CAST OF CHARACTERS:

Xena, Warrior Princess
Gabrielle, Amazon Bard
Joxer the Mighty
Eve, Daughter of Xena
Argo and Amber, warhorses
Perdicas, Gabrielle's late husband
Aphrodite mentioned in passing
Morpheus mentioned in passing
Dr. Seuss mentioned in passing

Rating: PG. Fighting. Mention of sex topics, but nothing graphic and nothing happens.
Genre: Drama; Xena, Warrior Princess; Joxer-Gabrielle Romance
Spoilers: Return of Callisto, Dreamworker, Animal Attraction, King of Assassins, Evil Foreign gods, pacifists, and I-don't-know-what-else
Many thanks to my dear parents, who purchased for me that wonderful book 'My Body Fell Off!' which inspired this story.

It was not going to be a pleasant night. Xena and the group of humans and horses that Aphrodite had once referred to as the 'pesky posse' were forced to make camp at the bottom of an empty valley, covered with tall, dry grass, swept with straight, bitter winds. There were no trees for shelter, or even any sort of undergrowth to block the wind. It would be a long and miserable night.

There was no earthly way to make a fire, so the adults shared between them half a loaf of slightly stale bread that nobody enjoyed and nobody felt better after eating. Then they wrapped blankets around themselves and snuggled against the horses, prepared to lie awake until morning.

But there is something about utter, freezing misery mixed with something so comforting about the familiar smells of leather and horses, that everyone was soon asleep. Morpheus seemed to be feeling merciful tonight, and Gabrielle blessed him just before she lapsed into a deep and coma-like state.

Joxer found himself in unusual dreams that night. Not worse than his nightmares, or more beautiful than his fantasies, just odd sorts of dreams. They involved strange geometrical shapes and stairways that would only let you go one direction and dolphins with elephant's noses and rattlesnake's tails. Perhaps if the reader will recall something by Dr. Suess, they will know how it was.

He had just applied himself to walking upside-down through a crooked doorway (which is a difficult thing at any level of consciousness) when everything seemed to vaporize into nothingness. He fell out of the doorway and landed on a patch of springy ground, so he got up unhurt. As he straightened himself out, he saw another person.

It wasn't the sort of dream where one saw other people, so Joxer was vaguely surprised. Nonetheless, he hailed the stranger. "Hello there!"

The other person waved. "Hello, Joxer! You remember me?"

Joxer looked at the person and applied his unconscious mind to remembering. It was a man, in a white toga-like garment, wearing a swordbelt, scabbard, and sword. His hair was one of those infinite shades of intermediate blondeish-brown, and his eyes were blue. He was smiling, an honest and confident smile.

And suddenly Joxer knew him. "Perdicas!"

Perdicas laughed. "Good! I knew you wouldn't forget me after such a short time."

"It's been almost three years," Joxer observed. "I would think that'd be a pretty long time, even in the Elysian Fields."

Perdicas looked shocked. "Three years? It couldn't possibly be . . . Oh, I forgot. I forget."

"What?"

"You forget things in Elysia. I must have forgotten most of that time. Isn't that awful, though? I don't have any idea what's been going on! Come on, Joxer, tell me quickly. How is Gabrielle?"

Joxer rubbed his neck nervously. "Gabrielle? Well, she's . . . she's okay, I guess. She went through some rough times after you died. Evil foreign gods and Romans and pacifists and I-don't-know-what-else . . . It's been hectic. But she's doing all right now. She laughs again."

"That's good. I always loved to watch her laugh."

"So . . . how are you? I mean . . . being dead and all?"

He tried not to laugh, but did anyway. "It's boring as watching paint dry. I miss having a body. I miss eating. I miss being tired. And most of all I miss Gabrielle."

"I don't blame you," Joxer said ferverently.

Perdicas reached out and gripped him by the shoulders, a gesture of great trust and friendship that made Joxer feel a bit taken aback. "That's really why I broke so many rules to get into your dreams tonight, Joxer. I know you can understand how desperately I need this favor.?

"What favor?" he asked warily.

The post-mortem spirit hung his head. "Please, for all that you love, help me. It may seem to me that I haven't been dead for a day, but already I'm suffering. Joxer, if you love her, please . . . help me to see my wife again."

