"Lucky 4 You"

Lucky 4 You

Rating: PG, for violence . . . of a sort . . . I guess.
Summary: An old, betrayed friend returns . . . to foreordain the nightmare of the Twenty-Five Years.
Spoilers: If, according to you, TLFENH, then this will be completely out of the timeline. If you don't know what I mean by the Twenty-Five Years, you'd better wait to read this until you find out.
Note: Sorry about the utter strangeness of this story . . . I haven't done anything this weird since Recalled to Life . . . but the lyrics refused to cooperate. It actually turned out better than I expected, though.

Lucky 4 You (Tonight I'm Just Me)
by SHeDAISY

You always said that I have multiple personalities
I bounce around somewhere between my dreams and reality
So where'd you dig up the audacity to ask me
How we've all been doing
Since you broke our hearts
(Well, so far)

Number 5 just cries a river a minute
7 wants to tie you up and drown you in it
Yeah, 14 just wants to say so long, bygones
32 wants to do things to you that'll make you blush
10 would key the El Camino that you love so much
And there ain't nobody wants to mess with 23
Oh, lucky 4 you tonight I'm just me

I guess this party's more than your new Barbie bargained for
She's got you by the sleeve, slowly easing towards the door
She's probably right, you should be movin' on
Don't know how long we can behave
Better have the valet get the car
('Cause you know how women are)

Number 5 just cries a river a minute
7 wants to tie you up and drown you in it
Yeah, 14 just wants to say so long, bygones 3
2 wants to do things to you that'll make you blush
10 would key the El Camino that you love so much
And there ain't nobody wants to mess with 23
Oh, lucky 4 you tonight I'm just me

Forgiveness is the key
According to my shrink
But, it's not just up to me
(I don't know girls, what d'ya think?)

Number 5 just cries a river a minute
7 wants to tie you up and drown you in it
Yeah, 14 just wants to say so long, bygones
32 wants to do things to you that'll make you blush...

Joxer leaned his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his fists. So tired . . . walking forever tended to make one tired. Xena and Gabrielle were discussing the details of their mission, but their voices were enough to tell him that they were tired too. A long journey, a hot meal, and soon they would have soft beds for the first time in weeks.

Soon he was dozing, his head almost sagging to the table. Xena caught sight of him and smiled. "I think someone needs to go to bed. We can finish working this out in the morning."

Gabrielle nodded. "Come on, Joxer," she urged, shoving him. "Wake up."

"Huh?" said Joxer vaguely. "What for?" His head promptly drooped again.

"Joxer! Wake up! It's time to go to sleep."

"Come on, you wouldn't want to sleep through that, would you?" Xena asked.

"No, 'v'course not," said Joxer vaguely, and he hauled himself to his feet. The ground swayed beneath him due to the lack of blood in his brain, and Gabrielle had to support him until he could stand on his own.

"Poor Joxer," she said sympathetically. "We've really been pushing you hard. I'm sorry."

"F'rget it." said Joxer, and he headed for the staircase.

The front door of the inn suddenly slammed open, sending a blast of cold storm-wind into the common room. Xena felt a few ice-cold raindrops land on her bare skin as her head whipped around to see this new threat.

A single figure stood in the doorway, head bowed, arms hugged tightly against her chest to try and warm herself. She wore a dark blue cloak, but it was soaked through, besides being horribly old and ragged. It billowed around her, following the swirling and thrashing of her long, tangled, brilliant red hair.

She stepped inside, water puddling around her feet, and let the wind slam the door shut again. Although every eye in the room was upon her, she appeared not to notice. She raised her head and pulled back her hood, revealing a narrow, delicately-boned face and the same intense blue-gray eyes as Xena.

It was a face that all of the great threesome knew.

Joxer, his body still screaming for rest but his mind awakened by surprise and a hint of fear, stood up straight and took a step towards her. Gabrielle grabbed his arm and hauled him back to her side.

"Moera," he whispered.

