Rubdown
by
Ogami

Disclaimer: The characters Xena and Gabrielle are owned by StudiosUSA, and are used here without permission. This is a work of Sapphic fiction. If you are under 18 years of age, you may read this only if a parent is reading it with you.

Setting: The 6th season episode WHO'S GURKHAN?, but with a slightly different plan.

The ground tilted beneath Gabrielle's feet. Only it wasn't ground, it was wood, and she was on a ship. The blonde warrior felt the familiar swelling in her throat.

"Are you okay?" Xena asked, walking up behind her.

Gabrielle turned around, and Xena saw that she was tapping her wrist veins.

"Couldn't be better, just give me a moment." Gabrielle said tightly.

Xena watched her timing. "I see you remember that little trick I taught you."

"Couldn't forget it." the blonde replied, her expression relaxing. "I've learned a lot from you over the years."

Xena caught the meaning in Gabrielle's tone, and looked down at the deck. "Listen, that's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about."

Gabrielle stopped her tapping, and looked her partner in the eyes.

Xena was about to speak, when another conversation interrupted. A sailor was walking by, with Xena's daughter Eve following right behind.

"In the name of Eli," Eve began, "don't you know that your proposition to me was wrong?"

"Blow it out your porthole." the seadog replied, walking faster.

"What's going on here?" Xena asked, stopping the man.

The crusty sailor indicated over his shoulder. "It's her prattling, Ma'am. I'm trying to trim down the sails, else the crosswinds 'ill rip 'em to shreds."

"He propositioned me." Eve declared indignantly to Xena.

Xena glared at the sailor, who audibly gulped above the splash of the sea.

"I was trying to make her leave me alone." the man said uneasily, shrugging.

"What did you say?" Xena asked.

"I uh..." the sailor trailed off. "Well..."

"He told me I could do something else with my mouth." Eve huffed.

Gabrielle stifled a laugh, and looked to Xena for her reaction.

Xena raised an eyebrow, and then turned to the sailor. "Mind your manners, and carry on."

The sailor nodded and left, leaving an outraged Eve before her mother.

"But he-he... ow! Ow!" Eve yelped as Xena took her by the ear and led her to the railing.

Xena released her. "Eve, would you leave the crew alone?"

"But mother," Eve whined, rubbing her ear, "these people should know the message of love that Eli can bring them!"

Both Xena and Gabrielle rolled their eyes.

"Look," Xena continued patiently, "not everyone is receptive to the message of Eli. Why don't you let him do his work, okay Sweetie?"

Eve sulked for a moment, then nodded her assent and left.

Gabrielle rejoined Xena's side. "She's so naive, Xena. What's wrong with her?"

Xena paused before speaking. "It's exactly the way Callisto was after I gave her my 'light' in Hell."

"Oh." Gabrielle replied. "Yeah, I remember that. You think Eve will ever be a normal person?"

"I don't know." Xena said. She turned to the other woman. "Now where was I?"

Gabrielle forced a smile. "You were about to lecture me on how the cycle of violence must end, and that I shouldn't take vengeance for what Gurkhan did to... my parents."

"All that, huh?" Xena returned the smile, but Gabrielle had already lost hers. Both women looked out to the horizon.

"I trust you." Xena suddenly said.

"What?" Gabrielle looked back at her. This was the last thing she expected Xena to say.

"I said, I trust you." Xena said with a glint in her eye. "Gabrielle, we've traveled together for six years now."

"Longer, by some counts." the blonde replied.

"I trust your judgment." Xena said simply. "I know in your heart you'll find the right thing to do."

"And what if I don't?" Gabrielle said harshly. "What if I just want to feel his blood running down my hands? Xena, when I think of what he did-"

Xena watched the blonde cut herself off, holding in her pain. It would come out sooner or later, Xena thought.

Taking her partner by the shoulder, the Warrior Princess led her towards the cabin. "Then we think of a plan together. A good one."

"Harlot for sale!" Virgil bellowed. "Prime merchandise for the taking!"

Eve jumped as Joxer's son prodded her in the back. This was the part of the plan she was liking the least.

"Fun for everyone, bring your friends!" the youth called again, to the puzzled stares of passersby. Eve jabbed her captor in the ribs.

"Ow, what?" Virgil cried in mock pain. "You're not nervous, are you?"

"Who, me?" Eve returned, turning to look at him. "No, I trust my mother's plan."