Joxer took several steps backward very quickly. "Help you see Gabrielle again?" he demanded. "Perdicas, you're dead; what could I possibly do?"

"Let me into your body!" he pleaded, eyes shining with a strange glow that Joxer didn't particularly like. "Please, it would only be for a short time. I'd give it right back to you, I promise. And you can understand how much joy it would give me, and her too."

"You're insane," Joxer announced. "All due respect to the Dead, but you're nuts. How do you think it would possibly give you or anybody else joy? You'd be in my body. Gabrielle hates my body; she hates most of me. She'd think I was just joking and would beat me to a bloody pulp."

"Gabrielle knows me, no matter what form I'm in. Love is stronger than appearances."

Joxer moaned. "All right, all right, whatever you say. You're the dead guy, after all. But why can't you just talk to her in dreams, like you're talking to me? That would be so much easier on everybody!"

"Every time she dreams of me, the dreams turn to nightmares and she watches me die again! I've tried hundreds of times, but my death hurt her too badly. I don't want to make her see that one more time."

Perdicas' blue eyes looked into Joxer's choclatey brown ones, pleading, desperate. "Please, Joxer," he begged. "Please, let me be with my wife again."

Joxer flinched . . . hesitated . . . wished Perdicas wasn't so good at that puppy-dog look . . . and gave in. "All right. You win. You can have my body. Just two conditions."

"What are those?"

"First: I get my body back as soon as I ask for it."

"Well, of course! That goes without saying."

"Second: I know Gabrielle is your wife and all, but please . . . don't, well, you know . . . don't 'take' her."

Perdicas looked insulted. "I don't see how that's any of your business."

"Of course it's my business; It's my body! And besides, it's way too risky. What if she got with child? Would it be your child or mine? At any rate, the baby would grow up without the solid family that every kid deserves because Gabrielle ain't my wife. I wouldn't want to do that to Gabrielle's baby. I wouldn't want to do that to anyone's baby. So promise me that you won't do anything stupid."

Perdicas nodded. "You are right. You have my word."

"Good. Then I'll do it."

"Thank you."

Perdicas reached out and took Joxer's hand, then suddenly pulled him . . . out of the dream, out of his body, seemingly out of existence.

Gabrielle awoke far more comfortably than she had fallen asleep, snuggled warmly against Amber's flank with a wool blanket drawn around her. The air was dry and still, and meadowlarks clamored around them in a chaotic and comforting sort of background noise. She sat up and stretched.

Joxer, huddled into an uncomfortable-looking ball on the ground, uncurled and threw off his blanket. He sat up and looked at her, straight into her eyes with a forwardness and intensity that was most uncharacteristic. "Good morning, Gabrielle."

"Morning," she answered faintly.

"Mm . . . morning, all," Xena muttered as she shoved her raven locks out of her eyes and tried to sit up without waking Eve. "Weather seems to have cleared up nicely. We'll be able to make twenty miles today."

"I can hardly wait," Gabrielle groaned as she pulled a boot off her foot and gently touched the blister forming on her heel. She needed to get these boots fixed. She grabbed a bag that was within arm's reach and burrowed in it until she found a couple scraps of moleskin, which is the very softest of leathers. While the others saw about getting breakfast, she took a needle and some catgut and sewed the scraps into the inside of her boots, where the leather rubbed the blisters. It would last a while, anyway.

She put on the boots (far more comfortable on the worn, reddened skin) and moved to get up, but stopped when Joxer stood in front of her and offered his hands. She looked up at him, trying to figure out what was wrong with him this morning, but he just smiled at her. A strange smile. Friendly, affectionate, but strange.

She hesitantly took his hands, and he lifted her to her feet as easily as a child. "Hungry?" he asked.

Gabrielle nodded.

Xena offered her another piece of bread. "Sorry, but that's all we've got until we can restock. It?s too bad I didn't set snares last night, or we might have had rabbit for breakfast."

"It's lucky we didn?t all freeze to death, even without your setting snares." Gabrielle pointed out. "We did the best we could. Now let's hurry and get moving before we have to spend another night in the open." She knelt and slapped Amber solidly on the rump. "Up you get. Go on, now."

