Just let it out. Let it all out. I’m here.”

And for the first time in a very long time, Gabrielle did.

#

 

“Why weren’t you here before?” she asked dully many hours later.

Aphrodite pressed her lips tighter together.

“Why won’t you answer me?” Before the immortal could respond, Gabrielle let out a tearless sob. “You never answer me when I really need you!”

“Gab-”

“You’re just like Eli!”

The blond goddess fell backward when Gabrielle shoved her away. She did not try to get up.

“I thought you were my friend!” the bard continued as she paced and gestured wildly. “I thought he was my friend. I thought—” Her voice caught on the name but she forced it out anyway— “Xena was my friend! But none of you are! I’m just yours! I have to accept whatever you guys say while you all disregard me! ‘Gabrielle, have faith in me! ‘But if there is a reason for our travels together, it’s because I had to learn from you.’

“Yeah, ‘Screw you, Gabrielle! The only thing that matters about our time together is what I got out of it! You’re nothing!’ ‘It's for the greater good!’ How many times did I hear that? Everything was for the greater good unless it was inconvenient for them! ‘Let Ares kill me, Gabrielle!’ ‘Kill your baby, Gabrielle!’ But also, ‘I’ll lead you to your cross but won’t let you stay there because the pain and guilt is too much for me! I’ll bring you back from the dead because- I, can! So, there!’ And, ‘Well, my mother and child are suffering! The whole world, Heaven and Hell, can go screw themselves, and so can you, Gabrielle! That’s my greater good! We make our own destiny in this family.’

“Or, what about this one? ‘My son is dead, because of you! It doesn’t matter that you would never hurt him but had in fact just risked your life in exchange for his, against the immortal who killed your husband, as she threw fire at you! So what if I tried to run your child through with a sword before your eyes and then chased you hurt, heartbroken, exhausted, and t-terrified across a foreign country with that baby in tow? Yes, I made you run, ride a horse, and paddle a canoe, though aching and bleeding from an instant pregnancy and childbirth, all night and day, just to keep me, your best friend, from killing the child! But that’s okay! And I stabbed your infant grandson in the back while he embraced you, but that’s okay too! But WOE TO YOU for even thinking to send your daughter to the safest place in the village! I’ll drag you through fire for that! Yes, fire again, Gabrielle! Your greatest fear after being t- being with Dahak! Then I’ll throw your sorry carcass off a cliff!”

Aphrodite breathed the woman’s name but continued to go unheard. She flinched when Gabrielle wheeled around and stalked toward her, but the bard charged right past her without even noticing her presence.

“‘Your newborn child might have killed a man; evil! Evil! Put her to death! Think of the greater good! Oh, my child? My sweet little, full-grown Evie who killed Joxer right in front of us and hundreds, if not thousands, of other people too? She can be saved, Gabrielle! Cheer me up about her, Gabrielle! I’m so sad! Never mind that I never had a kind or sympathetic word for you when you were a scared teenager trying to save your baby or mourn her; poor me! I can’t kill my daughter, Gabrielle! How could you just give up on her? How could you think that’s the greater good? Oh, you’ll do it for me? Spare me the everlasting guilt and pain of killing her myself, thus condemning yourself to that a second time, for me, of all people? Well, chakram through your skull, Gabrielle! Die, Gabrielle! Again!’”

All at once, the little tornado in human form stopped her rampage. Green-blue eyes stared at the round weapon that had seemingly magically appeared between her hands. “Chakram,”she breathed in awe. Absently, she glanced up at the sturdy mirror across from her.

“No!” Aphrodite cried when the bard let the death-bringer fly. Snapping her fingers, she made it disappear in a shimmer of gold sparks.

“Give it back!” Gabrielle shrieked in a crazed rage as she spun around quicker than the weapon could and launched herself at the goddess. “Give it back right now!” she screamed over and over as she pummeled her friend. “Now, Aphrodite!”

The immortal refused with a sulky tremble in her voice. “…I’m sorry,” she whispered too as she went limp.

“No!” the human echoed. “Fight back! Fight back, damn you! …F-fight back,” Gabrielle pleaded and commanded at the same time as she shook her friend by the shoulders, weeping bitterly. “You can’t feel this, can you?” she asked sometime later.

“I can,” Aphrodite said simply.

“No, you can’t! You’re not mortal! You don’t understand! You’ll never understand! Look!” she indicted the goddess, shoving her partly away while still holding onto her. “I said, look!” Gabrielle shouted louder when Aphrodite closed her eyes in expectation of another blow.

Hesitantly, her friend obeyed. She could not even smile, let alone smirk, when Gabrielle lay a hand on her chest instead.

“All my crying, snot and tears, and yet, there’s not a drop on you. Just like the rain! Nor are you bruised from my fists. Why? Because nothing touches you! Nothing phases you! You can’t be hurt!”

“I can,” she repeated.

“No, you can’t! It’d be too much for you! Why don’t you just disappear, huh? Leave me here all alone! That’s what you’re good at! That’s what you’re all good at! How many times did Xena leave me behind without thought of what could happen to me? It didn’t matter if I got t- attacked, kidnapped, nearly killed; she couldn’t get rid of me fast enough! Any time it was convenient- And any- Every time someone came around looking to make her pay for a crime, whether she was guilty or not, she was all for it. I gave up everything for her! Everything! Everything, and it meant nothing! M-my life, my family, my child, my blood innocence, virtue, heart and soul, my- my everything- a-and one, one stupid little riddle from some unknown entity she hadn’t mentioned once in all our time together-” A rising sob cut the bard off momentarily. “And she tells me straight to my face that none of my sacrifice could compare! I’d just sent my baby down the river, abandoned my last h-hope, for her- But- What did she owe Lao Ma? Or Akemi, for that matter! She- How- Why? …Why am I so worthless, Aphrodite?”

“Gabrielle, you’re not!”

Knocked into and crushed in an ardent embrace, Gabrielle felt nothing. “I am,” she insisted lowly. “It’s all I’ll ever be. I wasn’t anything to Xena when she was with me. What can I be without her? It’s true,” the bard whined in lieu of letting Aphrodite interrupt. “Even to Eli. I was his first follower; I was his friend. …I thought. But he preferred Xena. He gave her g- …special powers– answered her prayers and saved her daughter. But refused to acknowledge me ever again after he forced me to- let your brother kill him, not even after I stayed up all night with his ashes, begging for his help! Xena had just rejected me yet again too, then.” She broke off before whispering, “M-Michael, who told me I had a beautiful spirit and that Xena had to spend eternity in pieces, later deciding she had to become ruler of Hell… He- only spoke to her after Eli resurrected us. Or Eve. It was like I wasn’t even there to him anymore. The archangel was even ready to slash me in two to get to you. Do you… remember that?” she whimpered.

Aphrodite paused to think about it. Shadowy memories of the day she lost her godhood caused her head to hurt. Heart already in considerable pain, she shook herself. “Not really…”

“I do,” Gabrielle grunted. “I was so worried about you. I kept trying to get through to you, to help and comfort you. Know what you called me? A butt-kissing parasite, a-”

“I didn’t remember you, Gabrielle. I forgot you on purpose.”

The bard finally fell silent as shock zapped across her features. Then a dark satisfaction spread across her face. “Well, ain’t that a kick in the head? No, a chakram in the head. You going to give mine back anytime soon?”

“No.”

“Of course not. Why would anyone ever do anything for me?”

“You are what drove me to Rome in the first place, Gabrielle,” Aphrodite admitted for the first time ever. “And I did lots of things for you,” she added too softly to not be heard.

“What are you talking about?” Tickled by a strange, unexpected feeling, from such a strange, unexpected source, Gabrielle almost smiled.

“I thought I’d lost you again.”

“What are you talking about?” the bard shrieked in hollow mirth.

Turning as pink as the gauzy shawl around her shoulders was, Aphrodite shook her head. “Stupid things. Ditzy Aphrodite; that’s me, right? …I’ll just go like you wanted, okay? I’m sorry I-” Her spirit leapt when a soft hand squeezed her arm, and her friend gave her the smile she had missed for more than a year.

“Tell me, Aphrodite,” that sweet voice urged her.

The goddess stared at Gabrielle and felt happy tears well up in her eyes. “Gab-”

Then that light dimmed.

Smile turning wry, the mortal shook her head. “If for no other reason, I could use the laugh.”

“No, I think I’ll go,” Aphrodite choked as her tears began to sting her eyes. “I-”

“Fine. Go. I can’t stop you. I can’t stop-” Breathing out in a shuddering sigh, Gabrielle fell into unconsciousness.

Aphrodite leaned over her to hold her close and teleport them far away from her temple.

 

 

*Hold on, GabrEna (my name for the Gabrielle/Xena pairing) shippers! I swear I'm not a Xena-hater! Read to the end for the absolution. :')

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2: Breakthrough

 

“Mornin’, sunshine!” Aphrodite perked as Gabrielle blinked into bleary wakefulness. The goddess giggled. “You’re so cute in the morning!” With that, she set a small table over her friend’s lap.

The mortal held up a hand to block the streaming sunlight from her eyes. By feel, she noticed the luxurious bed under her and that her body had been propped up in a half-sitting position with fluffy pillows. “Where am I?” she asked though she had a sneaking feeling that she knew the answer.

“The Mighty Aphrodite Hospice for Beloved Bards!” came the pert response.

Gabrielle frowned. Even the ridiculous name sounded familiar. Then her breath caught in her chest. “Th-thanks, Aphrodite,” she murmured as her eyes took in the daisies in a little glass on her tray.

“Smell ’em!” the goddess all but cheered.

Unsure of the wisdom of following the directions of such a trickster, Gabrielle still obeyed. “Potadeia, m-mother,” she gasped as the scent of the little garden Hecuba had maintained in her daughters’ childhood, their farm, stirred the bard’s heart and memory. She was surprised to find that fond nostalgia rather than grief filled her. “What- How-”

“Hello! Goddess!” Aphrodite answered, displaying jazz hands and spirit fingers. “Eat up, little one. Don’t let all my hard work go to waste!”

Even less certain that complying was a good idea, Gabrielle eyed the food dubiously.

“Please, sweet pea? I had one of my best priestesses make it up for you.”

The bard chuckled and didn’t find that strange. “Hard work, huh?” she wondered aloud as she picked up a hunk of warm, brown bread.

“Oh, you’re smiling again!” Aphrodite reached out a hand to rub her knuckles and thumb against her friend’s cheek. “So, what do you think? Bath first or- What?”

“What’s going on, Aphrodite?”

Though the bard was frowning in confusion rather than anger, the goddess felt a thrill of fear shoot through her. “Just pampering my little one!” she said, injecting more lightness into her face and voice. Then she gave a playful pout. “Is that so wrong? …Aw, come on, Gabs! Can’t we play pretend just a little longer? I can braid your hair!” she suggested before snapping her fingers and causing hip-length locks to sprout from Gabrielle’s scalp. “Or you can braid mine!” Another snap caused her own hair to come out of its ringlets and flow in waves around her. “No? We can paint our nails!”

Instantly, salon kits took residence between her mug and vase.

“Why are you doing this?” Gabrielle asked, becoming slightly annoyed but still mostly puzzled by the goddess’s behavior.

