RATING: Extended bad taste riff in part 2 goes to upper limits of PG, otherwise free of violence, innuendo, and content.
CONTINUITY WEENIE: Probably sometime in the fourth season, post-India and pre-"Convert", but frankly it isn't worth the mental energy to figure out when exactly.

He intended to set the pack down gently. He always intended to do things like this, but they seldom turned out the way he planned. This time was no exception. The pack jumped out of his hands like a live thing and fell to the floor with a clatter that sounded painfully like the irreparable denting of a bronze serving-platter, which he remembered too late was indeed among its contents.

Xena glared. Gabrielle glared. They sat at the table here in the common room of the inn and they glared at him in tandem. He wondered sometimes if they practiced this when he wasn't around. He never asked them, because if he did they would tell him and he didn't want to know. "I brought the pack," he said unnecessarily.

"Joxer, sit," Xena snapped. "Carefully!" Her voice brought him to attention just enough to move his elbow out of the space currently occupied by a beaker of olive oil, which would have subsequently wound up somewhere probably near or in Xena's lap. "Sorry," he said sincerely. A narrow escape. If he spilled olive oil in her lap she might ignore him for days, or throw him through a wall.

He finished lowering himself to the bench without incident and found to his delight he was on the good side of the table, next to Gabby. She had a scroll and a quill, as she almost always did when a flat surface presented itself, and was writing. He leaned over her shoulder, fascinated. "What are you doing?"

"I'm plowing a turnip field under, what does it look like I'm doing?"

"Writing?" He admired her technique. She put all the letters in order and everything. His writing usually got lost halfway through the words and came out the other side all backwards. He loved to watch her write. Of course, she was Gabrielle, and he loved to watch her do anything, even sit and breathe.

"It's a list of everything we know so far," she said. Since this was an actual explanation, it was probably aimed at Xena and not at him. "Quests are complicated. We have to make sure we have all the information at hand where we can get it."

"Quests are easy," Xena said. "Find something, kill it, go on to the next thing, kill it too, repeat as necessary."

Joxer thought Xena was making a joke, but then everybody Joxer knew assured him that Xena did not make jokes, so he was probably mistaken. Gabby obviously did not think it was a joke. "That's not going to work with Aphrodite."

"Are we going to see Aphrodite?" he asked.

"It might work," Xena mused. "She's awful fond of her temples, and they have an awful lot of breakables in them."

"Are we going to the temple?" he asked.

"We've got to be careful not to antagonize her," Gabby said. "We need to get the truth from her, remember?"

"Is she in charge of truth now?"

"All gods have the truth," Gabrielle told him. "Mortals can't handle it."

"Being gods?"

"The truth."

"Yeah, but-- "

"Joxer, shut up."

He shut up. She might have meant it kindly, or not, but it didn't matter. Joxer tried not to search for hidden meanings. He had learned that he was a lot less confused and got in a lot less trouble if he just took everything at face value. Xena said sit, he sat. Gabby said shut up, he shut up. It all was very simple really. His life was composed of a surprising number of straight lines, considering that he was constitutionally incapable of walking in one. "So when do we leave?" he asked.

"Joxer, you are not to go anywhere near the temple," Xena said.

"Why not?"

"Because Aphrodite hates you."

"Why does she hate me?"

Xena gave him a look. "Do you want to know the truth?"

Joxer thought about this for a moment. "No," he said honestly. "I can't handle the truth."

"Good boy. You can stay here and watch the pack."

"What, you think someone might steal it?"

Gabby snorted. "Hercules couldn't steal that pack. Explain to me again why we had to bring four short swords? Not to mention an entire wheel of cured cheese. A quarter-wheel, I could understand, but an entire wheel?"

"I told you," Xena said, "once we get to the mountains we'll be able to ditch the tapestry, and then..."

The rest of the conversation faded from Joxer's attention as he realized the small part of it that had included him was over, so he mentally shrugged and amused himself studying the grain of the table-top. He would stay and watch the pack, and when Xena and Gabby got back from the temple they might give him something else important to do. This was a big quest and they would probably need lots of help. He might even come out of it a hero. Life was good. A fly landed on the table and set about cleaning its tiny face.

Xena smashed it flat, causing him to jump. "Joxer!"

"What?"

"I said, can you wait here for us and not go anywhere?"

"Of course," he said, offended. Hadn't he just promised he would?

