More digging, which didn't work. More shouting, which didn't work. And Joxer hadn't said anything for an hour. Or was it two hours? Or six?

Gabrielle had lost track of time. Every second in this hole had started to feel like an eternity, and the silence wasn't helping things any. The only extended conversation they'd had since last night had been over deciding where to dig a cathole, a topic which by its very nature was self-limiting, and once the matter was decided the silence had fallen again. Okay, she'd wanted a little peace and quiet, but this was ridiculous. They could at least talk to each other. It wasn't like there was anything else to do.

But Joxer remained silent, only speaking briefly when spoken to and falling silent again. He wasn't sulking that she could tell, he was just... too quiet, and it was making her unhappy. No, she corrected herself, uneasy. It was making her uneasy because it wasn't like Joxer not to be rattling on all the time about some nonsense or other, and he obviously was feeling down, and it made her unhappy. Uneasy! And...

Oh, hell.

She started to say something, then stopped. She'd been trying on and off for quite some time, but she never could quite seem to actually bring herself to do it. This is ridiculous, she thought, rubbing the kinks out of her arms. He was being ridiculous, and she was being ridiculous, and the whole situation was just... She took a deep breath and rushed at the words before they had a chance to escape again. "Joxer, what I said last night.. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking, I didn't mean..."

"No," he said quickly. "Forget about it, you don't need to apologize."

He sounded nervous. How dare he. She was the one apologizing, so she was the only one with a right to be nervous. "No, really, I didn't mean..."

"It's okay."

"It is not," she said firmly. "Shut up and let me explain, I..." She didn't have an explanation and stammered for a minute or two. "I didn't mean you were driving me -- us crazy, I mean not really..."

"Gabby, please."

"It's just that... Well, you've been making me nervous with all this looking."

There was a short pause before he asked, "What looking?"

"You know, the, the looking. And the watching, and all the time... wanting something, and I feel like... I feel like -- you turned on me."

"What are you talking about?"

"You turned on me. You wouldn't believe what I've been through in the past few months, and all through it I thought there was one thing I could count on always to be the same, just one." Gabrielle felt her way along the words, thinking as she went. "I always thought you were the only person I knew who wouldn't turn weird on me, I mean not weirder than you usually are, and wouldn't ever be all over me like that. Wanting me to change, wanting me to be anything else than who I am."

"I never have."

"That's not true. You said you didn't want any kind of response from me, but you're all the time with the looking and the watching and the poking and, and..."

"It's got nothing to do with that," Joxer said. He sounded frustrated, the way he did when he couldn't express himself properly, and Gabrielle could imagine the way he was probably waving his hands as if he could pull the words out of the air. "It's, it's just that I can't count on you any more, and I'm not looking, I'm just kinda... checking."

Very quickly and very thoroughly she was angry again. "What do you mean, you can't count on me? Of course you can count on me!"

"No, I can't, because you run around dying all the time."

"I do not die all the time. Don't be ridiculous."

"Twice!"

"Once! That first time I wasn't really dead."

"You're as bad as, as Iolaus."

"I'll tell you something about Iolaus. He dies, he doesn't die, but at least he doesn't sit around and whine about it."

"Fine. That's great, that's just great. A person shows a little concern on account of someone gets dead, and it's 'whining'."

There was an extended silence, and Gabrielle said maliciously, "Followed by 'sulking'."

The silence continued to extend. Gabrielle felt a little guilty and dealt with it by saying nothing.

The silence extended some more.

The silence extended some more. "Oh, for pity's sake, Joxer," Gabrielle said.

The silence continued to extend, incredibly enough, and finally he said in an odd voice, "You know what you are? You're... you're unreliable."

"I am not."

"Always dying and stuff. Of course I look. To see if you're still there. How do I know you haven't gone and done it again?"

"I'm unreliable? I'm not the one who is taking off all the time."

"I do not take off all the time."

"You do so. You get distracted and you just wander off and you don't even say goodbye, sometimes even in the middle of a fight, where do you go? Just up and disappear!"

"I do not-- "

"And then you come wandering back and you act like we should be happy to see you or something. For all we know you've gotten lost or kidnapped or killed or something, and you do that all the time, and you complain about me being dead every now and then."

"I do NOT get killed. That's one thing about me, I don't get killed. I don't even catch colds."

Gabrielle started to reply, and instead sneezed. "See," he said. "It's all chilly in here, too."