Aphrodite sighed. Eyes lowered, she admitted, “Because you’ve been so sad. Because you need a friend, and the way I was wasn’t cutting it for you.”

“Aphrodite…” The bard’s tone hovered between mild reproof and disbelief.

“Believe it or not, I do care about you, Gabrielle. You’re… really very important to me.”

“Since when?”

The deity did not find her friend’s laughing tone encouraging. “I don't know. A long time now.” Blue eyes flitted up to greenish ones before lowering once more. “Probably since the first time we met.”

“But you thought I was a clumsy goody two shoes.”

Aphrodite shrugged uncomfortably. “I was jealous.”

“You’re messing with me!” ‘Stunned’ could not even begin to cover what Gabrielle felt, nor was ‘vulnerable’ a word she associated with the goddess, and yet there was no other way to describe her friend’s disposition at that moment.

“I’m not. I- You’re- …I wasn’t used to caring for a mortal. I’m still not.” Those eyes lifted again. “But I am trying. You can see that, can’t you?”

Gabrielle lost her breath a second time. “Y-yeah… I just don’t understand why.”

Aphrodite gave her a half-smile. “There doesn’t have to be a why with love, sweet pea.”

“You love me?” The mortal openly gaped at her friend.

Frowning and turning away in a sort of flinch, Aphrodite retorted, “Or I am love…”

Moments of silence passed between them.

“Well, I guess I’m still doing it wrong. I’ll leave you be for now,” the deity announced before disappearing in a cascade of golden sparks. The nail-styling pouches and magically enhanced locks of hair went with her.

Gabrielle chewed her lip rather than the scrumptious meal that a selfish goddess of all people had commissioned for her.

#

 

Aphrodite reappeared in the evening. Arms crossed and head down, she said, “You had a late breakfast, but you’re probably hungry by now, right?” She looked up when she heard her name said in a welcoming tone. “H-hey…” A nervous smile lit her face. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah…” Gabrielle answered just as uncertainly. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

The goddess let out a dramatic groan-scoff as she unfolded her arms and slumped her shoulders. “You live to humiliate me, don’t you?”

“No…” Green-blue eyes stared up at the statuesque figure towering over her.

“How could you not know what you mean to me?” Aphrodite asked as she sat on the bed near Gabrielle’s knees. “So, did you remember this place yet?” she changed the subject quickly.

“Kind of… It’s strange. I-”

The goddess stared deep into the mortal. “I brought you here from the lava pit,” she admitted at long last.

“You? What? But-”

“Air lies. He does that a lot, actually! Such a-”

“But!”

“I couldn’t let you die for my mistake. Again.”

“Your mistake?” Gabrielle echoed in bafflement that was fast solidifying into both craving and misgiving.

Aphrodite once again forced herself to be uncharacteristically forthcoming, “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t want to lose you. …But I fear I will either way.”

Both people jumped when tears dripped down the goddess’s beautiful face.

“Tell me, Aphrodite. Whatever it is …I need to know.”

“It’s- I-” All at once, the immortal became completely transparent. “I don’t want you to hate me. …More than you already do.” Voice becoming very small, she whispered, “And I don’t want you to hit me again. No one ever did that before, and- …It hurt very much.” Sniffling, Aphrodite added, “I really didn’t mean for everything to happen like it did! I- I was trying-”

“I won’t blame you, Aphrodite.”

Attitude flaring in an instant, she sassed, “Really? Because you did yesterday, and you didn’t even really have a case!”

“I was wrong. Aphrodite, I was wrong. I shouldn’t have acted like that. You didn’t do anything to deserve my wrath, but I took it out on you anyway. That- It- I’m sorry.”

Aphrodite recoiled from the hand coming to caress her cheek. “You said I wasn’t there for you all those times you were hurting, but I was. I was!” she cried, still stung by the accusations. “I just didn’t barge into your moments of need uninvited. I figured that was the last thing you’d want a god to do after D- It’s not my fault you rarely think of me! You don’t turn to me! You’ve never asked me for help if I wasn’t already there; or the one who screwed things up in the first place. …E-except when—” Silver-blond curls bobbed when Aphrodite snapped her chin to her chest— “when I really screwed things up,” she mumbled. “…No wonder you-”

“I’m really sorry for how I treated you, Aphrodite,” Gabrielle reiterated as she pulled the deity into a hug for once. “Truly, I am. I’d give anything to take it back.”

Her friend grinned tearfully. “Really? You mean it?”

Gabrielle pushed her away only to look her in the eyes. “I do.”

Aphrodite rolled hers with another scoff-groan. “How cloyingly sentimental,” she said with a weak chuckle.

“But still very much appreciated?”

She beamed; her friend remembered. “But very much appreciated.”

The pair shared a moment of contentment before Aphrodite’s little gray cloud reappeared.

“Now I want to tell you even less!” she whined.

“Please tell me, Aphrodite. …I’ve always wondered what happened …back then.”

Aphrodite took a fortifying breath.

 

 

Chapter 3: Fulfillment

 

“You- It all started when…” Aphrodite glanced to her right and found Gabrielle looking at her without pressing her or retreating. A grimace darkened her visage when she knew she had to keep talking. “You prayed to me in Brittania.”

Gabrielle’s stomach dropped as the long-forgotten memory stirred in her mind’s eye.

“I was like, ‘No way!’ you know? Little Miss Goody Two Shoes praying to me? That I had to check out!”

\\Nineteen-year-old Gabrielle’s broken heart lit in a flicker as she crouched on a muddy riverbank. It’s worth a shot. Anything is. “Aphrodite, please keep my baby safe. Teach her love, goddess. Let her be filled with it.” An impassible lump formed in her throat and cut off her plea when she let go of the basket carrying her Hope. Then she turned and ran for the rocks, hearing the echoes of her soul’s cries get fainter and fainter.//

“And then I was like, ‘What baby?’ I-” Aphrodite tried to smile and hoped Gabrielle would too. “I thought you had been naughty and was so going to lord that over you. Xena too. I-” The goddess choked on a sob. “I never thought-”

Gabrielle too hissed a sharp intake of air. “Y-yeah…” Her hands fisted the silken sheets under her.

“No,” Aphrodite told her both firmly and gently, cupping Gabrielle’s face to lock gazes with her. “I never got to tell you how sorry I am about what happened to you. That was a terrible thing no mortal- no anyone should ever have to experience.” Her hands fell into her lap and wrestled there as she looked away from her friend and began to rock. “Oh, I was angry when I found out what D- that god did. But I couldn’t do anything against him. Not even Ares could, obviously… So I helped you forget,” she divulged yet another one of her secrets.  A small smile lifted her cheekbones when she continued, “And expended quite a bit of energy keeping him from being able to gain access to you again too; cloaked you in my love and protection. That’s why his presence mostly left you after I got involved.” Humbly, she shrugged. “I couldn’t always keep you safe. He broke through when you were most distressed, and sometimes while you slept, but I did the best I could. …Then big-brother Herc defeated him, I guess.”

“And you took care of Hope,” Gabrielle finished in a detached tone of awe.

Aphrodite flinched again, seeming almost sullen as she spread her feet and slouched her shoulders to her ears. “And I took care of Hope. You almost k- uh, lost her with that basket of yours. But I kept it afloat. Dahak– sorry– thought I might be an ally. As if! …But, um, anyway. I didn’t know the whole story at the time, of course, and- I’m sorry, Gabrielle, but I sent her to people who wanted her. The cult who-”

Gabrielle took her turn flinching even though her half-smile remained. “The cult who …took me too. So they were the ones who raised her.” Then she whipped around to look at the goddess beside her. “Did they-”

“No, they didn’t touch her… like that. They- wouldn’t…” Remorse weighed so heavily on Aphrodite that she caved even deeper into herself. “But I was so selfish. I- I never imagined-”

Concerned for her friend and her child, along with becoming ever more confused, the mortal lay a hesitant hand on a wrap-covered shoulder. “What do you mean, Aphrodite?”

“I thought you meant to make her love you, once I got a better picture of things, a-and she got a little older,” the immortal said in a rush into her own cleavage as if it were the most shameful secret in the world. Her eyes clamped shut when her friend shifted beside her. In a tremulous whisper, she elaborated, “It’s what I would have wanted, so I automatically thought you’d want the same thing.”

“Hope… couldn’t love on her own, could she? You made her more human.”

“Not intentionally!” Aphrodite cried as if she had been accused of something terrible. “And …I don’t know. She might have been able to love without my help. After all, she was half-you, and you are the most loving mortal— anything!— I’ve ever met.”

“Thank you, Aphrodite,” the bard answered by rote, unable to process the compliment or catch up with her own thoughts. “But the way Hope loved me …it wasn’t natural. It wasn’t real,” she said after a long pause, trying to work things out in her head but not sure she was getting anywhere.

“Real love can’t be created with a spell,” the pair said at the same time.

“Did she love her son?” Gabrielle gave voice to something she had been wondering for years.

The goddess put an arm around her. “I don’t know, sweet pea. …But not like she loved you, either way. I… did sense a great lacking in her and so gave her a double dose-” Her arm fell to the bed. “But I was just trying to do as you asked! I really-”

“Aphrodite, you didn’t do anything wrong.” Mixed tears blurred the bard’s vision. “The fault was mine…”

“Gab-”

“And yet…”

Aphrodite sucked in another harsh breath and waited, cringing, for whatever would come out of Gabrielle’s mouth next.

“I’m glad that Hope got to experience some sort of love. …She’s still my child. And I still- I still love her,” the human whimpered, her own tiny voice disappearing by the end of her admission. In sniffling, she lifted her face. “Did you-”

“No, little one. Your sweet heart did that all on its own. And no matter what anyone else might say, I think it’s incredible that you loved her, still love her! You’re a very strong person, Gabrielle, and an undeniably good one.” Wanting to look away for both their sakes, Aphrodite held steady eye contact with her friend, nevertheless. “I know you’ve struggled with that ever since- what happened to you in Brittania, with Hope, with- all of it. And it …set you back, or made you lose sight of your goodness, but never your goodness itself, Gabrielle. You’ve always had it. And you always will. That, I know for sure!”

The second time in as many days, Gabrielle fell onto Aphrodite weeping. That night, the goddess shared in her tears.

#

 

“Aphrodite?” Gabrielle asked, muffled against skimpy lingerie in the very late evening.

Her friend jolted away from her. “Sorry; sorry! I didn’t mean- Hey…” she grumbled as she rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. “I didn’t even have my hands somewhere they shouldn’t be. What gives?”

“We’re cuddled,” Gabrielle said with a child-like giggle, confused but happy at the same time.

The deity puffed out a breath in relieved teasing. “Is that problem?”

“No…”

Aphrodite positively beamed. “Good!” she declared as she hugged the mortal once more, snuggling her tight as they lay on the large bed facing each other.

“But-”

“Ask it later, little one. Don’t ruin the moment.”

“…Alright.” Gabrielle closed her eyes and fell back into a more peaceful sleep than she had long thought possible.

Chapter 4: Cost and Worth

 

“Can’t we cuddle for this part too?” Aphrodite whined in the pale early morning light. “I don’t want to look at you when I say it, and I don’t want you to be able to look at me! Or hit me!” she added petulantly.

Gabrielle smiled wanly. “But I think I know what you’re going to say. And I still don’t blame you.”