"Joxer, hush," Gabrielle hissed. She dug her fingers hard into the flesh of his arm.

The pain was a very old feeling to Joxer. He remembered feeling it as Gabrielle dragged him towards the door of the underground temple, screaming at him to come with her. She had been terrified . . . so had he, so had Moera. Because they had provoked the Queen of the Gods.

Moera had been Joxer's friend . . . in the short time they had known each other she had gained his trust. But she needed to use him . . . use him to attain her obsession of ambrosia and the divine powers that came with it.

He hadn't known; he hadn't understood. All he knew was that she'd asked him to help by pressing and holding the pressure pannel on one side of the temple. She'd gone around and pressed the other pannel, and between the two of them the door was unlocked.

Gabrielle, suspicious as always of Joxer's friends, had followed them with Xena in tow. They dashed to the underground chamber just as Moera grabbed at the lump of brilliant pink gel.

"Moera, come on, put it down." Joxer urged. "Please. Gabrielle and Xena have seen people eat that stuff; it destroys their soul. Leave it alone." His voice trembled as he tried to hold back tears of panic.

"Joxer!" Gabrielle screamed. "What are you doing here? Come on! Get out of here!"

"Moera's got ambrosia!" he screamed out. "We've got to stop her!"

"Hera guards this place! Come on!" Xena urged.

"Hera . . . Oh my gosh. Moera, come on, we gotta get out!"

She didn't answer. The ambrosia was nearing her lips now.

"Moera! Moera!" "Joxer, come on!" Gabrielle grabbed his arm, her fingers biting into it with such strength it made him flinch. "Come on, please!"

She pulled with all her might, trying to get him to safety. But stubborn, loyal Joxer wouldn't leave without his friend. Even if she had just used him.

Then Hera came. Light flashed, Moera screamed with such anguish that she had to be dead, and Xena shoved Joxer toward the exit. The three of them fled, hearts beating in terror, knowing the young woman to be gone.

But she wasn't. Here she stood, looking the same as she had in those last few moments. Same beauty in her face. Same frightening, crazed obsession in her eyes.

"Joxer," she breathed, cocking her head and smiling. "Oh, Joxer. Why so scared? You look almost as frightened of me as you were of Hera."

"You're alive," he answered. "I thought you were dead. I thought she killed you."

"Too late." said Moera. She delicately wiped a raindrop off her lip with a slender finger and touched it to her tongue. It was the same gesture she would have used to clean ambrosia off her mouth. "Even Hera can't kill a goddess."

Xena's hand hovered near her chakram, twitching, like a cowboy at high noon. "Look, Moera," she said calmly, "I don't know what you want, and frankly I don't care. But goddesses never scared me."

"They will."

The room went dead silent. It had been silent before, with no movement or speech from the inn's patrons, but now the silence was almost absolute. Breathing stopped. Fidgeting stopped. Outside, the storm silenced itself.

There was an hourglass on a shelf behind the bar. The grains of sand had ceased to fall.

"We didn't get a chance to say goodbye," she told Joxer. Her voice was light, teasing, frightening . . . like Callisto's. "You left me behind."

"I thought you were dead," he repeated. Gabrielle's grip, frozen against his arm, was making his fingers tingle painfully. "Moera, I didn't want to leave you, truly I didn't, but . . ."

"But her." Moera finished. "Your little idol; your love. 'Joxer, come on' she says. And you come. Like the dog that you are."

Her voice was still sweet and flirtatious and mild.

"Hera was too late to kill me. She couldn't kill a goddess. But she can do other things; she can do many other things. Do I frighten you, Joxer? Did your heart quicken in terror at the sight of my face?"

Joxer was practically incapable of lying. Slowly, he nodded.

"I don't blame you. I frighten myself. Hera struck me with madness for violating her sanctuary, and her madness is a fate far worse than death. I bounce around somewhere between dreams and reality; I'm not even sure of what I am sometimes. Maybe I'm a demon and I just haven't noticed yet. But this I know for sure, and it's lucky for you: tonight, I'm just me."

