ALL DISCLAIMERS STILL APPLY. SO THERE. =P
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CHAPTER TWELVE
Face-to-face
The bard and the warrior walked out of the tavern into the cool night air. Gabrielle curled herself against Xena's side under the cloak as they walked.
*I'm glad I forgot to bring a shawl,* she reflected as Xena fanned her hand along the exposed flesh of the bard's side.
The warrior sighed, relishing the contact and wishing for more. *This isn't the time and it definately isn't the place, warrior,* she said to herself.
"Uh...Gabrielle...where are we going?"
The bard smiled and nodded to an old woman as the two of them passed by. "To my family's barn."
*Great...just what we need...her FATHER knowing what's going on. He'll feed me to the Tigress faster than one could say 'Hello' and wave 'Good-bye'.*
"Gabrielle," said Xena, her quiet voice a breathy purr in the bard's ear, causing gooseflesh to ripple down her arms, "I don't think going to your barn is a good idea."
The blonde smiled through her pounding heart, "I know you're worried about my father...Killian," she snickered, "but I want to be alone with you. The barn is the best solution." She concluded the discussion by squeezing the warrior in her arms.
Xena returned the embrace, then used the quiet time to think and to make sure they weren't being followed. She felt as though Taj might be behind them, but thought that if she turned around to look, then she'd be giving herself away.
A good hundred paces behind them, a man crept in the shadows, careful to keep the duo in his line of sight, but not to look directly at the man in Gabrielle's arms. He had heard stories of how Xena's senses were so keen that she could feel it if someone merely glanced at her as they looked for someone else.
While Taj doubted the man in the beautiful bard's arms was Xena in disguise - he knew the Warrior Princess was at least ten feet tall as he had seen her once when he was young - he felt sure that the person was at least a compatriot of hers, here to help Gabrielle.
*****
"Uh..go on up. I'll be there in a minute." As she turned away, a moment of insecurity stabbed at Gabrielle and before she could stop herself, she turned back to the ascending form of her best friend.
"You'll wait for me up there, right?"
Xena turned around and looked down at the bard. "Of course I'll be waiting...why do y-" she stopped suddenly when she realized why Gabrielle was asking that question. The warrior jumped down the ladder and stood in front of her.
"I never meant to hurt you...even though I really do not have an explanation for what I did, good or bad, and I'm more sorry than you could imagine. I hope that you'll forgive me and let me tag along with you on the road.
"I swear to you that I'll be up there, waiting."
Gabrielle smiled. She stepped forward as if to hug the warrior, but stopped herself. "Alright...go on up. I'll be there in a minute." Then she turned and walked away before Xena could see the tears run down her fair cheeks.
The warrion watched the bard's swishing rear-end as she walked away. *Whoa...a bit conflicted, there, Xena?* she thought to herself as she again began to climb the ladder to the loft. *You're gonna need all the concentration you have to fight with Sanura, the Tigress, and her army.*
When the warrior climbed the last rung of the ladder and looked into the loft, she figured that this was one of the places Gabrielle went to when she needed to get away and write. There were several make-shift pillows covering a worn blanket that was not-so-neatly spread out on the floor. Moonlight poured into the space from a window next to a small, but adequate, table. An image of a younger Gabrielle sneaking out of her house to come up here filled the warrior's imagination, making her smile.
*Zeus, Xena...FOCUS. After this is all taken care of...that's the time when you can indulge yourself in fantasies of this beautiful, sexy, intense, light, funny, wonderous, talkative, talented woman.*
The warrior took off the cloak, the shades, and the sword and placed them on the opposite side of the blanket from the table, by the wall where she would sit and wait for Gabrielle.
*****
"Hello mother. Hello father."
Hecuba and Heroditus looked up and found their blonde daughter smiling at them as she walked insice the house. A rosy colour adorned her cheeks and she looked truly happy for the first time since she had arrived back home.
"Gabrielle! How are you? You look much better!" greeted her mother.
"I feel better, thank you," she said as she walked towards the bedroom she used to share with Lila.
"Would you like something to eat?"
"No, thank you. I actually feel like writing so I'm gonna grab my scrolls and a candle and write outside."
"Oh...okay... Don't stay out too late, dear, and be careful with that candle!"
Gabrielle rolled her eyes and smiled. Normally, she would be annoyed, but she was so happy that Xena was up in her hay loft, waiting for her that she could even enjoy one of her father's endless rantings. She gathered two scrolls, her inkwell, a quill, a candle and a small pouch and left the room.
"Good night," she said, kissing her parents. "Don't wait up for me, okay? Love you!" With that, the whirling dervish that was Gabrielle exited her family's home.
*****
The blonde ascended the ladder to the loft as silently as possible, reaching the top to find Xena sitting against the wall by the window, her long legs stretched out in front of her, an unguarded smile on her lips.
Gabrielle smiled at the relaxed state of her friend, but her features darkened a little. *Does she look so relaxed because she hasn't been around me?* she thought. The bard crossed and put the things on the table then carefully lit the candle.
Xena felt more than saw Gabrielle's expression change...so she decided to leap off a verbal cliff...if she could pick up her feet.
"No," she said, watching the bard as she sat, her legs tucked under her, and arranged the table.
Gabrielle turned towards the warrior. "'No,' what? Am I doing something wrong already?"
The warrior growled. "I should've said 'No, I do not look this relaxed because I've been away from you.' I mean, that is what you're thinking, right?"
Without turning, Gabrielle replied, "Yeah...it was." The bard arranged and rearranged the table prolonging the inevitable - she was going to have to look at Xena sometime...