“But you might! You could change your mind and decide I am a rash where the sun don’t shine! Then I’ll be really, really sad. I’ll probably cry forever!”

“Aphrodite…”

That same scolding, near-laughing tone both soothed and irked the goddess. “You sound like my mother. And I don’t even have a mother! I …um, ew. Suffice it to say, I emerged from the sea, okay?”

“Suffice? My, mighty Aphrodite; that’s a mighty big word!”

“Shut it, goody two shoes.” She punctuated her retort with a swish of her hand against the bard’s back, not even patting it.

Gabrielle laughed. “Mighty Aphrodite is not so mighty.”

“Yeah; well-”

The pair winced at the same time. “Nevermind-” and “I’m sorry,” they said one after the other.

“Whatever; moving on! No, wait! Let’s go back-”

“Aphrodite…”

A deep sigh followed the name. “Yes, mom. …So; well… But it’s obvious. isn’t it? No?” Ever more distressed eyes found green-blue ones before darting away. “Hope’s overpowering love- well, desire, for you brought her to Greece.” Once more curled into herself and speaking into her bosom, Aphrodite muttered, “Please don’t tell me I need to tell you what happened after that.”

“No.” Gabrielle shivered. “I remember that quite well.”

Several minutes of unbroken silence spanned between the pair but did not distance them.

“But Aphrodite, why didn’t you …I don’t know, warn me that she was coming?”

“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to bring all that up to you. You didn’t even know I knew about any of it; and I… was kind of hoping she wouldn’t find you.”

“And once she did?”

The goddess shuddered. “Dahak caught me off-guard and banished me somewhere else for a while. I didn’t know where I was or how to get out, not for a long time.”

“By the- Aphrodite, I never knew…”

“I know you didn’t. I didn’t want you to. It wasn’t your problem, and that …god had done more than enough to upset you. …Hope actually let me out, like she did with Callisto. But after her, um, activities with Iolaus and all.”

“Hope slept with Iolaus too?” Gabrielle all but shrieked.

“Oh, no! No, no, no! She sent Callisto back in time to kill Hercules before he was born, something, something; Ares sent Iolaus after Callisto as vengeance for Strife or whatnot… The little guy saved the day, if I remember what Air told me right. Anyway!” Aphrodite was surprised to find herself blushing and so diverted her attention into plowing ahead with her confession. “Hope let me out as a last resort since I intervened for her on the river. I didn’t want to help her, but I …had to. She got the idea and power to make her first cocoon from me. Her… father got their worshipers and then Callisto to make her a new one, but- …That was my fault too. I’m so sorry, Gabrielle.”

“It doesn’t matter,” her friend told her though it did, rubbing her chilled arm to soothe her. Then the bard changed her mind to support her words. “Really, it doesn’t. Dahak had already resurrected her. They would have found a way for her to be reborn no matter what.”

“Thank you, sweet pea. That… means a lot.” Bright blue eyes stared into the distance. “But yeah. By the time I got away from Hope, Xena had already- You were both headed to the seafloor.” A haunted look came over Aphrodite’s angular facial features. “You were dead, Gabrielle. You and Xena, because of my mistake. I never thought I’d cause one, let alone, four, deaths, and certainly not one I so-” She shook her head hard. “I begged the Fates to help me, same as I begged Morpheus to help me keep Dahak out of your dreams.”

“Solan-”

Aphrodite hissed and flinched as if struck in the stomach for the innumerable time. “Really died because of me, yes. That’s why- well, part of the reason why I couldn’t kill Eve. I-I didn’t try to stop Ares, but I couldn’t … take another child from Xena. Not from either one of you.”

“O-oh. …Well, what I was going to say was that Solan didn’t create Illusia for us like I thought he did.”

“No, he didn’t.” The goddess gave her friend a less than half-hearted attempt at a smirk. “The boy knew next to nothing about you. How could he have-”

“But you did. You knew everything, and I never knew that.” Gabrielle stared through Aphrodite.

“I did not! Not everything! But the Fates did, and they wove a little temporary world for you like they did for Xena after she protected their temple. I tried to get them to- But they said I had to let it play out. I couldn’t intervene, couldn’t protect you from being hurt there.”

“But you did play a part in making it a reality. As painful and upsetting as parts of that experience were, it brought us back together, Aphrodite. You brought us back together. We wouldn’t have made it otherwise; even if we hadn’t …fallen off that cliff.”

“‘Fallen,’” Aphrodite repeated in the same teasing tone the mortal had used on her.

“You saved us, Aphrodite. Me and Xena.”

“You,” the goddess stressed unnecessarily, “I did it for you. You’re… a little wrong. Xena can- could- um, well; survive quite easily on hatred alone. You couldn’t. Even if she hadn’t …done all that to you. You would have died in Amazonia without her.”

“Like I’ll die now,” Gabrielle whispered without thought, soon realizing that she was telling the truth. “I don’t know how to live without her anymore.”

“You’ll learn to get through it! You forget how strong you’ve become. And this time… if you’ll let me; Gabrielle, I’ll be with you. You don’t have to go through it by yourself.”

The bard smiled deep within her soul.

#

 

“I thought you hated me,” Gabrielle mused to herself in the afternoon.

“Never, little one.”

“All these years…”

“I played it cool. I reeled from how much you meant to me, how much I put myself through for you. And I thought we were bad for each other. So, I tried to stay out of your life after you made it through Illusia and Theenie let me fix you up from what- happened before it. …But I couldn’t stay away for too long! I missed you.” The curly-haired deity shrugged self-consciously. “And worried about you. But I couldn’t let on about that! I had to pretend like you were just any other mortal. So, I played tricks on you and hassled you, per usual. …But you still saw me as a friend.” The goddess got lost in her musings. “You have no idea what that means to me. I’d never had a friend before you, Gabrielle. Haven’t had another since either.”

“Aphrodite…”

“It’s fun. I like to tease you so you smile.” She rubbed the back of her own neck, feeling it and her chest begin to heat. “That obsession thing; you know I never really cared about the diamond, right? I just wanted you to be able to see yourself as you truly are. Plus, Xena took you for granted too much! And you just let-” The goddess held up her hands to calm herself. “I digress. Mostly, I wanted to give you a nice vacation after …everything.” Pink crept up into her cheeks too, first in greater embarrassment, then in pleasure when Gabrielle broke into a big grin similarly tinged with shyness around the edges. “Being able to bring joy into your life, however briefly, that makes me really happy for some reason.” Aphrodite rolled onto her back and laced her fingers behind her head. “So, did it work?” she asked a long time later.

“Did what work?” Gabrielle echoed, more at peace than she had been in a long time.

“Did my crazy made-up story make you happy?”

The bard gasped, her drowsy mind scrambling to figure out if her friend had been playing another trick on her. Then she knew in her heart that the tale was true. “Nah,” she joked. “Too cloyingly sentimental.”

“But appreciated?” Aphrodite asked as she finally looked somewhere other than the stars, a wide grin forming on her own face.

“Very much appreciated.”

The deity rolled over onto her friend to make her yelp and was pleased when her wish came true. Then she tickled the mortal to the point of tears. Nuzzling her forehead against Gabrielle’s temple as the human tried to catch her breath, Aphrodite asked more seriously, “No, but really. Did it work?”

Gabrielle did a quick series of double takes to try and ascertain what her friend was getting at but couldn’t help but giggle the first few times. “Did what work, Aphrodite?”

“Um, hello! The whole point of all this,” the goddess answered with an audible eyeroll and grand hand gesture. “Ugh, fine.” Capturing Gabrielle’s face and forcing sustained eye contact with her, she asked, “Do you see how you were wrong? You called yourself worthless. I’m telling you how very much you are worth, to me.” Aphrodite surprised the bard yet again by looking away and blinking fast to disperse her welling tears. “You say you gave up your family for Xena, and in a lot of ways you did, but I gave up my family for you. Zeus, Hera, Hephaestus, Athena, Artemis, Poseidon, Hades, Deimos, …ew, grody Discord—but who needs her, right? Though I do kind of miss her too sometimes— all of them died on account of you guys.

“I put on mourning clothes for my husband, but as soon as I could after you got hit, I went to you. I stayed with you while my uncle, brothers, and sisters fought for their lives in the next room. I didn’t even try to do anything to Eve, thus putting an end to the slaughter— not to mention, ensuring my own survival!— after Xena left her with us, because I could not move from your side. Then, I transported you three into my sacred home even though I knew doing so could mean the deaths of the rest of my family, all so that you might live. I chose you over them, same as Air chose you guys over them.” Rare sternness smoldered in cobalt-blue eyes. “So please do not tell me that we, I, did all that for nothing, that our sacrifices too were without worth to anyone but us.”

Solemn green-blue eyes stared into the goddess. “Thank you, Aphrodite,” Gabrielle whispered as if in prayer.

“You’re welcome, little one.”

#

 

“Aphrodite?”

“By the gods!” the deity imitated Gabrielle in her prissiest voice. “…What, little one?” she groused. “You’re totally killing the vibe here, you know!” Still, the fact that the bard had consented to taking a bubble bath with her made her smile.

The pair reclined across from each other in a large, square basin, much like the one Gabrielle and Xena had shared in north Africa, since Aphrodite’s envious little heart desired it so.

“You said you went to Rome because of me?”

“Whoa, way harsh!” Aphrodite fixed the mortal with a glare after jolting upright. “Well, what’d you expect? I thought you were dead, again!”

Gabrielle fought down some more poorly stifled giggles, averting her gaze from the bubble beard and unicorn horn that had exploded into place due to the goddess’s flailing.

“Well, I did! Do you know how traumatizing the idea of death is to someone who can’t die? Not to mention- That’s why we don’t get attached to mortals. But I did! To one who has an epic on-again, off-again affair with Auntie Celesta, too! You almost died countless before I ever even met you! There were whole years of your life where you couldn’t go a single week without ending up with someone’s knife at your throat or wandering into some other form of mortal peril! Then you got more street smarts and combat skills, and I thought, ‘Finally, my sweet pea will be safe!’ But nooo; you gotta go cliff-jumping with Xena in Amazonia! Then you try to break your neck by flipping without your staff. Aw, just the ankle this time? Bummer. But oh, look! Here comes a poisoned arrow! Better get right in front of that thing! Oh, goody, it got you!– What’s with the giggles?– Well, shucks, you lived through that too? That’s okay; you’ll just go lava-diving! Whee! Then you get yourself hanged. But not to worry! You’ll get out of that the same way you got off your first cross! How? By falling, of course! Where? Into the middle of a bloody battle; of course! Then you go and fall down another giant pit that takes you out of the time-space continuum! Then you go, and get crucified! A second time!

“But, whoa, nuh-uh! That’s not enough for Miss Thing!– Why are you laughing? It’s not funny!– Then you decide, ‘Even death will not stop my passion for falling from great heights! Woo, I’m in Hell!’ Stop giggling! ‘But, wait! For my next trick, I’m gonna spirit-battle some psycho shamaness without a lick of knowledge-’ IT’S NOT FUNNY, GABRIELLE!”

The bard had never appreciated the absurdity of her life’s path before hearing her friend rant about it. “You’re the best, Aphrodite,” she managed to get out between bouts of uncontrollable laughter.

“I am!” the goddess sulked. “But unfortunately for me, you’re the worst!”