She stood up and pointed at him. "Don't move from the table, Joxer, you got that?"

"I will stay right here." He smacked the table for emphasis. "I'll stay right here, and not move, or anything." He wondered why Xena seemed so stuck on this point, but if he asked her she'd tell him and he didn't want to know. It made life too complicated.

Gabby stood up, and he tried to watch her without letting it be obvious that he was watching her. "Get the truth from Aphrodite," she said in that wonderful disgusted tone of voice he loved because she often used it on him. "This should be fun."

Xena stood up as well, or had at some point -- Xena did little things like standing up so quickly and smoothly he could miss them if he was not watching closely -- and said, "Let's go, then. The sooner we have the truth, the sooner we can get on with it."

They walked to the door together, the warrior and the bard, the dark hard woman and the blonde soft woman, two halves of a whole. Joxer admired them extravagantly. My friends, he thought proudly, those guys there, the ones who left me here to guard the pack. "I'm with them," he informed the innkeeper.

"Get out," the man replied to this information.

"I can't. I'm not supposed to move."

"I have to clean." The innkeeper had some dangerous-looking thing on a stick, a mop or some such, and waved it threateningly in Joxer's direction. "Go outside 'till I'm done."

"I'm supposed to stay here, and not move, and guard the pack."

"And take that damn bag with you." The mop now menaced the pack.

The pack! Joxer sprang to his feet and hauled at the bag. "Don't touch that," he said seriously, "or I'll have to do something."

"Like what?"

Like take it outside, as it turned out. Joxer hauled it onto his shoulder and, bent almost double under its weight, stumbled into two benches on his way towards the door.

Okay, so technically he had moved, but he still was watching the pack. He leaned it against the outside wall of the inn and leaned himself after it, taking the weight off his aching shins, and watched people walk by. It was nearly noon and people scurried to and from the agora, lines snaking up and down the street. All pretty colors and constant chatter. Many, many distractions. It was very lively outside, much better than inside, and Joxer amused himself watching the pack and the people for an indistinct amount of time.

"What's wrong with you, anyway?" That sounded like Xena. That was probably because it was Xena. He blinked and wondered how much time had passed.

"Why aren't you sitting at the table like I told you?" she asked sourly. "You never listen, it's like talking to the wall. The truth is sometimes I think you're just plain useless."

Joxer blinked again. That was a very odd thing for Xena to say. Of course, she thought it at him a lot, but always only for a moment, and usually didn't bother speaking it.

"Well, there you go again," Gabrielle said to Xena. "No tact at all."

"Yes, and I suppose you know everything?" This was also a bizarre thing for Xena to say. He had seen her say it with her eyebrow on occasion, but never out loud.

"The truth is," Gabby told her, "if you had used a little tact at the temple, we wouldn't be in this mess."

And this was so not like Gabby to say things like that. Everything Xena did was just as fine with Gabby as everything Gabby did was fine with him. Joxer wondered if he'd stood out in the sun a little too long. "Um... "

"The truth is I need a drink," Xena said, and stomped into the inn.

"The truth is," Gabrielle said, following her, "you drink too much."

He was left without direction. No one had told him to come in, but on the other hand no one had told him to stay there either. But then there was the question of the sun, which he had apparently stood under too long already. But then there was the question of Xena's mood. But then... Had she said "drink"? That was the deciding factor. Hoisting the pack one more time, he walked carefully back inside.

Xena and Gabrielle were sitting at the same table as before, on the same sides as before, and they had drinks. He intended to put the pack down carefully. He always intended to do things like this, but they seldom turned out the way he planned. This time was no exception. The pack jumped out of his hands like a live thing and fell to the floor with a thump that sounded painfully like the disfiguring crack of a large perfect sphere carved of solid amethyst, which he remembered too late was indeed among its contents.

Xena glared. Gabrielle glared. They sat at the table here in the common room of the inn and they glared at each other. Not at him.

Something was really wrong.

He looked from one to the other, cleared his throat, and said, "So, uh, how did it go at the temple?" They did not answer him, and he dared to elaborate. "Did you get the truth from Aphrodite?"

"Oh yes," said Xena, disgusted. "We got the truth all right."

For once, just this once, things had worked out right. Joxer was amazed at his luck. Imagine if he had gone to the temple after all, and Aphrodite had decided to zap him with this truth spell, and he had wound up sitting here speaking his mind on every little thing. He probably wouldn't have long to live, for starters.