Virgil nodded. "But you don't exactly trust me, right?"

"I think I do."

"You shouldn't." Virgil laughed. "Half of me wants to sell you for real."

Eve looked blankly at him. "I can't ask you to forgive me."

"Then don't." he replied, losing his jovial expression. "That's not something I'm prepared to give."

"One step is all it takes," Eve said, brightening, "it was as Eli said-"

"Please, spare me the musings of Eli." Virgil replied, tugging at Eve's chain a little. "Let's just say I trust Xena, because my father spoke highly of her. And I'm willing to help."

They both watched the crowd pass by.

"I'm going along with her plan," Virgil continued, "and that is to find you a buyer."

"Then perhaps we'd better find a real slave trader," she replied, "I doubt you'd be able to sell me on the street corner."

Virgil scanned the crowd, spying a bejeweled turban-wearing individual hurrying by.

"Don't bet on it." Virgil said evenly, tugging on her chain. "Come on."

Xena looked up at the imposing structure. "So this is Gurkhan's palace."

"I hope we didn't disappoint you." Eve said excitedly.

Xena smiled as she touched the hastily-applied bandage that Eve had on her thigh. "You got out in one piece, what more could I ask for?"

"You want us as back-up?" Virgil asked, still breathing heavily, although their escape was made an hour ago. This sort of action was still new to him.

Xena shook her head. "No, you and Eve head back to the ship. Gabrielle and I will handle it."

"Are you sure?" Eve asked, concern in her eyes.

"Hey." Xena said, hugging her daughter. "It's me, remember?"

Xena released Eve, and then stopped Virgil. "Thank you, Virgil."

"For what?" the youth asked.

"For not letting me down." Xena added, inclining her head towards Eve. "You have your father's gentle heart."

"I try." Virgil said curtly, lowering his gaze. Unable to come up with any other response, he turned and joined Eve.

Xena and Gabrielle watched them go.

"I don't know where he gets that strength." Gabrielle observed. "If it were me, I would want to tear the head off of my father's murderer."

"The night is young." Xena coolly replied. "You ready?"

Gabrielle fingered the dual hilts of her dragon sai. "Ready."

It took many years, but at last Eckhar finally got the post he deserved. As head guard to the palace entrance, his was a position of authority that the other guards had to respect. When important visitors came calling on Gurkhan the Magnificent, they had to get by him first. The guard looked up from his post to find two women before him. "Yes?"

"Hi there." Xena said with a bored expression. "What's your name?"

"Eckhar." the guard replied. "What do you want?"

"We're here to see Gurkhan." Gabrielle said brightly, looking around.

He snapped to attention, along with the guard next to him.

"Gurkhan?" he repeatedly in disbelief.

"Uh huh."

The guard adopted a scowl. "Deliveries are around the back."

"We like the front door approach." Xena spoke up, flashing her brilliant blue eyes at him.

"Are you expected?" the other guard asked.

"No." Xena innocently shook her head. "I was going to bring him something on a platter."

"Sorry, no admittance." Eckhar gruffly spat out. "Sell your wares elsewhere."

Xena frowned. She looked at Gabrielle.

"I don't have any snappy comebacks." the blonde admitted with a shrug.

"Me neither." Xena said, looking back at the guard. "We'll do this the hard way. Ay-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi!"

The guards reached for their weapons as the woman somersaulted up in the air, but it was too late. Xena delivered a sharp kick to the back of Eckhar's neck, knocking him senseless before he even hit the ground.

Flashing her sai in a bewildering array before the other guard, Gabrielle expertly disarmed him as he raised his weapon. As he looked at her in astonishment, Gabrielle flattened his nose with the hilt of her weapon, sending him to the ground as well.

"We never learned the other guy's name." Gabrielle observed, rubbing the blood off her knuckle.

Xena clicked her tongue as she studied the great wooden door before them.

"Maybe we'll ask him on the way out." the Warrior Princess replied, kicking at the door with deceptive ease.

Bolts on the opposite side of the door strained and broke as the force of Xena's kick threw the door off its hinges. Xena and Gabrielle entered the palace through the archway they had created, scantly noticing the groan of the guard underneath the shattered door.

Xena drew her sword. "Let's find that throneroom."