It was. It was definitely colder than it had been a few hours ago. The outside temperature must be falling, and the cave was getting correspondingly colder, and Xena still hadn't shown up yet. "Where is Xena, anyway?" Joxer said, reading her mind again. After that whatever had caused his sudden burst of verbosity was gone, and he fell silent.

"I'm sure she's on her way," Gabrielle said, but the words were starting to sound unconvincing even to her own ears. She shook away the doubt. "She's on her way," she said, more firmly. "She's got to be. You know Xena. She'll come charging in any second now."

Xena crouched behind the rock, remaining well-hidden for the time being, and listened. *Pang*, and she put her right hand up, *pang*, and she put her left hand up, and caught the two halves of the chakram almost simultaneously as they ricocheted off the cliffside into her hands.

One throw, two more of the band face down in the dirt. Xena was really starting to appreciate the efficiency of the double chakram. Twice as much done in half the time and no need for her to go charging in, which was really a pain in the ass with swollen ankles.

From a quick scout of the camp she had deduced there probably weren't more than a half-a-dozen or so bandits total. They did have horses, and obviously could create a lot of noise and confusion on their forays into town, intimidating the unmounted and rather inoffensive populace into submission -- but honestly, how much trouble would it have been for the townspeople to get together in a group and come up here to break their own damn families out? Sheep, all of them. Except for maybe the magistrate, who'd had the right idea. Just the wrong approach.

Xena stood up and walked into the small encampment, pushing an unconscious bandit aside with her foot. It hadn't been hard to drop first the two on guard, and then the other three, with the chakrams from a distance, and that should have cut the number considerably. Two, three, that made five. Hmm, wasn't there ...Oh, right, Xena thought, casually swinging her sword back over her shoulder with just enough of a twist in the wrist to catch bandit six across the side of the head with the flat of the blade as he came up behind her, dropping him in his tracks.

It would have been easier just to drive the point backwards through his gut, but she was feeling rather mellow lately. Must be a mommy thing, she thought as she turned around and put a foot on the man's belly to hold him steady, resting the point of her sword at the base of his throat. He blinked, dazed.

"I understand you have some prisoners here," Xena said. "I'd like 'em released."

She was fairly confident that unless he was an utter moron he wouldn't say anything stupid like, "I don't know what you're talking about," which was exactly what he said. This pissed her off. She leaned on the sword a little and said, "Look. I'm pregnant, I have mood swings, and I've got a sword. Don't mess with me. Where are the prisoners?"

Like most men, he was a bad loser, and led her to the roughly-built barricade over the old mine entrance with poor grace. A dozen people scuttered back from the opening when he moved the door aside. Xena looked them over quickly. Villagers or tinkers, all of them. No Gabrielle, and no Joxer. She sighed and stepped into the cave, pushing the moronic bandit ahead of her. "Okay. Fun's over. Everyone can go home now."

There was silence for a moment, and Xena thought of sheep again; then the prisoners clattered to their feet, all exclaiming at once, knocking over what few pans of water or scraps of half-eaten turnip they had scattered about, and Xena was now reminded of chickens, or geese, or some other kind of fairly stupid birds that huddled in flocks and made too much noise. "Quiet," she roared at them, and they fell silent. She poked the bandit in a pressure point that was almost instantly unfatal but caused a lot of pain. "You added two more people here yesterday. I don't see them."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Moron said sulkily. "Ow!"

Xena raised her voice and addressed the crowd. "Did anyone see anything?" A thin man, with several days' growth of beard, stepped forward timidly. "They brought a couple of people through here yesterday, a man and a woman. Took 'em in the back."

"Where in the back?" The entry tunnel extended far into the mountain, and "in the back" was not going to be specific enough. The man looked at the ground, as if he didn't want to answer. "Where in the back?" she repeated pleasantly, addressing Moron this time.

"I don't-- " He caught himself this time, and remained silent.

The thin man gestured. "There's a shaft back about twenty feet or so. They threw them in there, then blocked up the entrance. They were carrying torches; we couldn't see much, but we could see enough."

Xena looked at the man, looked at the blank faces of the other prisoners, looked at Moron, and spun him face-first into the wall. She stepped over his body and sheathed her sword. "Somebody get him out of here. You," she said to the thin man, "and any of the rest of you who can, I need your help. We're going to dig them out." Lovely, she thought, pushing the real fear down deep where it wouldn't affect her. Over a day gone, no food, no water, no air... Leave it to Gabrielle to get into something overly complicated like this. No, this had to be Joxer's fault. No, it was the both of them deliberately trying to drive her crazy. Why was nothing ever easy?

Conclusion >>>