“Oh, you love me!” Gabrielle cried in her merriment, pressing her hands to her sore abdominal muscles and leaning back against smooth tiles.

“I do! Why, I DON’T know!”

Then the bard was beaming under teary eyes. “You do!”

“I do. So what?” Overjoyed and yet gruntled at having amused Gabrielle so, Aphrodite could not enjoy the moment. “That’s why it messed me up so bad when you disappeared from my radar again. I had just gotten you back after having lost you for a quarter-century too—” her lower lip stuck out further than ever— “paid with the lives of almost everyone I ever knew– people who were never supposed to die in the first place– to keep you breathing, for the sole thanks of you continuing to gamble with that life every chance you got, per usual!” The vigor left her voice when she breathed, “And you were just gone. For a whole extra year, Gabrielle. I didn’t feel your presence for so long…

“So, I made myself forget you after a while. I couldn’t afford the high cost of …feeling that way anymore. For all I knew, you were never coming back from the Norse lands. No family, no friends, the last of her kind; the goddess of love had no one to love and no one to love her. Is it any wonder that I lost my identity?”

Far past laughing, the bard could only shake her head. “No… I’m sorry…”

More silence passed between the two friends.

“Aphrodite?”

The goddess snorted, groaned, and sighed all at once. “What, little one?”

Gabrielle reached for her under the water. “Thank you. For everything. Truly-” 

Aphrodite smiled before squeezing Gabrielle’s hand once and then letting go to swipe the bubbles off of her own head and blow them at her friend. “You’re welcome, little one. Always!”

Chapter 5: Secret Treasure

 

“Aphrodite? When I came here before… what happened?” Gabrielle asked after dinner.

The goddess released yet another heavy sigh. “Just what I told you. I got you out of that pit and brought you here, to my most favorite place in all creation. A place of my own creation.” Proudly, briefly, Aphrodite lifted her chin. “It is!” she insisted though Gabrielle made no effort to refute her claim about the sparkling oasis around them.

The bard’s misunderstanding rose from another source. “But- Xena said-”

“Air manipulated the image she saw so she’d think you were dead for sure. He figured I rescued you to keep you here as a plaything. That left him free and clear to trick Xena into marrying him in exchange for your soul, which he never had, of course.

“I. Couldn’t do that kind of thing to you. I didn’t even want to. I just wanted to help. …After trying so hard to stay away, knowing the danger Dahak posed to- all of us, really, I put myself on the line for you, again. I saw you fall and knew I couldn’t take the chance of you getting hurt again, no matter what that beast might do to me.” Aphrodite grabbed her own arms and hunched over them as she shivered at the memory. “He was there with us. …While he was preoccupied with Hope and his unborn Destroyer, I was able to snatch you from his clutches before he could stop us.”

A wry smile lit her face. “Hey! Come to think of it, we’re related because of Air’s… whatever you want it call it. Since he, you know- uh, fathered your grandson, that makes me your daughter-in-law. So, I guess you really are my mom!” Aphrodite laughed.

“That- Augh, Aphrodite! I try not to think about Ares and Hope! He- with my child! In a copy of my body! And Hope wasn’t even a year old yet! Then he had the nerve to proposition me, multiple times, even without all he had put Xena through-”

“My bro is something else, huh?”

“Something else,” Gabrielle echoed with a shiver of her own. Eager to turn her thoughts from that unpleasantness, she prompted, “So…”

“So… you were really messed up for a while. You weren’t hurt physically- But. Well, we both know that things don’t have to leave a mark to be sore.”

The bard flinched from dueling memories of Khrafstar’s touch burning her in spirit rather than body, Dahak’s similar assault on her, and herself striking Aphrodite. “I’m s-”

“I don’t care. I’m not important right now,” slipped from glossed lips before the goddess could help it. She let a feeling that both was and wasn’t shock roll over her without giving it any attention. “You couldn’t speak. Or wouldn’t.” Aphrodite shrugged but could not free herself from the weight on her shoulders. “Maybe you just didn’t want to talk to me.”

Gabrielle closed her eyes and tried harder to remember, drawing on the deity’s words to construct mental images. “I don’t think I could.” Then her separate recollections took over and she was left nearly breathless though she too tried to skim over her unchained memories and the emotions attached to them. Dully, she concluded, “I was too busy trying to get back to Hope somehow. Dahak said he’d kill her. And I- I don’t know why that upset me so much considering what I’d just done myself. Again. …But at the time, I thought I’d done the right thing.”

“You did!” her friend rushed to her defense. “That was very a brave thing you did, leaping into fire for Xena like that! Fire that not only reminded you of Dahak but-”

“Was Dahak. I knew what I had to do,” the bard whispered. “Even without Ares’s meddling, I couldn’t- I promised Hope when she was a baby; I told her I’d die before I let Xena hurt her. …I meant it. That never really changed for me. Never…”

“Oh, little one-”

“Xena’d already done it too. The second she sliced Hope’s arm with her chakram, she cut my heart in two. Hope didn’t think too much of it, but I- I did. And when I saw Xena backing her toward that pit, coming at her- my, my Hope with that dagger…” Disquieted, she admitted, “I saw my little baby and Xena about to run her through in that castle. But I wasn’t there behind Hope to grab her up and whisk her away. …I had to go to her. I’d already decided when Ares added more- …fuel to the fire by reminding me that Xena would die too if she killed Hope. So, I saved them both. Or at least I thought I did.” Tears dripped down on either side of her nose. “Of course, I didn’t…”

“Little one!” Aphrodite mourned with Gabrielle, holding her as if the strength of her grip could keep her friend from falling to pieces.

“I’d already sent Hope off on her own twice, you know? I put her basket into churning waters and had to run away from her without looking back, to lead Xena as far away from her as I could, s-so she’d have a chance! Then I gave her over to the night with poison… And even though I held a-and rocked her the; the first time she died; I didn’t accompany her to the underworld to make sure she’d be okay. I almost did but was too scared. Too selfish. So, I had to go into the pit with her, Aphrodite! I couldn’t let her fall into darkness alone. Not again.”

“I know; I know,” the goddess repeated as she held and rocked Gabrielle much like the bard had just described doing for her child. “I know,” Aphrodite said again though she really didn’t.

“Then why- Why did you rip me from her?” came out in pained whimpers.

“I didn’t! Her father did! I only-”

“I know. I’m sorry,” Gabrielle said in Aphrodite’s place. “It’s just that it hurts so much. Still. …I could never talk to anyone about it. Nor write it down.”

“I know, little one. You’ve carried around far greater pain than anyone should have to bear, for far too long. Do you think you can let it go now? Can you at least try?” she amended in an instant. “Gabrielle, I’ll do everything I can to help you, supernatural or otherwise. You don’t have to suffer by yourself ever again if-”

“Thank you,” the woman answered shakily.

“Don’t mention it. …Please.” Aphrodite entwined herself even more intricately with her friend.

#

 

The pair once more lay in bed together, the smaller half with her ear to the other’s chest and the taller rubbing her back.

“So, I was here for a while, right? What’d we do all day?”

Aphrodite beamed. “This. Lots of this.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Mixed nostalgia suffused the goddess’s face and voice. “You liked listening to my heartbeat. I don’t usually have one, you know. But that …upset you. You would, like, really freak out to hear nothing. I didn’t know what in Tartarus you were doing at first, smashing your squishy little cheek into my ta-tas so insistently all the time. But, oh, little one… It made you cry. You still wouldn’t make much noise, but tears would spill down your face like a waterfall. And you’d look up at me and touch my face, looking;  just so sad and scared, for me, I think. Concerned or something. Then I got it and made myself a beating heart. Really, it just echoed yours. But you loved that. I guess it reminded you of Ho- uh, your real mother. Or Xena. I don’t know.”

“I didn’t want H- any of them- you, to be dead,” Gabrielle realized belatedly.  After another few moments of silence, she asked, “But was I really content-”

“Oh.” The goddess squeezed the mortal all the tighter. “No. Not at first. For the first few days, you were- what’s the word? Catatonic. You just stared off into the distance with …such a haunted look on your sweet little face. Nothing I did or said made it go away. I finally just waited, like Theenie told me to. Then you slowly started coming back to life. I-” Aphrodite grunted. “I guess you were confused; naturally, of course. It’s to be expected!”

The bard pouted in thought. As she had often done with Xena in the past, she offered up an observation without intonation or expectation of a response. “You sound sad.”

“Well, yeah!”

She smiled at how her old technique still worked. Then she listened closely.

“You were scared of me, okay? You couldn’t recognize me and didn’t understand what I wanted from you. But I didn’t want anything! Not for myself! I just wanted you to know you were safe and to be happy.”

“I know-”

Aphrodite smiled once more. “Did then too. It just took us a little while to get there. Then…” A huge grin spread across her face, and she got lost in reminiscence.

“Then, what, Aphrodite?” Gabrielle asked, half-smiling herself.

“Then you were my sweet pea. Oh!” The deity released her friend with one arm to grab at her own chest. “You were the cutest little thing! I’d gotten used to having to find something else to do for a lot of the day, either because you didn’t notice I was with you or didn’t want me there—” she rushed past the painful part— “but you suddenly didn’t like that anymore. You followed me everywhere I went, usually holding onto me in some way. Conga line!” Again, the jazz hands came out. “Okay, okay! You were just like—” a throb from her heart caused one in her voice at the thought of her lost loved ones, but she pushed past that too— “Baby Bliss and Cupid for a while, but even sweeter. And I was your mommy. I spent the night in here with you; even though I had better things to do, you know! Because you were still human and needed to sleep, of course, I’d tell you a bedtime story or sing you a lullaby, and you’d start to drift off. You’d smile so sweetly when I kissed your forehead, totally at peace. But the second I got to the door, those pretty green eyes would pop open, you’d throw off the covers, and you’d run to me with your arms out. Every night!

“How could I ever walk away after that? I’d try to put you back to bed, but you wouldn’t have it. Wouldn’t even let go of me.” A slow smile spread from her soul outward, bathing the pair in a luminous glow. “So I stayed with you. What else could I do?”

The bard didn’t know what to say. Her eyes slipped closed as she tried to picture the scene in her mind.

“You still didn’t talk to me– you never did then– but we had a lot of fun, you know? I got to reintroduce you to the world. And I made it grand, okay, girlfriend? Nothing but the best for my little one! I took you riding on my seashell, fly- Oh, the first time you saw a dolphin! Oh, little one! You were giggling and skimming the still water with your hand as we cruised along under the sun. Then you saw a dark shape rising below us. You yanked your hand back, shot up, and came toddling back to me for a hug– you always did that when you got scared, by the way– But my sweet pea could never stop being brave and curious for long. So, not letting go of my hand, you returned to the water’s edge to learn more about the creature. You squealed with laughter when a fountain came out of its blow horn and splashed us.