Gurkhan the Magnificent pulled another draught of ale from the tap, he preferred to handle his own beverages on occasion. He had been in a foul mood since the day's earlier diversion, and was now bored by the winnings he had just earned. Gambling with his night's guests had been satisfying, but he had the strong suspicion they had cheated to let him win. And why shouldn't they? It was good to fear Gurkhan, he thought to himself with a smug smile.

"Is something troubling you, my husband?" the blonde woman at his side asked.

"No, Sarah." the slaver answered, swallowing. "That little vixen will be captured yet."

"She seemed very familiar somehow," Sarah wondered aloud, "but I can't place where I met her before."

"No matter." he replied. "I have doubled the guard, and put the word out. I expect you'll get to ask her yourself, shortly."

"I hope so." Sarah replied imperiously. "She ruined my shopping trip today."

Sitting in his throne tent, Gurkhan thought he heard something beyond the patter and music of his throneroom. At first he dismissed it, but then he heard a faint cry from outside the chamber, followed by a crashing noise. The doorway opened, and his eyes bugged out in alarm. Then his expression relaxed as he saw it was just two women entering his chamber. Who were these beauties, he wondered.

Xena looked around the throne chamber, as Gabrielle closed the door behind them. The Warrior Princess noted eight guards with visible weapons, and four others with hidden weapons. These last ones did not appear to be guests or slaves, but that would do for now. Many eyes were on her, it seemed she had most everyone's attention.

With a snarl, Xena brought her Chakram into view, to the gasps of those watching. She flung the Chakram off at a guard, who just had time to double back with his scimitar raised as the weapon carved wetly through his wrist. Before his scream of pain echoed through the room, the Chakram had already careened off a wall and slit another set of wrist tendons.

Gabrielle readied her sai defensively as the Chakram raced around the room, but the scene shocked the trained guards into inactivity. In the span of ten seconds, eight guards were now screaming and clutching their missing or injured swordhands. Noticing movement off to her side, Gabrielle ducked and tumbled just as another figure drew a dagger through the space where her belly had been. Coming up behind her assailant, Gabrielle expertly sliced her sai across the back of his thigh, hamstringing him.

Xena smiled in approval as Gabrielle avoided his counterstrike, and she calmly walked to the center of the chamber. "Which one of you dirtbags is Gurkhan?"

A turbaned individual spat out a mouthful of bread, and almost looked in the direction of the tent. Catching himself, he worriedly looked at the female intruder and stood up.

Xena's eyes narrowed at the individual standing before her. She closed the distance between them, stepping on a guard's bleeding hand on the way over.

"I-I am Gurkhan." the man said in halting tones, his face going white.

Xena got into his face, and looked him over from head to toe. "You're not Gurkhan."

Before the astonished man could speak, Xena's hand shot out, hitting his points. The man teetered for a moment, and then sank to his knees.

"I've just cut off the flow of blood to your brain..." Xena intoned. "You'll be dead in a matter of minutes, unless you tell me who Gurkhan is."

His face hidden behind a curtain, Gurkhan silently signaled his hidden guards to attack.

Gabrielle took a step closer to the wall as two men charged her, bringing steel out of their garments. Blocking one with her sai, she spun the other into his friend and stabbed him through the ear. Turning her attention from him, she saw that she had caught the other man's stiletto in her sai, so she twisted it from his grasp. Throwing the dead guard against his friend, Gabrielle put some distance between them.

"Don't." she warned as the guard brought up another weapon. "Unless you want to end up like your friend."

The man glared daggers at her, but lowered his weapon at seeing her expression. He raised his hands and sat down against the wall.

Gabrielle looked back to Xena to see a fat man falling heavily on the floor next to her.

"Incompetent." Xena observed, having booted the man in the face. "It's so hard for slavers to find good work these days. Isn't that right, Gurkhan?"

The man before her had turned beet red, and was trying to take breath, but just barely could.

"Where is he?" Xena urged, locking eyes with the dying man. "No amount of pay is worth your life."

"In... in the black slippers." the man finally gasped out.

Xena considered for a moment, and then released his points. "Good boy."

He collapsed to the floor, as Xena stepped over him. In front of Xena, the man in black slippers got to his feet.

"What do you want?" Gurkhan asked brusquely, slapping away his wife's offered hand.

"Gabrielle." Xena said coolly. She watched as a guard struggled to place a sword in his other hand, only to drop it and resume binding his seeping wound.