The horses both lunged to their feet with groans of protest and shook the stiffness from their necks. Xena mentally slapped herself; she'd let them sleep in their saddles!

"Sorry to disappoint, Gabrielle, but we're not going anywhere for a while. At least until we take care of these two. You guys get their saddles off while I handle Eve."

Two seconds later, Eve screamed, broadcasting the fact that she was awake and demanding to be recognized for it. Gabrielle shook her head. Even now, she couldn't understand how Xena did it.

She almost jumped when she felt Joxer's hand on her arm, firm and steady. "Come on. Let's get Argo first. You get the girth strap, okay?"

She nodded, and her answering "okay" was barely more than a breath. There was something odd about Joxer today. He was just too . . . confident.

She determined to talk to him about it as she slid under Argo's belly to loosen the straps that held her saddle on.

Joxer woke up. That was all. He wasn't sore all over, as he expected; he didn't seem to be cut or bruised in any way; and his head felt about as far from pounding agony as it could get. He felt very light, as though he'd been walking around with stone boots, lead armor, a backpack with rocks in it and a granite helmet, and suddenly all that had been taken off him. Maybe he'd just been sniffing something dangerous and now was exceedingly high. So many possibilities.

He could see tall, dry grass around him, so he seemed to still be in the valley where they'd camped. It seemed to be about midday.

After staring at the sky for a while, he decided that the best course of action would be to get up, so he shoved himself up onto his elbows and looked around.

He wasn't there.

Joxer looked down at where the rest of him aught to be, and all he saw was the grass that he aught to be sitting on, completely undisturbed. He got the curious sensation that he was nothing more than a pair of eyeballs floating about.

"Okay, this is ridiculous," he announced to himself. He didn't really expect anyone to hear him; invisible, insubstantial things tended to be inaudible, too. "I can't go around not being able to see myself. I aught to be right here!"

And then he was. He was wearing the same toga-like garment that Perdicas had been wearing, which didn't suit him all that well, but at least he could see himself again.

"That's better," he said. He got up and brushed himself off, although that was rather pointless. Then he had a long think about what to do next.

He'd forgotten to ask Perdicas what would happen to him while his body was occupied. Well, now he knew, and he didn't particularly like it. He had to hunt down his body and get it back as soon as possible!

Fortunately, dry grass is one of those things that marks trails clearly, and it wasn't difficult to find which direction everyone had gone. He set out after them at a dead sprint, letting all sorts of things pass through his form as he ran by.

"Joxer? Can I talk to you?"

Joxer looked up from staring into the fire. "Sure, Gabrielle. Gladly." He got to his feet.

"Don't wander too far, you two," Xena cautioned. "It's easy to get turned around at night."

"We'll be careful," Gabrielle said as she and Joxer disappeared into the shadows.

Xena tickled Eve's cheek. "What do you think, Evie? You think she's falling for him?" Eve grabbed the finger and tried to get it back in Xena's mouth. The Warrior Princess laughed. "I shouldn't wonder if you're right."

"So what did you want to talk to me about?" Joxer asked as he followed Gabrielle through the woods that they had reached in the late afternoon.

She slowed down a bit so they could walk side by side. "Well, I just noticed that you were behaving . . . strangely . . . today. Not like your usual self. Is there anything you want to tell me? Something that's bothering you?"

Almost without thinking about it, he slipped an arm around her waist. "How have I been behaving strangely?"

"Like that, for example." She removed herself from his arm. "Usually you wouldn't dare touch me, but you've been doing it all day. I am beginning to find it annoying."

"You don't want Joxer touching you?"

She stopped and looked straight at him. "What's wrong with you? Normally you'd say 'me', seeing as how you are Joxer. Aren't you?"

She peered a little deeper into his eyes, and a faint light of realization went off in her head. "Jett?"

"Who?" said Joxer.

Gabrielle took half a step backwards. She hovered unsteadily for a moment, not sure whether to talk, attack, or flee, then suddenly sighed. "Joxer, you were scaring me for a second. Honestly, can't you be a little more mature?"

"Gabrielle . . ."

"Oh, just forget it. Come on back to camp. And stop it with the 'Jett who' thing."

She turned back the way they had come, but suddenly Joxer's hand was solidly on her arm, keeping her from moving away without hurting him. "Gabrielle, stop."