There was no answering a declaration like that. Joxer instead turned his attention to Gabrielle's frozen hand and wrenched his arm from her grasp. Her fingernails ripped his sleeve and skin to ribbons, and he clutched the wound against his chest.

"Aren't you glad, Joxer? Aren't you glad to see me, to know that I still live?"

"I am glad," he answered truthfully. "I thought you'd died; I . . . I felt so guilty."

"Good."

She struck him . . . not with all the might of a goddess, but simply with all the power and fury of a woman scorned. He reeled back, but made no attempt to retaliate.

"You left me to die," she hissed, "at the command of her whom you love most. You coward. You traitor. You hypocrite. And I suffer this . . . madness in all it's foul, horrible power . . . because of you. So you'd better feel guilty."

Joxer kept his distance from her, his hands up in front of him in about as unthreatening an attitude as he could hope to get. "Moera, please, calm down. I never would have left if I'd thought I could help you; you know I would never. Moera, come on."

"You'll suffer as I suffer for abandoning me."

"But I didn't!"

He was about as frustrated and scared as Alice with the Queen of Hearts, and had rapidly come to the conclusion that if he didn't do something drastic soon she was going to do something drastic to him.

But by the time he thought this, it was already too late. An invisible force pressed him to his knees, his head wrenched back as if in preperation for having his throat cut.

"You are cursed." Now her voice, which he could remember rising so musically in laughter, had dropped to the sharpness and temperature of ice. The air in the common room was suddenly saturated with the feel of magic. "You are cursed with the one thing you cannot bear, just as I was cursed with the one thing I cannot bear. Suffer it, and remember me."

The next moment, her screaming rang through the room, and it somehow touched off every other voice like tuning forks on the same pitch. Gabrielle shrieked, though she hardly knew why, and was only silenced when Xena clamped a hand over her mouth.

"Quiet!" she roared at everyone, and with a few scattered sobs everyone obeyed. Joxer was curled on the floor in the fetal position, shivering. Gabrielle knelt and shook him until he uncurled and looked up at her.

"Where's Moera?" he demanded.

There was a brief period of everyone looking around. Finally, they discovered her body, covered in it's sodden cloak, lying in a heap on the ground.

"Dead," Xena pronounced, after a moment's examination.

Silence reigned.

Joxer's head spun. Dead? She couldn't possibly be dead; she'd eaten ambrosia at the cost of her mind. Yet there it was.

Had cursing him killed her? No, there was no way that could have happened. He had no doubt that she'd wanted to die. Was it possible that she committed suicide after achieving her supposed vengance by an act of sheer will?

Yes. If anyone could do it, it was Moera. Willpower was practically the definition of the remarkable person she had been. He quickly offered a prayer to Hades that she would rest, finding the peace her ambition had stolen from her in life.

But then there was the curse . . .

What was the one thing he couldn't bear, that she had inflicted upon him?

"Joxer, are you all right?" Gabrielle demanded. "What happened?"

And at the sound of her voice, he knew.

Gabrielle.

The one thing he couldn't bear was to live without Gabrielle.

He clung to her hand and pressed his forehead against it, praying to every god he knew. Please, don't let me lose her.

She held him very tight for a long time, until the terror that clutched his heart melted into a sickening dread of what would surely come.

The End

Please take the time to write to Seri at silverhawkwarrior@netzero.com and let her know how you liked the story!

COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER:
Xena: Warrior Princess, Xena, Gabrielle, Joxer, and all other characters who have appeared in the series, together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of StudiosUSA and Renaissance Pictures. The lyrics to "Lucky 4 You" are owned by the appropriate copyright holders. No infringement of copyrights or trademarks is intended in the writing of this fan fiction. The character of Moera was created by the author for use in this fiction. This story is copyright © 2000 by Seriana Ritani and is her sole property along with the story idea. This story cannot be sold or used for profit in any way. Copies of this story may be made for private use only and must include all disclaimers and copyright notices.