"What are you doing?" Xena watched Gabrielle through narrowed eyes. The bard had a scroll unrolled on the table, and was writing as quickly as she could.

"I'm putting the truth into this epic about the Argonauts, that's what."

"Will that make it longer? Because the truth is it's too damn long already."

See? He would get a broken nose, at minimum, for saying something like that. And that was a fairly harmless observation. Not a really big secret. Joxer had one really big secret, and half-a-dozen little ones, and no one knew them, not even himself most of the time, and he wanted to keep it that way.

"The truth is," Gabrielle said, writing furiously, "you're really not qualified to be a literary critic."

"The truth is," Xena said, "those epic poems of yours are really not qualified to be literature."

Uh-oh. "I think Gabrielle's poems are very nice," he said.

"Proves my point," said Xena.

"Joxer, shut up. Xena-- " Gabrielle looked up from her writing and waved the quill at Xena as if it were a dagger-- "the truth is, you don't have enough depth to appreciate my poetry."

"I think Xena is very deep."

"Shut up, Joxer. Gabrielle, the truth is your poetry is boring."

"What?"

"The truth is I've always found it overly detailed and dull."

"I never."

"The truth is even Joxer gets bored with some of it, like that genealogical crap you always put at the beginning."

"I do not," he said, but no one was listening.

"That's traditional. The truth is you have no idea of proper literary form."

"Who would like another drink?" Joxer asked. "I'll buy."

"The truth is neither do you."

"Everybody, then? Fine." He stood up, or tried to, and stumbled backwards over the bench. Gabby and Xena were too busy glaring at each other to notice. No one yelled at him. Feeling that things were somehow made incomplete by this, he trotted swiftly over to the bar and returned with three more ales. He managed to get them onto the table without spilling a drop and in happier times would have looked for praise for this feat, but this was an emergency.

Xena took one of the tankards and drained it.

Gabrielle was rolling up her scroll. "There's a salon on the other side of town," she said. "A place for people with a little finer appreciation of art. I'm taking my epic and I'm performing it there."

"Gabrielle," he said, "aren't you overreacting a little?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Joxer, do you want to know the truth?"

"No."

"I don't consider you to have any kind of authority to tell me when I'm overreacting."

He wasn't sure what this meant but suspected it couldn't be good, and backed down. Gabby stuffed the scroll into her bag and slung it over her shoulder. Now Xena would say something, and Gabby would calm down, and things would smooth over.

Xena took Gabby's tankard and drained it too.

Gabby stormed out of the room in a huff. She was adorable in a huff. He was lost in reverie over the adorableness for a moment, before he came to his senses and realized this was not the way things were supposed to work out. "This is awful."

"Not as awful as that poem."

"What is wrong with you?" She gave him a look and he caught himself and proceeded much more cautiously. "I mean, both of you. Fighting over trivia and everything."

"We're not fighting. We're just telling the truth."

"Well, you should apologize. I mean," he amended, "someone should. And then y-- someone should apologize to Aphrodite, and maybe she'll take the spell off you. And then everything will be all right." He thought this was a pretty good plan, and mentally congratulated himself on it.

"Do you want to know the truth?"

"No."

"I don't want to apologize to her, and I sure as hell do not want to apologize to Aphrodite. Are you going to drink that?"

He looked down at the tankard he was still holding, forgotten. "Ah... no?"

"Good answer." She took it from him and drained it too. "I'm going to find some amusement tonight that is not going to include listening to eight inches of parchment's worth of begats. If she can't handle it, fine."

Joxer knew a dismissal from Xena when he heard it. He also knew the consequences of ignoring it. He had learned this through extremely unpleasant experience. Despite all that, he almost started to protest again, but she gave him the look and instead he found himself scurrying to the other side of the room in rather a hurry.

Right, that was it. Someone had to do something, and that someone would be him. Wasn't it his job to look after them, after all? This would be much better than merely watching the pack. He would make them sit down and listen to reason, and they would forgive each other and hug, and they would say how useful he was and how they would never again do something so dangerous as go to a temple without bringing him along for protection. Ha. He was proud of himself already.

Now all he had to do was figure out how to accomplish this. Xena was here, he could start with Xena. No, he couldn't. Logic dictated he should start with Gabrielle, logic and a well-developed instinct for self-preservation. To the salon, then.

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