“So many things gave you …such, joy! That made it all worth it in the end, all the sadness, all the fear- Oh, to relive those days! We made snow angels on the tallest mountains, played in giant piles of autumn leaves, danced around under falling cherry blossoms. I ended up having to recreate a lot of things here, though, of course.” A smirk twisted the goddess’s face as she tapped Gabrielle on the nose. “As we talked about before, you are incredibly disaster-prone. And you get that weird motion-sickness thing. So, I had to make safe versions for you here. But I didn’t mind. Anything for my sweet pea,” she reiterated with another, bigger grin. “Plus, artificial things are a lot easier to manage. You wanted to do all that outdoorsy stuff— camping under the stars, following nature trails, sitting around a fire, you know, all the things I’m not really into. But I did it for you. I just kept the really grody stuff out, like mud and bugs and all that. But the rest, I conjured reality for you– flowers, dew drops, swans, anything your little heart desired.

“And you were happy to do things my way before bed too! Really, you were! You loved when I brushed your hair and painted your nails. You even picked out ribbons and bath scents and nail polish colors and pajama fashions-”

Gabrielle rolled away from Aphrodite to look her in the eye. “Is that why those were your go-to when I had writer’s block and then, a couple of days ago?”

Mild embarrassment warmed the goddess’s face. “Yeah. It came naturally. I- Bath time was your favorite. Like in real life, I guess…”

“My time with you here was real life, Aphrodite! It was probably the happiest I’d been- for a long time and would be for an even longer time after that. Right?” The bard smiled softly as she jostled her friend to try and lift her spirits.

“It was,” Aphrodite agreed, misty-eyed. “I was so glad I could give that to you. …But it wasn’t enough in the end,” she trailed off, losing her smile and drawing invisible patterns on the silken sheets between them with her forefinger.

“What-”

“You missed Xena.” She shrugged, melancholic and a bit awkward. “And you were getting better. There wasn’t much reason for you to stay anymore. And I- couldn’t keep you here. I mean, I could. But I couldn’t, you know?”

“I know. …But Aphrodite, how come I didn’t remember?”

“I let you forget. I…” Yet again, Aphrodite shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t want you to feel like you owed me or something. You didn’t! The memories alone were enough for me.”

“R-”

“Yes. No. …I did get to be a little selfish at the end!”

“You-”

“I sensed you were ready to move on, so I gave you a complete spa treatment. Gift-wrapped you for Xena with a full-body mud bath and oil finish—” The goddess put up a hand in self-defense although the human had not moved— “Nothing… untoward, of course! You weren’t mentally a little girl anymore, but things aren’t like that between us, Gabs. I could have any number of mortal and immortal lovers, but you are my one and only friend.” Shaking off the distraction bodily, she circumvented whatever Gabrielle might have to say with, “Anyway, I brushed your hair ’til it shone, buffed your nails, all that! What can I say? I love pampering my little one. …No matter how much it hurt then because I knew it was the last time.”

“But that still doesn’t explain-”

“I put a charm on this place when I first created it so that whenever anyone not me crosses the threshold of it for good, they forget it. Gods gotta keep up their security, you know.” Aphrodite chuckled forlornly.

“You could have lifted that for me.”

“I could have tried. But you know how bad I am at reversing my spells; you sure made fun of me for that enough times! I didn’t want to risk messing you up again. And I just didn’t want to, for the principle of it, like I said. …Our time together was a private treasure, my most valuable and that no one could ever take from me. And it was really shared, the best kind, but only I knew that.” The deity half-smiled at the frilly pajamas she had provided for her friend. “You know, it’s funny. I thought I’d been given another chance when that little Alessia girl wandered into my temple. Tried to recapture what you and I had. But she wasn’t you. No one’s you, Gabrielle.” Feeling the weight of the woman’s stare, Aphrodite mumbled, “I dunno. It’s like I keep telling you. You’re special to me. You make me different. Someone I never thought I could be and didn’t even know I wanted to be.”

Gabrielle smiled as teary-eyed as her friend had earlier. “Now you sound like Xena.”

The goddess flailed over-dramatically. “Whoa! Way, way harsh! Why you gotta insult me like that?”

“Aphrodite!” The mortal shoved her friend and tickled her for the first time that she could remember, hard. She got tickled in return.

The two friends took their time calming down.

A half-smile, half-pout twisted Aphrodite’s lips. “So judgmental, little one. Always. Especially of me. …Remember what you said to me about her?”

Gabrielle blinked, hints of a frown dimming her shining smile. “Who, Xena?”

“No! Alessia; duh!”

“O-oh.” The bard gave a half-shrug and placating smile. “I-”

Aphrodite waved aside the apology before it could be fully formed. “You always called me on my crap. No one else did that, you know? Well, except maybe C- Nevermind.” Again, she rolled onto her back to gaze upon the stars that her sweet pea had mutely requested be visible from their bed. Nearly thirty years later, and she still hadn’t reinstalled the roof; the thought made her smile. Then she shook her head at her friend’s prodding. “Huh? What? Sorry…”

Giving Aphrodite a scoff-groan for a change, Gabrielle said,  “I apologized. And asked if you wanted me to revise my scrolls. I …mischaracterized you so badly in them.”

The deity giggled. “Nah, let’s keep it our little secret.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.” Once more, she tapped her friend’s nose. “I like when you’re wrong. Especially when it’s because I’m right.” She stuck her tongue out at Gabrielle. “Besides, even though I was a little sad that you …said those things to me. I was happy too. Proud.”

Gabrielle matched the goddess’s ambivalent grin even as she shook her head. “Of me?”

Aphrodite squealed. “Hee! As if! Of me, you dope! The lesson you ‘taught’ me with her, I’d already done with you. And you didn’t even know it.” Her wistfulness returned her to her story. “Our goodbye was a sad moment, but a sweet one too. You- we both cried a little. Then I gave you a final hug and dropped you off in that forest where Xena was… Well, I hung around, invisible, just to be sure you were safe. Then Xena found you. I almost blew her away for raising her sword at you like that, but then it became clear why.”

“Why…” the bard repeated. “Why did I lie to her? Why didn’t I know I was lying?”

Long lashes fluttered over royal blue orbs. “What do you mean?”

“I told her I woke up in a hospice-”

“You did! The finest in all the land, too! The Mighty Aph-”

“Okay, but I also said I remembered falling, fire, rocks… Hope dying; sending word to Xena… Was there something else?”

“You did remember falling, fire, and rocks! You still dove into that lava pit! Something happened for a while—” the goddess sped up suddenly— “but ended when Dahak consumed Hope, like he …did to you; in Brittania. But he didn’t- She was already pregnant- Well, you knew that. I took you away when their uh, shield lapsed, and you started screaming for her; I thought she was dying too and didn’t want you to have to see that again. But obviously, I was too late …I don't know where you came up with sending-word-to-Xena thing, though. I never promised that, and you never asked for it. I just-”

“Took care of me. …Really, really good care of me.”

“I did.” A delicate hand cupped Gabrielle’s uplifted cheek. “Because you’re my friend, and that’s what friends do, according to you. …I love you.”

Gabrielle beamed as she leaned into her friend’s touch. “Love you too.”

“Always?”

“Always.”

 

Chapter 6: Highs and Lows

 

“Hey, Gabby?” Aphrodite broke the companionable silence between the two friends for once days later.

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you something?”

The amusement on Gabrielle’s face faded at the sight of the tension in her friend’s. “Uh, sure!”

“It’s about the lava pit-”

“Oh!” She sucked in a stricken breath. “I don’t-”

The goddess’s mouth began to work a mile a minute.  “You don’t have to answer! And if you don’t remember, that’s okay too! I-”

A low exhale interrupted her. “Ask, Aphrodite. It’s fine.”

“It- It’s really not my business- I just. …I really worried about you. It took me a while to catch on, per usual, but…”

“What is it, Aphrodite?”

“Did Dahak …hurt you again in there? Was I too late twice in one move?”

Gabrielle turned away from her friend with a strangled scoff. “What makes you ask that?” She filled the uncomfortable silence by muttering into her knees. “By the way you tell it, I was only in there a few seconds-”

“It was a few minutes, actually. He and Hope- …did something that I couldn’t stop or see. They held you in some sort of a bubble- But, uh- anyway, that monster obviously didn’t impregnate you a second time, though that possibility kept me on edge for a while too, but- you were just so traumatized a-at first… Theenie made me worry about- that. Then she told me to shut up about it,” Aphrodite admitted.

Her friend didn’t respond, so she too kept talking to try and defeat the silence.

“I didn’t tell you earlier, but that was the only thing you responded to. You didn’t sleep or move the whole first night or next day, so I sought Theenie’s counsel. She suggested Dahak might have …done it to you again, even had me bring you to her to check you herself, but you …flipped; out! You let me lay you down a-and hold your hand without a problem, but when she started pushing up your skirt- She took that as a ‘yes.’ I guess I did too, but I was really hoping it was just a leftover reaction from being so close to him again!

“I- Couldn’t stop thinking about it. That was the hardest part of you not talking to me, especially those first few days when you were like a doll. I even tried to broach checking you myself once or twice, but- …I guess that’s why you came to fear me, but I never meant to hurt you or do anything bad to you, Gabby! Never! I just- I couldn’t stand the thought that I let that happen to you on my watch. And that I couldn’t do anything to make it better if it did.”

“Neither one of you would have found anything,” the bard mumbled dully as she rolled over onto her back. “Dahak made sure to never leave a mark on me. He even removed the wounds his cult gave me and scars I’d had from childhood, my travels with Xena when he; took everything from me.”

Tears burned Aphrodite’s eyes and solidified into a hard lump in her throat. “‘Never’ sounds like he did it more than once…”

Gabrielle kept her gaze steadfastly on the wall. “You really want to know?”

The goddess braced herself. “I really wanna know.”

“Whether he did it to me in the lava pit or not, though that’s pretty much a surefire yes… and whether it was really him or just my imagination; he’s done it to me more times than I can count, Aphrodite. Any time I get stuck in fire or, like you said, too scared or upset, I feel him on and in me. His foul laughter echoes in my ears as he takes me from all sides all at once– tearing me to pieces, burning me inside and out; all of it– every chance he gets, even if it only lasts a moment… Trapped in the tavern by that mob; giving birth to Hope; abandoning her; watching her die, all three times; each anniversary of those five days; f-facing Callisto in Solan’s place; w-when Xena dragged me out of the Amazon village; in Illusia; shot with that poison arrow and slowly suffocating… What else?

“Ah, yes, the Rivers of Memory, without a doubt, and when Tataka and Mephistopheles possessed me and I got turned into a demon, for sure; every time Alti showed up; on any battlefield with explosions; when- your family hit our cart and sent it over the cliff with that blaze of glory; twice with the cannibals and once in Higuchi. …I let him and my feelings about him overtake me at Helicon, and Brunhilda surrounding me as eternal flame panicked me just as much as it did you, you know; before I blacked out. Whenever I dream of those things now… Over and over. Dahak can even reach into my past. He joins me in King Solus’s crematorium and-” Her breath shuddered. “That’s why I hate burning the dead. But Xena asked me to… for her. To save her, even though she must have already known- …And Amazon law demands it. But if we never burned Hope and I hadn’t- then her father might not have been able to- Please, when I die-”

Shaking just even worse with suppressed tears than Gabrielle was, Aphrodite interjected with a perky, “Oh, don’t worry! I’ll put you a nice ice cave like Air did! And fire is banned in this place from here on out! All sad, scary stuff too! I-”

Two hearts joined into one when the friends crushed each other in an embrace strong enough to meld their spirits.

“I’ll never let anything like that happen to you again, Gabrielle. I stayed away before o-out of respect for your privacy, and your relationship with Xena, but now-”

“But now?”