She was startled by the strange force in his eyes. She couldn't say anything.

He held her gaze almost effortlessly. "Listen to me." he ordered, his voice level and sure and calm. "You're right in your suspicions. I'm not Joxer."

Silence reigned between them for a few eternal moments.

"Gabrielle, you know me. Don't say you don't. You remember me." He brought his free hand up to her cheek, stroked it with infinite tenderness. "Oh, Gabrielle, we were going to be together forever. You were my wife. Don't tell me you don?t remember."

She watched him, breathless, for a moment, then finally whispered, "Perdicas?"

The man who looked like Joxer smiled.

She shook her head. "Joxer, stop it. Stop it! How dare you! You have no right to defile the memory of the dead! Let me go!"

"Gabrielle, look at me, please!" He took her firmly by both shoulders. "Listen. When you were born, you had eleven toes. Would Joxer know that? I remember, your mother let me see it, when it was about halfway grown back into your foot, and I thought it was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen in my life. But then you grew up, right alongside me, and you became the most beautiful woman in the world. And I was always in love with you."

She froze once more, and this time she didn't move again for a long while. This time, something in his eyes told her. It wasn't Joxer. It couldn't be Joxer.

Perdicas kissed her, long and tenderly, and held her tight against the body he occupied. She started crying, half in longing and half in joy, and she threw her arms around him and held him tightly.

"Oh, my Gabrielle," he murmured, "It's been so long . . ."

"Perdicas, Perdicas!" she cried through her tears. "How is it possible? You've been gone so long . . ."

"But I'm here now," he whispered, pulling back to see her face and running his fingers through her thick, short hair. "I'm here now. It's all right."

"Where's Joxer?" she whispered, although it really didn't matter to her right then.

"I don't know. He let me use his body to see you again. Aren't you glad?"

She nodded. "I'm glad." She fell into his arms again and let herself be washed over with memories.

Joxer burst through a thick old oak and stood panting next to his body, although he wasn't really that tired. "Hey, Perdicas," he began, but stopped when he got no reaction. "Perdicas!"

Perdicas looked over Gabrielle's shoulder at him and smiled. Joxer didn't like the smile. He liked it even less when his eyes . . . Joxer's physical, choclatey-brown eyes . . . flashed scarlet, and his pupils stretched into cat-like night vision slits.

Joxer jumped backward very fast with a yell of surprise. Whatever was in his body, it sure wasn't Perdicas. Something with red eyes that wasn't Perdicas was in his body . . . and it had his arms around his Gabrielle!!

This called for immediate action. In true panicked-Joxer style, he grabbed at his body, but his spirit-hand went straight through and he lost his balance. He tried again: no effect.

"Get off her!" he roared, but the thing ignored him and let his eyes change back to brown as he kissed Gabrielle all over her face, making her laugh with delight.

"Gabrielle, it isn't him!" Joxer yelled in her ear. "Come on, please hear me. It isn't him! Listen!"

His cries were in vain. She couldn't hear.

Suddenly, his eyes (which the Perdicas-thing was in control of) flashed red again, and a tiny shot of scarlet lightning flew into Gabrielle's. She gasped, looked dazed for a moment, then shook her head, blinked, and went back to kissing the Thing That Wasn't Perdicas.

"I'm so glad you're here . . ." she whispered. Never leave me again."

"I never will," he replied. "Never."

"Yes, you will! I want my body back!" Joxer shouted.

The TTWP looked at him. "Nothing you can do about it, Joxer," he said calmly. "Sweet dreams."

Gabrielle seemed to find nothing unusual in the fact that he was talking to thin air. She looked blankly ahead, and faint bits of red swirled behind her eyes. The Thing took her by the elbow and led her away.

Joxer stood stock-still, his mouth hanging open, startled and confused and angry. 'Sweet dreams'? What was that supposed to mean? What sort of a demon told you to have sweet dreams?

Morpheus did.

Morpheus, who knew better than anyone how to sneak into dreams. Morpheus, to whom Gabrielle was nearly sacrificed as his bride. Morpheus, who knew very well about Gabrielle's eleven toes. Morpheus was in his body and he was after Gabrielle again.

Conclusion >>>