Blood and Roses Realm | Fan Fiction Site | Home Page
This page was last updated: August 31, 1998
(c)August 1998
URL: willow8.htmlThe following is a bit of alternative fiction based on certain characters from the Xenaverse It is not meant to infringe on anyone else's rights. If you don't agree or disapprove, please go read something else.
This story is part of an Altaverse based on Bite Me and the Fonder Heart. It can be found, along with other such stories, at The Realms of the Xenaverse, under Blood and Roses. Xena is Ares' Daughter and Gabrielle is Bacchus' Daughter
Characters from Buffy: Vampire Slayer have also been borrowed for the purposes of this story. All of this is written with the utmost affection and the no desire for renumeration (except for possible emails). The same above disclaimer is in effect. There are certain changes that have been made to accomadate this particular Xenaverse. Buffy's Vampires are really part of the Kin, renamed for purposes of this story
Xex Alert: Yes, there definitely will be, between two consenting immortal women even. Maybe even more
Violence Alert: Yes, probably, given that this is a story involving slayage and Xena.
"Oookkkaaayyyy...." Xander clapped his hands together once, drawing everyone's attention to him. "I guess that about sums it up, huh? So it's business as usual. Stakes anyone? Shall we go slay some beasties?"
Xena stalked across the room and got right in the young man's face... Xander blinked, so lost for a moment in the endless blue of the warrior's eyes that he didn't hear her growling words.
"Huh?" he asked dumbly, soaking in the combination of piercing eyes, bronze skin, and sharp cheekbones. Man... this was a woman right out of his dreams.
"I said, what do you mean we?" the warrior asked in an icy tone.
"Uh... you know, we-- the team," Xander stuttered. "Us." He gestured around the room, ignoring Cordelia's Don't you dare look at me, Xander... I'm not getting blood on this hundred dollar blouse look that she gave him whenever he tried to include her in the messy end of their slayer adventures. It occurred to him, Maybe this Xena's like Cordy... She doesn't like the rough stuff... Although you could have certainly fooled him.
"Slaying. Is. Not. A. Team. Sport." Xena spat out the words. She flicked an accusing glance at Giles, who wilted under the visual assault.
Xander held up his hands in surrendering motion. "Hey... that's cool. You don't have to come if you don't want to. It is kinda dangerous." He flashed his most debonair smile at her, the one that always worked with Willow. "You can stay with Giles and keep him company." He jerked his head around at the snort of laughter from Cordelia. "I suppose that means you have something to say."
"Aren't you forgetting a little something, Mr. Clueless?" his sometimes-girlfriend-sometimes-biggest-pain- in-the-known-universe asked, a smug little smile playing over her patrician features. "The show is called Xena: Warrior Princess-- not Gabrielle: Wonder Bard."
He shot her an irritated look. "Yeah? So?"
"Yeah, so... you're seriously suggesting that Xena needs your help slaying?"
Slowly, Xander turned back over to the woman standing negligently in front of him. For the first time he appraised her sleek length through something other than lust-fogged eyes. Xena felt all the mortal gazes in the room fix on her with the same dawning recognition... and two sets of eyes in particular burned deep into her. One was the familiar, loving gaze of her eternal partner-- who knew in agonizingly pleasurable detail what the warrior looked like beneath the jeans and T-shirt she wore. The other was the intense stare of the slayer. She could feel the young woman's gray eyes raking over her body... measuring the breadth of her shoulders, running down the powerful muscles in her arms, focusing on the finely jointed wrists and hands tempered by years of swordwork. The dark woman's muscles twitched slightly under the roughly appraising stare... responding to the implicit challenge in the slayer's gaze. She felt the Fire warming her blood... its strength pulsing slickly through her body. She had lived as a mortal for so long now... had clamped down on the joy of the Fire as she rediscovered it, not wanting to unsettle her partner once more... whose uninterrupted millennia had tamed the craving heat of the Blood in her soul.
