Ascent

by Tricia Stewart

Eve stood over her Mother's bed, wrapped in a blanket. She smiled down at the sleeping woman and gently stroked her long black hair until ice-blue eyes that matched her own blinked awake. "Eve?" the Warrior Princess spoke sleepily. "Is everything all right?"

"Mother...I don't know how to tell you this but...Eli came to me in a vision."

Xena was suddenly wide awake, sitting up as her daughter joined her on the bed. "A vision?" She tried to will her mouth not to speak the next question. Somehow, she already knew the answer to it and it filled her with terror. "What did he say?"

"It's time Mother. It's time for me to take my place with him. The Twilight has passed and Aphrodite's reign is now secured. You redeemed me and in doing so paid your debt to Callisto's soul. And the three years since we've been together have been well used in healing us both. Everything I was born to do here has been accomplished and now I have other work...elsewhere. I have to go." The younger woman stood.

"But Eve..." Xena clutched at her daughter's arms, not willing to release her. "Don't leave me! You...you talk as though your life here could never have any meaning."

Eve's expression was infinitely patient. "Try to understand Mother, for me it no longer can. When Eli saved me in his temple, he not only gave me back my past but an innate sense of my future. This is my path. It has been the path laid out for me since my life was created within you. My earthly tasks are complete and I must move on."

Eve turned to go but Xena's hand held firm. "Eve. I can't just let you die. I can't lose another child. I can't lose you again."

Her daughter smiled down on her and touched her cheek. "You will never lose me. I will never die." Eve bent down and kissed her mother. Xena's eyes fluttered shut and Eve eased her back down on the pillow. She passed her hand across the Warrior Princess's forehead and spoke softly. "See my path with your own eyes and let your heart be light."

Eve watched as Xena's eyelids showed the telltale signs of intense dreaming. Soon, a beatific smile settled on her mouth. Her daughter kissed her again and whispered, "I love you Mother," before making her way out of the room.

Once in the hallway at the Inn, Eve stopped outside of Gabrielle's door. Not planning to wake her beloved "Aunt", she still felt the need to see her one last time as a mortal. She opened the door a crack and frowned as she saw the bard tossing in her sleep, her face portraying the pain she felt as she mouthed a soundless word over and over again. Joxer. Joxer. Joxer. Saddened, she closed the door.

Barefoot and wrapped in a blanket from her mother's room, Eve stole quietly into the night. Sometimes, she wished Eli hadn't saved her. The past three years had been the hardest in her entire life. She now knew how much she had been loved as a baby and while her mother still looked at her with that same expression of boundless love, Gabrielle's perception of her had been tainted by the sheen of blood she wore from her time as Livia.

She knew the bard was proud of the way she had put her darkness behind her, and that she was happy for Xena's joy in having her daughter again. But every time Gabrielle looked at her, she knew she was seeing the same scene they'd both dreamed every night for three years. Livia gleefully exterminating Joxer in his attempt to save Gabrielle's life.

She'd also had to live with the reinstated memories of the man she had so needlessly slaughtered smiling sweetly at her pregnant mother, proudly claiming her as a niece, playing with her, cooing over her, loving her. He loved her. Even knowing she'd become a butcher, some part of him had still loved her, had only wanted to help her. And in one fell swoop of her sword, she killed him, the warmth in Gabrielle's heart, and a part of her own soul.

She had thought the guilt would ease when Virgil had gotten the summons that his mother had died in Athens a year ago. He left his family homestead then for the city to take charge of his younger siblings. Eve thought she would have peace in her monthly pilgrimage to Joxer's grave if she didn't have his son glaring at her from the house or the field. His gaze had always held such a powerful presence that she never before realized the intensity of Gabrielle's own glare for the woman who had killed the man she loved and only didn't realize until it was too late; too late because Eve had taken him away.

Tear-filled pale blue eyes greeted the Goddess Aphrodite as Eve approached. "Eve, what's wrong?" she asked as Eli materialized behind his young protégé . The girl's lower lip trembled.

"She is not ready to complete the Ascent." Eli spoke softly, non-judgmentally as he gently touched her shoulder. "Her guilt still ties her to the earthly plain. She has to forgive herself for her greatest wrong; killing a man who loved her."

"Joxer," Eve whispered.

Aphrodite brushed away her tears and smiled. "Would you forgive yourself if Joxer told you to?"

That got her attention. "What? How?" Aphrodite winked at Eli. Eve turned to look at him and he simply smiled.

"Well would you?" he asked.

"I...I..."

A sparkling light caught the corner of Eve's vision. When she turned towards it, it coalesced into the form of a tall, lanky, dark-haired man who was rubbing his eye. "Doggone it Ephiny! You're not supposed to use the staff to whack me in the eye. Elysia rules remember? You're supposed to go easy!"

When he heard no answer from the curly-haired Amazon he'd been addressing, he took his hand away from his eyes and looked at the blonde Goddess smiling at him. "How've you been Studmuffin?"

"Aphrodite? I..." His words trailed off as his eyes settled upon the younger brunette woman that stood before him.

Eve stared at the man. This was not the way Joxer had looked when she killed him. This was the way she had remembered him as a baby. His gentle brown eyes sparkling at her; so full of love even after what she'd done.