*****
He silently crept along the outside wall of the barn. With the moon full and bright on the side of the structure that had windows to the hay loft where he knew they would go, Taj decided to risk alertingthe bard and her companion by sneaking into the barn to eavesdrop on them.
"Mean...that is what you were thinking, right?" This was the first sentense he could hear clearly and figured that it belonged to Killian.
"Yeah...it was." He smiled, recognising the voice of the beautiful and amazing Gabrielle.
Taj stayed clear of the light that filtered down between the cracks in the floor of the hayloft as he crept under it to hear better. He kept his eyes down and his breathing to a minimal, praying that his rapid heartbeat would follow suit and calm.
*****
Gabrielle looked over at the warrior, meeting her insistant, though smiling, gaze. She felt herself blush, but didn't - couldn't - turn away.
Finally, Xena broke the silence, but not the gaze. "So, what do you plan on doing with those?"
"Huh?"
Xena's eyes briefly flicked to the scrolls, then back to the bard.
"Oh...right. I want you to take a letter to Ephiny," she replied, shifting her gaze from the warrior's eyes to the scroll and quill in front of her.
"I'm not leaving you alone here, Gabrielle," she said, her smile fading.
"You have to...and you know it." The bard looked at Xena and decided to play her game. Their eyes dueled back and forth, sparks of green and blue flavoured the air around them until the warrior aquiesced.
"Okay...I give...write Ephiny."
Gabrielle smiled in her victory and focused her concentration on the letter she was writing to the regent of the Amazon Nation.
Xena sat, spellbound by the bard's beauty, heightened by the flickering light of the candle as it reflected not only in her hair, but her eyes. The warrior's gaze burned a saffire path along the bard's body as it traced every line, every curve, memorizing it as if for the first or the one hundred and first time that hse had ever laid eyes on such beauty.
As the crystalline blue journey ended, Xena pondered at the strength and beauty of Gabrielle's hands. Her fingers, blackened by the ink she was using, held the quill that scratched out a letter to Ephiny about their situation. The warrior sighed then and turned her wandering gaze out of a window on the opposite wall of the barn, the starry night visible just beyond the line of the forest on that side.
Gabrielle could feel Xena's eyes as if they were the warrior's touch. She tried to ignore it if for no other reason than to finish the letter to her Regent as soon as possible. When she felt the eyes tear away from her hands, about which she had been self-conscious since Vidalis said they were the hands of a sailor, she turned to quickly regard the warrior.
She felt that she finally had the final piece to the puzzle she had been working on since they first met, but now it was up to her to place it within the established frame work. Would it fit? Would it be the right piece? She sighed as she finished the letter and rolled it up for Xena to deliver.
"Finished?"
"Yeah. Here you go," replied Gabrielle, handing the scroll to Xena, who didn't take it. "Well?"
"I don't like this idea. I don't want to leave you here...something's gonna go wrong," she said as she stood, donning the sword, cloak and shades once more.
Gabrielle looked at her indulgently, waiting for her to finish. "Take this to Ephiny." As Xena took the scroll, the bard made a point of brushing her fingers along the warrior's and smiled at the blush and the sharp intake of breath.
"Yeah...uh...okay," said Xena, her expression, confused and amused. She turned away to descend the ladder when she was stopped by Gabrielle softly saying her name, carried through the air like an incantation on a breeze. The warrior turned and found the bard walking towards her.
*If I didn't know her better,* thought Xena, *I'd say she was trying to seduce me. Look at her face...it's feral. hungry. seductive. dangerous. playful.* The rush of words through the warrior's mind made her dizzy, her heart rushing through her veins as a pang of desire washed over her.
She needed to leave now if she didn't want to make a fool of herself, declaring her love for the bard in the hay loft of her family's barn. Xena turned to leave again, but Gabrielle was too close. She cupped the warrior's chin and turned her to look deep into pools of forest green which seemed to reflect Xena's own baby blue and nothing else. That same hand, confident that the warrior wouldn't try to turn away again, slowly slid around her neck and just below the warrior's ear. With gentle, but insistant, pressure, Gabrielle slowly brought Xena down to her waiting lips.
As soon as the warrior realized that this wasn't a dream or a scene from one of Gabrielle's scrolls performed on stage, she pulled the bard close to her. Before the warrior could even consider doing so herself, she felt Gabrielle's tongue requesting entrance.
In an effort to bring the warrior closer to herself, Gabrielle wrapped an arm around Xena's waist and pulled, then moved the hand from her neck to entangle in the taller woman's raven tresses.
Finally, when the need for air was too great, they broke apart. Gabrielle extricated herself from the dazed warrior's arms and walked over to the table.
"Hurry back," she called over her shoulder, her voice betraying what they both knew anyway. She knew that if she saw Xena and her reaction to the kiss, there would be nothing to stop her from peeling the leather from the warrior's body and worshipping the princess underneath.
The warrior was the picture of perfect hair-trigger sexual tension. "You won't even know I'm gone," she replied and hurried out of the barn before her feet carried her to Gabrielle to lay her down on the blanket as she really wanted to.
*There's all the time in the world once the world is saved,* mused Xena as she stealthily ran out of the barn, her heart filled with the love she had for and received from Gabrielle.
*****
Below them, Taj was fuming with jealousy and anger. *Enjoy the memories...that's all either of you will ever have again.*
The soldier snuck out of the barn in the opposite direction and headed toward the encampment of Sanura, the Tigress.
More to come soon!!
Back to the first part of "Ghost".
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