Bright blue eyes looked away from sea-like ones. “Little one, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be-”

“Not just for not being with you in a way you could… before, but. But… I really thought…”

Quizzical and not, the mortal regarded the deity. “Thought what?”

“I thought I’d kept you safe from him. Put you out of his reach-”

“Ah.” She smiled wanly. “You probably did, Aphrodite. It’s probably all in my mind.”

“But- That-” Aphrodite grabbed her friend’s face in both hands. “Let me- fix it!”

“How?”

“I dunno! …I bet I could conjure your bowl from Mnemosyne’s temple, like I did with your mother’s flowers!”

“No.”

Agitation slipping over into anger, the goddess sprung to her feet. “Yes, I could!”

Gabrielle reached for her, squeezing her forearms. “Aphrodite, no. You don’t have to. And I don’t want you to.” Her quarter-smile became even more wistful as she looked away from her friend. “It’s like I decided back then, you know? If I give up my bad memories, then I lose the good ones too. And I lose all the inner strength I got from coping with the hard stuff.”

Tears glistened in her friend’s eyes. “My little one is so wise. Just like- Theenie was so proud of you that day. Me too, of course, but …yeah. She helped me a lot after you first got here. I was freaking out! So, she gave me her blessing to heal you, just in case. I didn’t even have to ask. And it wasn’t the first time. Do you remember—” Aphrodite shook her head to try and focus — “She liked you a lot, you know. We all did… You should’ve heard us girls arguing over who got to be your patron goddess, the champion of the darling of Mount Olympus.”

She chuckled. “’Meter said you were hers because you’re the earthy, home-n-hearth type like her. She almost won too after you played house with Xena and baby Eve in the Northern Steppes. ’Liope lay claim to you because you’re a bard, and your scrolls are what kept you and Xena together there and after. Of course, Artie had rights to you as Queen of her Amazons. And Theenie said you showed great wisdom all your life. But I won without even trying ’cuz you’re such a lovey dove. …I really miss them sometimes, you know?” The corners of her lips turned up in a rueful smile. “Of course, Air was really pulling for Auntie Celesta to win. He was steamed ’cuz none of the rest of us would let him kill you so he could get Xena back. That’s why he was so stoked and went a little crazy when I brought you here…”

Lips twitching into a full smile, Gabrielle said, “I’m glad to have disappointed him.”

Aphrodite giggled. “Me too,” she agreed before flopping back down onto the bed. “But if there’d’ve been a goddess of falling, she’d’ve won for sure!”

“Aph-”

“It’s true! Hey! Remember when Xena was Miss Amphipolis?”

Bewildered yet again, Gabrielle asked, “Uh, yeah?”

“You should’ve been a contestant in that pageant too! Your talent would’ve been falling really, really far down everywhere you go! No, really, it’s amazing! The judges would’ve been mondo impressed! Ten out of ten for consistency, drama, and execution, for sure! Not to mention, creativity! You al-”

“Aphrodite!”

The goddess squealed and squirmed under the furious tickle attack launched against her. “Really! You know what I’m gonna get you for your next birthday?”

“No, and I don’t want to!”

“Yes, you do! ’Cuz I’m gonna get you a parachute!”

Gabrielle blinked and cocked her head to the side as she leaned over her friend. “A what?”

“Hee!” Aphrodite squealed louder. “So, so cute!” Close to cackling, she turned her friend’s face side-to-side in small, rapid movements between her palms. “A-goo-goo-goo!”

“Ugh!” The mortal all but clawed at the alabaster hands on her cheeks to pull them off.

“Ain’t that the word of the day?” The goddess chuckled. “Ugh, right! Non-goddess in the room! It’s like…” Pouting in thought, she reached for the words. “That parchment thing Xena made to catch that fish at the lake you- Oh! Wait for it! Fell into—” her giggles interrupted her for a moment— “trying to kiss your reflection!”

Gabrielle puffed out her breath. “And whose fault was that?”

Aphrodite’s grin only widened. “Gee, who could it be? Ooh! I just remembered; I think she also used one to catch daddy’s lightning and hit that giant.”

“I remember it. I don’t think she’d call it a …parachute, though.”

“It’ll be called a kite in the future. But a parachute is kinda like that. Only it stays folded up in a bag you carry on your back until you need it. Then you pull a cord so it bursts out of the bag to catch the wind and keep you from plummeting to your doom. It could be very useful to you! Really!”

Mildly pink, Gabrielle scoffed and rolled her eyes. She unwittingly echoed her friend when her skin heated and her hand lifted to rub the back of her neck. “Whatever, Aphrodite.”

“You need one!”

“I’m not that bad!”

“Yes, you are! You wanna know the real reason I didn’t recognize you in Rome? You weren’t flailing and clawing at the air with a dopey look on your face! You didn’t actually fall! How was I supposed to know it was you? Also, I don’t know if you noticed, but your …uh, performance made me sit up. I was like, ‘That little weirdo is gonna fall off those shields! Wait, fall? Gabby?!’ before Caligula- …made me sleep.”

All at once, the brightness of the atmosphere faded, the air seeming to go with it.

“Aphrodite…”

“Don’t worry about it.”

#

 

“Put that down right now, young lady!”

Gabrielle jumped and dropped her quill. “Aw, Aphrodite!” she complained, trying to mop up the splotch of ink before it could settle too deeply into her parchment. “I was just-”

“Directly disobeying mommy! Leave it, little one!”

“But!”

“No way am I letting you have this over on me! My goddess stock would plummet even more if the story got out! Plus, it’d make my actual worshippers jealous!”

“But-”

Aphrodite fixed her friend with a faux-intimidating look, glowering at her and putting her hands on her hips. “No way does the world get to know that I’m totally whipped for a total dork! Besides! You like eating, right? Who’s gonna make your meals if you offend all my priestesses? They don’t get special treatment like my little one does.”

Gabrielle took her turn putting on an incredulous, mocking expression. “Your love for me knows no bounds.”

“Gab-byyyyy!”

“Go on. Keep talking,” she said, lowering her head and waving her fingers in a beckoning gesture. “Tell me more about this special mortal.”

“Nuh-uh. No way! And just for that!” The deity waved her hand and made all of the bard’s writing supplies disappear.

“No!” Gabrielle cried in not-so-feigned outrage. “Aphrodite!” Tossing aside the sheets she’d draped over her lap, she took a flying leap out of bed.

Eyes going wide to accommodate the real fear blooming within them, Aphrodite took multiple steps back as she threw up her hands to fend the bard off. “It was just a joke!” she said anxiously. She conjured the scrolls, quill, and ink jar into her own hands and then shoved them at Gabrielle. “Here!”

The human received them with rising regret. “Aphrodite…”

“Gotta fly!” The goddess too disappeared in a shimmer of gold sparks.

#

 

Gabrielle wandered along a nature trail to a waterfall. Bowing over the array of flowers in her arms and smelling them deeply, she found that the scent of the daisies newly reminded her of her friend in addition to her mother.

“They’re pretty. But not as pretty as my little one,” a warm voice caressed her with the light breeze.

She leaned into both. “You’re pretty, Aphrodite.”

“Tell me something I don’t know!”

“I couldn’t,” she answered. “This place is pretty too…” A smile lit her face when her friend wrapped her in an embrace from behind.

“Was that a wiggle?” The goddess laughed. “My little one is getting way too comfortable!”

“Pft. Is that a problem?”

“No.”

“Good!”

A strange bird cry lifted the bard’s head and opened her eyes as the technicolor animal flew over the pair.

“Kooky too.” Gabrielle giggled, thinking back to the puff-ball bunnies and bubble-encircled butterflies she’d found in the meadow where she picked her bouquet a while ago. “I should have known you had something to do with Illusia. It was so wacky.” A chuckle fell from her lips. “Like that place I got sent to when you knocked me in the head with that pulley on the dock. But of course!”

“I’ve got style!”

“You’ve got something…”

Soft, hesitant, and hopeful, Aphrodite asked, “Do I have you?”

The mortal grinned. “You have me.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 7: Exculpation

 

*Sorry the ending keeps changing. But I think I finally found the conclusion this story has been missing. It also helped me work out my less than positive feelings toward Xena and the GabrEna (my name for the Gabrielle/Xena pairing) ship overall, along with tying up a few other loose ends. Yay! :’)

 

“Hey, Gabby?” Aphrodite again asked out of a blue that was quite pale.

Gabrielle gave the goddess a wan smile over gritted teeth. “I don’t want to talk about …Hope or; her father or …anything to do with them anymore.” She turned away from the patient sympathy staring her straight in the face. “Not for a while, anyway.”

“That’s fine. I understand.”

The mortal tilted her head to the side to ask, “Then what is it?”

Bright blue eyes avoided her gaze. “I actually… wanted to ask you about …Xena.”

“Oh…” Not bereaved but neither glad for the topic, Gabrielle brought her knees up under her chin and wrapped her arms around them. Green-blue eyes seemed to stare through the ornate rug and marble flooring beneath it.

Aphrodite did not hesitate to stand from her overstuffed chair and sit beside Gabrielle on the bed to put an arm over the bard’s shoulders. “Do you not want to talk about her either, sweet pea? That’s fine too, you know.”

Rather than look up into her friend’s face, Gabrielle relaxed most of her muscles to flop against the goddess’s side, grinning and earning a delighted “Hee!” along the way.

“I’d forgotten you used to do that- as… well, a baby! Hee! My little one!” Aphrodite celebrated as she gathered the mortal’s sweet face between her hands to do a leisurely repeat of the move that had earned her an “Ugh!” from Gabrielle days prior. Then she grabbed a pillow to drop on her lap before redirecting the bard’s head onto it. Fondly, she mused, “Your hair grows so fast. When you don’t mess with it, anyway…” while finger-combing the blond locks that curled around Gabrielle’s shoulders at the ends.

“Do you like it better long?” the woman asked as she enjoyed the sensations along her scalp.

“Y- um, well.” Aphrodite took a moment to think about it as she got absorbed in the familiar action. “I don’t really think my opinion matters, sweet pea. It’s your hair.”

Gabrielle shrugged. “Xena liked it long. Joxer too.” Pain began to suffuse into her smile.

“Then I say no. Because I am Team Gabs, and you obviously prefer it short.”

The mortal flopped around to lay on her back, Aphrodite switching to smoothing her bangs out of her eyes, and almost absently reached up to twirl the white-blond tresses that would otherwise itch her nose. “Has your hair always been curly like this?” she asked.

The goddess nodded. “More or less, I guess.” The tiniest of pouts puckered her lips when she asked, “Why, would you prefer something else?”

Her friend beamed, chuckling. “My opinion really doesn’t matter, Aphrodite.”

A smile that didn’t quite spark in Aphrodite’s eyes stretched her lips. “It does to me,” she said quietly.

“Then your opinion matters to me!”

She came back to herself to stick her tongue out at the mortal. “Then remember what I said ten seconds ago! Geez, Gabs! Has anyone ever told you that you can be like, a total ditz?”

“Ugh!” Gabrielle threw her hands up in the air, scoffing and leaving her mouth gaping, same as she years ago.