What Gabrielle had no way of knowing about her newly reborn partner, is that Ares' Fire burned as hotly in Xena now as it had when she had first embraced it. She tried to soothe it by spending long hours in the bard's arms, reconsummating their love, but sometimes-- more times than she wanted to admit-- even that delicious fire wasn't enough. She had taken to roaming the edges of their estate at night, preying on the adumbral dwellers who lurked near the Sunwalker waiting for an opportune moment. The warrior had dispatched them without much difficulty, and if the bard noticed a slackening in the malevolent nibbling at the fringes of their lives, she never said anything.
When autumn arrived, they returned to the City; and Xena embraced her larger hunting grounds. Word must have spread about the return of the DarkFire, for the challenges awaiting her there had grown. She knew this place so well, knew every nook and cranny where the vermin might hide. The evil she found there didn't only belong to the Twilight Realm. There were always the pimps who sold the girls and the smack and the guns. She had spent her mortal life here. Born in blood ten years prior... with no memory... just the whisper of a name on her lips. She must have come from somewhere... But the streets were the only thing she had ever known... until the angel-haired woman came to the stark room where she spread her legs for grunting, sweating men who paid for their fifteen minutes of pleasure there. Gabrielle certainly wasn't the only woman to have purchased Xena's ample charms, but she was certainly the only one-- male or female-- who had spoken to the whore's shattered soul. When their bodies touched, the claiming had been instant and irrevocable... and it had became the first step on the warrior's path of return.
"Warrior Princess..." Xander stammered. "The Warrior Princes... but... but.. but..."
"How come you're immortal too?" Willow asked the question that seemed to escape her friend's fumbling tongue. She had no doubt that Xena was immortal... but unless her aunt had managed to convey her gift... And wouldn't that make her like Angel? Willow's brow wrinkled in confusion... this whole thing was just too weird in a way. But a good way, a way that made her feel warm and cared for in a way she never had before.
Xena arched a lazy brow at Giles. "Watcher?" she prompted.
Giles seemed to jerk back to himself and immediately went into what Willow thought of as full "ancient text" mode, the one that irritated Buffy so much. She cast a worried glance at her slayer friend, but the blond seemed preoccupied with her perusal of the warrior's strong frame. Willow recognized that look-- it was the same one she had when Kendra had arrived and the two slayers first met. But there was something else in Buffy's eyes, something... darker... as she looked at Xena. Giles cleared his throat, and Willow turned her attention to the older man.
"Xena of Amphipolis," he recited. "Also known as The Destroyer of Nations and The Conqueror. In later years you became known as The Lioness of Amphipolis, but usually most common designation remained Warrior Princess throughout your mortal existence."
"Destroyer of Nations?" Cordelia echoed faintly, a disturbed look on her face.
"Sounds like you were quite a bad-ass," Xander offered weakly.
Xena flashed him an evil smile. "Were?" she mocked.
"Xena.." Gabrielle warned her lover, wrapping her arm securely around the taller woman's waist. "Quit scaring the children." She glanced at the slightly startled group of mortals. "She not that bad."
"Not anymore," Giles responded. "Before she gave up her army, she had managed to conquer half of Greece with an army considerably smaller than most historically significant generals."
"So what does that mean?" Buffy asked. "Do they give some kind of immortal merit badge for being a major ass-kicker?"
Xena chuckled lightly at the image. "Listen to your Watcher."
Taking his cue, Giles continued. "Many people assumed that Xena was one of Ares' Chosen and treated her accordingly."
"What's a Chosen?" This from Cordelia.
"One who is favored above all others by a specific god," Willow answered. "Each god in the Olympic pantheon was considered to have a Chosen... a mortal who carries out his or her will on earth."
Giles beamed at the red-head. "Very good, Willow," he said, ever the teacher praising a clever pupil. "What people didn't know... what Xena didn't know herself for many years-- indeed until well after she had become a heroic figure-- was that she wasn't Ares' Chosen."
"What was she?" Buffy asked.
"Ares' daughter."
A heavy silence fell across the dimly lit library as each of the mortals absorbed the statement. The slayer's eyes came to rest once more on the dark figure standing loosely in the bard's arms. That explains it... She's the daughter of a god. Then it came to her. The God of War....
Oh shit.