"Un...Uncle Joxer?" she spoke hesitantly. He smiled sweetly and she launched herself into his arms.

"It's okay Evie. I'm here," he cradled her and tried to soothe her as she cried into his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed wretchedly. "So sorry...sorry...sorry..."

"Shh...I know. I know." He pulled back a little so that she could see his smile. His thumb gently wiped away her tears. "I know how sorry you are. I've heard every thought you've had about me since I...well, went away. You weren't the same person you are now. You were the person the Gods' persecution had made you. I know that you remembered me...and missed me...and loved me." He pulled her back into his arms. "You're my family Eve. I've always loved you."

"Can you ever forgive me?" she whispered.

"I forgave you the day you turned your life around. Livia killed me Honey, not you. On that day, you killed her and avenged me." Joxer looked to the two heavenly beings observing the reunion. Eli nodded to him. Again, he pulled away a little so that he could look Eve in the eyes. "Now, you have to go on and do what you were born to Evie."

She nodded and leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. "I love you Uncle Joxer."

He smiled. "I know," he said before becoming a light once more and then disappearing.

"Wait!" Eve turned to Eli. "You're essentially taking my life...my human life from me so that I can Ascend. Isn't that right?"

"You won't need it anymore Eve. You're rising above the physical."

"I may not need it, but Joxer does. Gabrielle, Mother and Joxer are part of a circle...one that should never have been broken. They were taken from him 28 years ago because they were protecting me. And then I took him away from them. I have to fix this. This is my last earthly tie. My Debt. They should be together again. If you will take my life, then give it to Joxer. Bring him back for them."

"Well...it's highly unusual."

"The kid has a point Eli," Aphrodite smiled.

Eli looked between the two women and slowly nodded his head. He extended his hand to the Goddess and they each took hold of one of Eve's. "This is your Debt Eve, and your life. Bring him back."

Eve smiled and closed her eyes in concentration. The three figures began to glow with light and then seemed to disappear into it.

A loud crashing noise in her room woke Gabrielle just as the burgeoning light of dawn invaded her window. "Ow...my head!" she heard a masculine voice proclaim from the direction of her floor.

"Who's there?!" She really wished she hadn't left her sai on the table on the other side of the room last night. The only thing next to the bed was a pitcher of water. She grabbed it and held it ready to really make her intruder's head hurt.

"It's just me Gabby," Joxer stood and smiled at her, looking as young as the day she had rescued him from Athena's warriors.

Gabrielle went pale and dropped the pitcher to the floor where it smashed into a thousand pieces. "Am I dead?"

"No silly. I'm just alive again is all. Eve fixed it for me." He smiled his sweet goofy smile and Gabrielle could have sworn her heart had just stopped for a moment, unable to take this much happiness at once.

"Joxer!" She leaned forward, grabbed him by his tunic and hoisted him onto the bed with her. She kept her hold on him as she showered his face with tiny kisses. "You...*kiss*...stupid...*kiss*...idiot!...*kiss* Big...*kiss*...jerk!...*kiss* How...*kiss*...dare you...*kiss*...die on me...*kiss*...like that?!...*kiss*"

Joxer's head was swimming with the bliss of not only being alive again but held and kissed by his beloved Gabrielle. He'd been living in the Elysian Fields for three years and this was so much better that it didn't even warrant comparison. It was only when he realized that she was also crying, and at this point nearly hysterically, that he snapped out of it and pulled her into his arms. "Gabrielle?"

"I...love you Joxer. I'm so sorry!"

He smiled. "Sorry that you love me?"

She pulled back and looked at him with an expression of familiar frustration that made him fear for the safety of his nose. Rightly so it turned out, as she reached out and gave it just a little turn. "Yowch! Gabby!" She smiled and released him. Then leaned forward and kissed his nose before putting her lips to his and kissing him properly.

When she pulled back, she smiled at the look of utter bliss on Joxer's face. He slowly opened his eyes and she took his face in her hands. "I'm sorry I didn't realize it until...it was too late."

He took one of her hands in his and kissed her palm. "It's never too late. I heard everything you thought about me while I was...gone. And apart from the "What was the old fool thinking"s that came through, the rest of it made me real happy."

He smiled and she returned it. Feeling brave, he pulled her to him for another kiss. She not only reciprocated, but pulled him down beside her as she lay back on the pillows. When they broke apart, he softly stroked her once again long blonde hair. "Where's Eve?" she whispered.

Joxer kissed her forehead. "She's with Eli now. Starting work on the good she was born to do."

"We should tell Xena. She'll be upset." Her hand toyed idly with the ties of his shirt.

"Xena knows. She's at peace with it."

"Oh." Her finger strayed from his shirt to rub at his chest a little. "Does she know about you being home?"

"No," he whispered around the breath he held at her touch.

"Oh." She smiled and leaned over him until she could plant a kiss on his neck. "Maybe we should go tell her?"

Gabrielle got to her knees on the bed and moved to step over him. Instead, Joxer pulled her down on top of him and then rolled so that she lay beneath him. "Xena can wait," he smiled as he tasted his sweet bard's lips once more. She slipped one hand into his hair and used the other to grope for the blanket and pull it over them.

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