The deity’s face scrunched up. “No, wait. I don’t like that memory. It came just before I learned that weird succubus-monster-thing Caligula stole my godhood! Whoa!” Not having expected a gentle hand to come for and cup her cheek, Aphrodite jolted away from it before returning to it and even holding it in place with both hands.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you, Aphrodite,” Gabrielle said in a voice that was softer than both her hair and her palm were.

A shadow of a smile gave little light to the goddess’s face. “It’s fine.”

Gabrielle shook her head, taking her turn pressing eye contact on her friend. “No, it’s not. It’s never okay when a man takes a woman’s power and identity like that.” A delayed reflection of Aphrodite’s non-smile turned up the corner of her lips too. “Believe me, I know on that one.”

“Oh, little one…” Aphrodite leaned over to hug her friend, chest-to-chest. “What happened to me isn’t nearly as bad as what happened to you.”

“It had the same result. Worse actually, in a way. At least I didn’t lose the same amount of power you did.”

“But I- you- …”

“Comparing hardships is pointless, isn’t it?”

“I guess so,” Aphrodite agreed. “Hey,” she added after a moment.

“Yeah?”

“Would you like to become a goddess …someday? There’s plenty of space on Mount Olympus… You could be- the- the new goddess of wisdom.” She strengthened her grip on her friend so as not to have to face her just then. “…Please? It’d be a lot nicer than only having Air to hang out with for all eternity.” The goddess of love attempted a laugh with poor results.

“Oh, gods. Ares. You’re doing a terrible job of selling this idea to me, you know.”

The pair sighed out weak giggles.

“Okay then, my little warrior. Then how about we depose Air and you become the goddess of war? And falling! Can’t forget the falling. …Or just clumsiness. Hey! It’d work.”

“Ugh,” Gabrielle faux-complained as she freed herself from Aphrodite’s grasp to cross her arms over her chest. “I have the worst friends ever.”

“Hey! At least you have more than one. And think of poor Air! He’s never even had one. No wonder he bothered you guys all the time.”

“What he did to us was more than bother, Aphrodite.”

“And the sky is blue. So?”

#

 

Over a late lunch, Gabrielle asked, “Aphrodite?”

The goddess laughed. “We’ve gotta find a better way to start conversations! This is getting ridiculous! Alright, alright; what?” she asked when her friend put down her food and folded her hands in her lap, gaze fastened to it.

“Nevermind.”

Aphrodite pouted. “Aw, that’s not fair! Come on!”

“But it might make you sad. No, it will definitely make you sad.”

Then she shrugged a little aggressively. “And my questions made you sad. It’s fine.”

Gabrielle looked up at her. “Is that your new catchphrase?” Her eyebrows shot up upon seeing the hard look on her friend’s face.

“Is that really the question you want to ask me?”

The mortal re-lowered her head. “No…”

“Then what is it?”

She let out a long, shaky sigh. “Where’s Cupid? And Bliss? I …know the Twilight was …bad, but Xena didn’t take them out. Weren’t, aren’t there hundreds of gods in this country? Off the top of my head, there’s them and Psyche, Hermes, Morpheus, Lachrymose… all sorts. You mentioned Demeter and Calliope too, didn’t you?”

“Do you actually want me to answer, or do you just want to keep asking? This isn’t a Greek mythology quiz.”

Though Gabrielle did not miss her friend’s tone and facial expression of humor, she still affected contriteness. “Sorry, I- I just; I-”

“Are returning to your roots as the little chatterbox who can talk her way into and out of trouble all at the same time. It’s cute.” Aphrodite turned from light teasing to melodrama as she widened her eyes and made a gesture of pushing down and outward from her chest. “Way better than the silent treatment you gave me all those years ago. …Though that admittedly had its redeeming moments.”

“Are you going to keep avoiding the question or answer it?” Gabrielle countered, mimicking the deity’s previous attitude.

Aphrodite sighed. “Some of us are lying low while most went abroad to be reimagined as something else. Cupid, Psyche, Bliss, and a lot of the others got out completely before… Theenie declared war on you guys. They knew as …we all, really, did; that our time is ending.” Sad and yet accepting, she continued, “Your friend Eli’s been edging me out as the god of love for decades now. Or, well, I guess he wasn’t really your friend. Sorry. …I don’t know.”

“When you say ‘got out completely,’ do you mean… they died?”

Profound heartache shone through the other emotions on her face. “No, but they… died to the rest of us. It’s hard to explain. It’s kind of like what Air did for you and Eve. They gave up their godhood but did so in a way that they severed all ties related to it. They… didn’t want to be hunted. I told Cupid you guys wouldn’t do that, but- You know, with a baby… he didn’t want to take any chances. Neither did Psyche. Nor did any of the others who went with them and then split up.”

“Why didn’t you go with them?”

“Why? Are you sorry I didn’t?”

Gabrielle answered the ribbing with moderate seriousness. “Ah, I was just thinking that, but in reverse. I’m sorry for your part. You …lost your whole family.”

“Your fault,” Aphrodite answered in a similar vein. “Not only because I had to be sure you were okay, but naughty-baby you tricked me! By making me give myself a heart that was a copy of yours, you made me more human. Left me like that for decades too. Your goodness infected me! I began to take my position as goddess of love more seriously.” Weaker than ever, her smile reemerged. “But I was still stupid. I worried that if I gave up my godhood, love would disappear from the world.”

The bard reached across the table to cover her friend’s hand with her own. “That wasn’t stupid, Aphrodite. You were right! Look what happened after C… uh, before you bit that Golden Apple.”

The goddess could not smile but rather frowned and caved into herself much like she had upon revealing her involvement with Hope. “That was a fluke. No, really! It was. War still existed without Air; hunting without Artie, terror without Deimos. It was just- …I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”

“Whatever it was, it proved one thing for sure! You’re the better deity of love!” Gabrielle exclaimed to try and make Aphrodite smile for real.

A head of white-blond hair popped up in response. “What?”

“Well, Eli couldn’t keep love in the world without you, could he? You’re vital.”

Aphrodite grinned, both comforted and mischievous. “Say that again!”

Gabrielle acted the overdramatic fool for the first time in a long time. “Oh, great goddess! How we lowly mortals need you! Don’t leave us! Don’t ever leave us!” she cried, standing only to swoon at her friend’s feet and pretend to kiss them. “Bless us with your love, oh glorious one!”

“HEE!”

#

 

In bed, rolling around tickling and pillow-fighting each other, Gabrielle and Aphrodite called a truce to catch their breath.

“So, you ever gonna let me ask my question about Xena,or what?”

The bard froze. “O-oh. Um-”

“No, no. You’re right. Later. For now… Hee-yah!” the immortal cried before bringing her pillow down on her friend’s face.

“Ugh!”

Their battle restarted in earnest.

#

 

“Okay,” Gabrielle panted a long time later. “I’m ready.”

“Are you sure?”

“Uh-huh. …Are not ready anymore?” She again tossed and turned to get a better look at her friend.

“I dunno. I don’t want to ruin the moment. Let’s sleep now and try again another day?”

“Hmm… alright.”

Aphrodite beamed when she saw her little one glance at her and bite her lip. Knowing what the mortal was struggling to decide, she threw her arms wide and said, “Come on. Come get your cuddle and listening sesh.”

Pink lips curved into a soft smile before Gabrielle wiggled her way back to the goddess and tossed herself partway onto Aphrodite. As ever, her ear nestled close to the artificial heart, its beating her favorite lullaby, the accompanying emotional and physical wrapping, her refuge.

#

 

But the day did not come for more than a week. Gloom inside and outside the villa set the perfect atmosphere for the conversation, Aphrodite thought. Visual, soundless confirmation from Gabrielle set the stage.

“Were- …I don’t know how to make this come out the right way, so… uh, please forgive me any insensitivity, but …were you always miserable with Xena? I thought you guys…”

Breathless before she could even begin laughing from sheer relief, the mortal answered with an emphatic, awe-filled, “No.”

Aphrodite frowned in confusion. “But you made it sound like-”

Gabrielle shook her head as she rolled over onto her back and put her hands behind her head in another echo of the goddess’s mannerisms. “I was focusing on the negative, Aphrodite. I wasn’t …lying, but what I said and did wasn’t true. Your focus determines your reality, you know. That’s something I’ve learned o- …in my life.”

“And yet the girl doesn’t want to be the goddess of wisdom!” Aphrodite bantered over her beaming pride.

But Gabrielle was not yet ready to smile. “That’s why I was so horrible to you.”

“Oh, Gabby.” Her friend scooted closer to her and laid down half on top of her for a change. Her cheek moved against the center of the mortal’s chest when she smiled, and her arms squeezed Gabrielle tight. “You weren’t horrible. You were hurting.”

“I was horrible; both.” The bard got lost in thought.

“You wanna know what I think?”

Gabrielle blinked as her eyes refocused on her outer reality. “Uh, sure.”

“Everything Xena did, right or wrong, came from a good place. I heard what she told you before you guys …charged into Dahak’s temple for the last time. There were times when you were both very confused, she said. Really, it was her, though. Right or wrong too, you’ve always been a pretty clear person. Your confusion welled from her, while hers did too. Geez, little one. Your heart’s suddenly going crazy. What gives?”

“It always surprises me when you do that,” the mortal answered, slightly pulling her friend to the side and laid a hand on her own chest to calm the organs within it.

Aphrodite lifted her head to rest on her elbows as she peered down curiously at Gabrielle. “Do what?”

“Unleash your uncanny insight! I don’t expect it.”

The goddess chuckled before tapping her index finger on the back of her friend’s hand rather than jab her in the chest. “Because you still think I’m as dumb as I pretend to be a lot of the time.” She shrugged in lighthearted self-consciousness. “And just am the rest.”

Gabrielle took a few deep breaths while shaking her head before reaching up and pulling her friend back down. “No, you’re not. Tell me more. Please.”

“Okay. …Well, one thing I think you never quite took into account was the sheer weight of the guilt she carried around; or the lengths she would go to protect you. …And neither one of you was very good at taking the other’s perspective, after a while. Or; well; for a while there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Of course, you were always better at it than she was, to a certain extent-”

Gabrielle held up a hand. “Don’t worry about niceties. I’m fine. Just tell me.”

Aphrodite frowned slightly. “Yes, ma’am, miss bossy lady.” She shook her head to bypass further distraction. “Hmm… For starters, she felt really, really guilty you had Hope in the first place. Part of destroying Hope– and later, Caesar, more than ever– was Xena’s way of repaying that debt, to you. You obviously know that even as a warlord, she would not attack women and children, but did she ever tell you that one of the first steps on her path to redemption was refusing to let her men kill a baby?”

The bard nodded as her eyes became unfocused.

“But she was willing to against all that– sacrifice everything too– for you. Xena knew… Hope had to die and didn’t want the burden to be on your shoulders, especially so soon after- She wanted you to be able to return to living your life like everything in Brittania never happened.”

Unwittingly, Gabrielle began to hum under her breath. ‘Thought I could protect you… Deliver you from evil/ Spare your innocence and youth…’ “Xena wasn’t only singing about Ming T’ien at the end of our time in Illusia, was she?”