Willow's eyes were drawn to the pair as well, her own thoughts rampaging in a decidedly different direction. Ohmigod... Her aunt was the daughter of a god, and so was Xena... And they called her family. Willow didn't believe for one minute that anything god-like was going to happen to her. She knew she wasn't particularly extraordinary... even if she was really smart-- and that was just because she liked to study, but she wasn't about to tell anyone that. She was geeky enough as it was. Buffy's sudden movement off the table startled her from her introspection, and she refocused her eyes to see the small slayer standing angrily in front of the immortals.
"Let me see if I have this straight." She pointed at Gabrielle. "You
were supposed to be really good, and then you did something really bad...
but you overcame it because of your love for Xena." She pointed at Xena.
"And you were really bad, but you became good... because of your love for
Gabrielle." She looked thoughtfully at the pair. "So, it's really
the love that you two are supposed to have that is the ballast on this
cosmic teeter-totter that we're all on." She glanced back at Giles for
confirmation. "Right?"
"Well, that's not exactly how I would have put it, but yes... that's
a fairly accurate description, I would say," the Watcher concurred.
"So..." She looked back at the lovers. "What happens if someone manages to make one of you forsake that love?"
"Willow?" Angel's shoulders slumped disgustedly as he resumed his study of the hand he was methodically deboning. "Willow is a kin? That's the worst joke ever, Dru..." Now he was really pissed off. Druscilla's talk about the existence of the Sunwalker and her shadowy lover had begun to excite him for the first time since... well... since he had returned to himself.
"It's no joke, sweet Angel," she sang in his ear, dancing happily across the room, flitting from one man to the other. "She isn't kin... but the Sunwalker's essence runs through her veins."
"Enough to do us some good?" Spike asked. He knew the stories about the ancient ones, better than Dru did. If they could find a way to walk in the light...
"No, no no... but enough to make the Bard unwilling to deny the claim..."
"And unable to refuse her aid," Spike finished tiredly. "Hasn't this been tried before?" He vaguely remembered several stories about some demented blond ancient who was obsessed with the pair, and who had nearly succeeded in destroying the Conqueror. In fact, until Dru came dancing in with this tidbit, he thought she had been destroyed. Apparently, he needed to start brushing up on his lore.. of course, given his current condition, that was about all anyone thought he was good for.
"Oh, yes, my love... but she was missing the point. She wanted to destroy the Conqueror... the key to capturing the Ancient Bard is to claim her lover. And that's exactly what we'll do. But first I think we need to get to know the Conqueror again. A little outing is in order, I do believe."
"Guys, I hate to interrupt," Xander tried to pop his head between the two women who were staring at each other intently, in some kind of warrior-showdown that only they understood. "But time's awasting... Don't we have a date with the ghouls in the graveyard?"
Buffy and Xena both shot him withering looks. "Don't you have some... homework... to do somewhere?" Xena muttered at him through gritted teeth. The dismissal was clear in Xena's tone, and it cut sharply through the youth who backed away silently.
"As for you, little girl, Gabrielle and I aren't your concern..."
"Well, warriorbabe, you're wrong there... Since you seem to have invited yourselves to my party, you are my problem." Buffy spun on her heel and began striding out the door. "And for your information," she paused at the door and added in a tone as cold as any of them had ever heard from the slender girl. "I'm not a little girl. This is my show... I run it. Got it?" Without another backward glance, she slammed the library door open and stormed out.
Giles polished his glass once more as the echo of the slamming door reverberated through out the tomb-like room. "Ah... that could have gone... a little better, I suppose." He glanced at Xena with an indecipherable expression. "If you'll excuse me, I think I'll go... examine what kind of ramifcations there might be from your presence here."
Xander had slunk quietly out the door in the wake of Xena's curt words and Buffy's dramatic exit. Cordelia was fast on his heels to talk him out of doing something dumb, like trying to go out at defend the slayer's stupid honor. Honestly, she really liked Xander, but she was really getting sick of his Cult of Buffyworship.
That left the warrior, the bard, and the teenager.
Blood and Roses Realm | Fan Fiction Site | Home Page
This page was last updated: August 31, 1998
(c)August 1998
URL: willow8.html