“No. …This will sound funny, but she was almost like the husband of a woman who gets pregnant with another man’s baby. Because he loves his wife so dearly and doesn’t want to blame her, he turns his anger and obsession on the unborn child. He thinks if he can just get rid of it, then things will to go back to the way they were before it was conceived. His marriage will be as strong as ever because the symbol and reminder of her infidelity will be gone, and he and his wife will never have to think about it ever again. He wrongly thinks it’s that easy… Of course, it’s not a perfect example!” Aphrodite rushed to say. “Xena only blamed herself– and Khrafstar and Dahak– for Hope’s conception, never you; but-”

Gabrielle smiled wanly. “I get what you mean.”

The goddess released a small sigh of relief. “Okay, good.” Her face reflected her friend’s. “And you know how Xena was about her loved ones being in danger. She chased you across Brittania because she thought your life literally depended on it, that your putting yourself alone with Hope would get you killed. Given the choice between keeping you happy and keeping you safe, she chose the latter and stuck with it. Putting your feelings aside was putting you first to her.” Aphrodite smiled even as tears sparkled on her eyelashes. “Her fear made her unreasonable just like Theenie’s did to her.”

“Yeah…”

“Plus, you already said the other part. She didn’t- never- …thought of you as a mother. Not out of spite or intentional invalidation toward you, but; Hope was never a real person to her. And since she was never a child and nothing like you, to Xena, you weren’t Hope’s mother, a mother at all. So, she expected you to be able to kill off Hope as easily as she slashed apart those …dryads or whatever. Cut and dried, easy-peasy. You know?”

The bard nodded a second time, sad only in a detached sort of way. “Yeah…”

“And you were the same way about her vision,” Aphrodite tried to state with as little accusation as possible. “That it bothered her so much annoyed you, same as your feelings toward Hope annoyed her. You know? But think about if your roles were reversed. What if you’d had that vision of her dying because of you? Would you really be so gung-ho about constantly leading her into danger and keeping her by your side? Would-”

“No,” Gabrielle answered in the same stunned way she had minutes ago.

“So, you see what I mean? You didn’t understand each other but also didn’t really try. But that’s understandable. You two went through a lot. And there was always more ahead of you. The life you cho- lived left very little time for reflection. That’s another reason your writing suffered, by the way. But I didn’t think you’d appreciate me saying that back then.”

“Maybe you should be the goddess of wisdom, Aphrodite,” the mortal murmured.

Her friend shrugged and smiled in an ungenuine fashion. “I’ve had to be a lot of things with the others gone…”

“I’m s-”

“So sweet. Mwa!” Aphrodite sidestepped the unnecessary apology to grab her friend’s face between her palms and lift it up to kiss her on the forehead. Then her mood dropped somewhat. “But you guys were happy together, right?”

“Yeah. I- …To be honest, and after spending all this time with you, I’m not sure our– mine and Xena’s– relationship was totally healthy, but it was real. And indispensable. We loved each other deeply. As much as we hurt each other, we helped each other even more. …My life was so empty before I met her. And it became empty again even with her, hence I spent so much time looking in the wrong places– Khrafstar, Najara, Aiden, Eli, etc.— for something that would give my life meaning …when she was right beside me the whole time.” Gabrielle pulled herself from her musings to smile at Aphrodite. “And above me. …Or wherever you were.”

Her friend smiled back even as she shook her head. “Nah, I wasn’t a part of that.” The goddess tapped the mortal’s nose. “But thanks for saying it.”

“I guess…” the bard agreed and didn’t. “You know, as much as I wrote off- or didn’t even really think Xena ever went on a spiritual quest, I think she did. But hers was a lot subtler and quicker than mine was. She knew her answer was me much sooner than I knew mine was her.” Again, Gabrielle’s voice took on a dreamy quality. “…I don’t think she ever knew how much that meant to me. After; after Hope died the last time, and we both knew it; Xena said I was her way. I couldn’t accept that just then, but it was true. I was a part of her. And she was a part of me. And all our searching, no matter the dead ends it led us to, meant something because we traveled that path together.” Her tone became rueful and frustrated.

"If only we had been together more! All those little missions one of us got herself and the other into, they pulled us apart more often than not. She did one thing; I did another. Or outside forces stole one of us from the other. But… I guess we thought we had all the time in the world to be together. …And now.” Gabrielle began to cry. “And now I fear we’ll never be together again.”

“Oh, little one! You will! Definitely! Remember? In your next lives and every one after that!” Aphrodite tried to reassure the mortal, hugging her tighter than ever.

“Things change, Aphrodite. Like, how could I be reborn after accepting your offer to become a goddess? Nevermind. …You know something that still haunts me?”

“No,” the deity answered around the small lump in her throat.

“We- Well, she sent Solan to the Elysian fields. …Where he’ll be waiting for her forever. Xena’s either stuck in Japa or will keep being reborn over and over. Or we’ll end up sticking around in Heaven or Hell. …That little boy has been waiting for his mother for years and years and will never stop waiting for her, because Hope killed him well before his time. I killed him.”

“I-”

“No, Aphrodite. It was me. Hope was my child. And… I- I knew what she was. But I couldn’t accept it. I knew she killed Kaleipus almost as soon as we saw him. But I still sent Hope to his hut because I wanted to believe in her goodness, wanted to believe that we could defeat Callisto and then travel along as a family, the four of us— Xena, Solan, Hope, and me— all of us together, happy and strong. Good. …I traded that boy’s life for a dream I knew could never come true. Because remember, I wanted to believe. But- after Kaleipus… I knew the truth.

“Gods, I know they can hear me now.” That soft voice became even fainter when Gabrielle breathed, “Please forgive me; please forgive me. …A-and please don’t.” Full eyes lifted to similarly streaming ones. “Do you think-”

Having been waiting impatiently for another chance to pounce on her friend, Aphrodite took it in a heartbeat. “Oh, little one! Of course they forgive you! It was an accident! No, stop it! I know that! Xena knew that, and Solan does too! And I’m sure Kaleipus would understand if he’s half the guy you’ve made him out to be in the past. Now you have to know it too!”

“I can’t!” Gabrielle insisted, repeating what she had been trying to say when Aphrodite refused to hear it, “It wasn’t an accident.”

“Then it was a mistake!” The goddess tried to administer a little tough love. “Unless you wanted them to die and told Hope to kill them?”

“No, no! Never!” Gabrielle shook harder with her tears. “But that’s what happened. What I made happen. Sure, Hope actually did it, but she couldn’t have done it without me. I-”

“No, little one. We all played a part in that. It was a group ef- mistake. But in the end, it was fate. Any number of big and little things could have been different and worked out differently, but… the result would have been the same. I firmly believe that.”

“So, I was fated to be …attacked like I was? To bear and birth and lose Hope?”

“I- …That.” Aphrodite sat up on her knees to tilted her head back and abate her own flow of tears. “Yes. The only answer is yes. Not because you deserved it; not because anyone but that cult would have wanted it so; it just was. Everything happens for a reason. Some better than others, but there’s always a reason. And there’s only so much anyone can do to avoid their fate. Maybe something… far worse would have happened to Solan if …Hope hadn’t-”

“What did she do?” Gabrielle asked without conscious intention.

They both cringed and winced with the statement’s escape from her mouth.

“Well, she didn’t hurt him… per sé. I… I think she just used her power to send his soul out of his body. That’s why he wasn’t, wasn’t injured when Xena f-found him…”

Gabrielle shuddered before another question leapt into her mouth and almost dove off of her tongue, but she thought she knew the answer. “I guess she didn’t do that to the rest of us because she, like Callisto, wanted to watch us suffer, eh?”

Aphrodite shrugged her way to sitting back on her feet. “I guess so.”

“But also like Callisto, maybe, maybe she wasn’t all evil? Maybe-”

“You know she wasn’t. But… That doesn’t mean that you- and Xena- were wrong to…”

“Kill her? Time and again?”

She huffed out a breath in looking to the side. “Yeah.”

“I still don’t see how hurting someone who loved me so much was a good thing. Could ever have been good.”

“Necessary things aren’t always good. And the easy things are rarely right.”

The bard tried to smile as she too let out a long sigh. “Let’s become the goddesses of wisdom together.”

“Hm, okay.”

“Then we can declare war on the Fates. I kinda want to burn their loom again.”

A subdued smile spread across the goddess’s face. “I know what you mean.” Then she got a little excited. “Hey! You know, with Caesar getting out of the underworld and starting that whole thing, I bet we could spring Solan out of there too. Spirit him to Heaven to stay there or be reborn to you guys again.”

Eagerness tingled over Gabrielle’s skin. “You really think so?"

“Sure! Totally! Let’s go tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Great! But first, we’re gonna need this! …Ooh, it’s not slowing down! Please catch it; please catch it!” The deity cringed as the spinning chakram tore its way back onto their plane of existence. Then she screamed and toppled over to lay flat on the bed.

Her friend’s hand shot up on instinct, caught the weapon, and put it down on the side table without conscious thought.

Aphrodite tried to giggle away her fear. “Whew, that was close, eh?”

“Uh-huh,” Gabrielle answered just as distractedly as her arm moved. “…But Aphrodite?”

The immortal stared in astonishment at the bard before nervously shrugging and then scooching closer to her to hug her tight. “Y-yes?”

“What if part of me was like Hope?” Gabrielle asked softer than a breath, eyes reflecting the moon in the dim light.

“Hm?” Aphrodite asked from the depths of nuzzling her friend’s shoulder.

“What if she got some of her darkness from me? What if, like her; …I wanted Xena to suffer for making me give her up and all that came after that? What if I– part of me– sent Hope to Solan… not necessarily to kill him, but to hurt him in some way? Hurt him like Xena hurt us?”

“Oh.” Aphrodite propped herself up on an elbow again. One of her hands went to caress Gabrielle’s hair and face. “That’s pretty dark, little one… But you know what else it is?”

The woman’s eyes and that voice dulled despite appreciating the affection. “What?”

“Human. Or godly. We get petty and cruel like that too. I think it’s just part of being on this Earth. Everyone has mean thoughts and vengeful wishes and such. That’s why actions can be so much more important-”

“But my action was to send a- ...a demon to an innocent without even checking on them…”

“Gabrielle, even at your worst, you would never willfully hurt or kill a true innocent. You loved that boy and, like you said, had just come off risking yourself for him. So, stop it. I think something Air told Xena, lots of us, was right. Don’t just look at the end results. Note the intention too. …Like with that boy in the desert.”

Gabrielle flinched as if slapped though the goddess’s words seemed well-timed and placed for some reason.

“Yes. Korah, wasn’t it? You stabbed him, and he died. Unlike Meridian, he was a true innocent. But you know what? So were you. You acted on instinct to protect Xena and have since learned to overcome …most of your feelings about that. You can’t blame yourself more for a death you didn’t actually cause than for one you did… You know what I mean?” Before the bard could answer, the goddess added, “And remember that feelings aren’t facts.”

The woman sighed her heaviest yet. “I guess you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right. Which is only made greater by the fact that you’re wrong!” Aphrodite did not quite recapture the light mood they had enjoyed for the last few days, but a noticeable improvement did dawn on the horizon. She worked harder at bringing it to fruition as she delicately picked up the chakram between her thumb and index finger to pass the weapon to her friend and said, “I trust you. You’re ready.”

Gabrielle’s breath caught in her chest. “Th-thanks, Aphrodite.” With reverence and awe, she took back her chakram.

The goddess smiled. “You’re welcome, little one. Always!”

 

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