The blonde warrior stepped forward and around the party-goers, until she was face to face with the slaver himself. Gabrielle looked at him coldly.

"And how did I wrong you, my beauteous one?" Gurkhan asked, finding some bravado.

"You killed my mother, and my father!" Gabrielle said at once, hate in her eyes. She raised a sai towards his throat. "Why?"

Gurkhan weighed his answer. Saying he couldn't remember whom she was referring to would not be the best answer. He decided to play it casual.

"Business is business." he said smoothly. "Can we not come to some possible arrangement?"

Xena watched Gabrielle's back. She wondered if the blonde even heard the man's words. After all, what could he say? How could he make it better? Xena waited along with everybody else to see what Gabrielle would do.

Gabrielle stared at the man before her. How she wanted to put her blade right through his bloated neck. Then she thought of her mother, of her mother making her breakfast, of her mother's advice. She thought of her father, of his stern outward manner, and his gentle heart. Her expression softened.

"Yes. Yes there is something you can give me."

"Name it." the slaver shrugged with forced casualness, his mind racing on how he could kill these crazed women and escape. Where were the rest of his guards? These two couldn't have taken them all out, could they? A thin sheen of sweat covered his forehead.

Gabrielle spoke louder this time. "I want my niece, she was taken as a slave by you years ago. Her name was Sarah."

A gasp went through the room, and Xena allowed herself a smile. So Lila's daughter was alive. Good.

"Sarah?" Gurkhan said with feigned calm. He held his hand out to his side. "Come to me, my wife."

Gabrielle gulped in her throat as one of the women under the tent stood up and stood alongside the slavemaster. She was also blonde, and about her age.

Gurkhan took his wife's hand and looked back at Gabrielle. "She is my number one wife. She belongs here with me."

Sarah looked the stranger over, incredulous and fearful.

"Sarah?" Gabrielle asked, lowering her sai. "I'm Lila's sister, Gabrielle."

The movement was not lost on Gurkhan.

"Mother?" Sarah asked in shock. "M-My mother sent you? What?"

"Yes, Sarah." Gabrielle said with relief. "I spoke to your mother, I've come to take you home."

"Will you, then?" the slaver observed, releasing his wife's hand.

Gabrielle said nothing, but returned her gaze to the slaver.

He smiled generously. "If you so miss your mother and father, then perhaps you should join them!"

Gabrielle dodged his knife strike, sidestepping him as her own blade flicked out. Gurkhan dropped his weapon as he clutched his torn throat instead. The blonde stepped away from him as his eyes bugged out, and his blood soaked his fine garments. She watched as he collapsed face-down in a heap. Gabrielle looked at Sarah, feeling nothing but numbness herself.

Sarah stepped back a bit, staring at Gurkhan's body in shock for long moments, and then looked up at her rescuer.

"Are you ready to go home?" Gabrielle asked simply, offering her hand.

Sarah looked at her, looked down at Gurkhan, and then nodded.

"Mother, what are we going to do with all these women?" Eve asked as she indicated the crowded deck. The deck of the merchant ship they had leased was covered with former members of Gurkhan's harem, to the delight of the crew.

Xena nodded. "Send them back to their homes."

"And the ones who don't have homes to go back to?" Gabrielle asked.

"I understand the Amazons are looking for new members." Xena observed. "For those who want it, it could give them a new way of life."

"That's good." Gabrielle replied, looking back on the departing coastline. A hand landed on her shoulder.

"Are you okay?" Xena asked.

"Not really." the blonde replied. "Xena, I could have disabled Gurkhan in any number of ways. I have the skill. I could have even put the pinch on him, you know?"

"I know." Xena smiled.

"When he moved, I was thinking of nothing else but cutting his throat, feeling it over in my mind like something I was tasting." Gabrielle said, shuddering for a moment. "When it came time to act, that's what I did."

"And this bothers you?" Xena coolly asked.

Gabrielle looked aghast. "Of course it bothers me."

"I'm glad." Xena said slowly. "When you don't care about killing someone, that's when you become..."

Xena looked over at Eve, who met her gaze knowingly. "Someone who doesn't like herself very much."

Gabrielle nodded, and returned to her thoughts. Undeterred, Xena poked her elbow.

"What's that you got in the bag?" the Warrior Princess asked.

Gabrielle chuckled. "Oh, well. It's just a little something one of the wives, ex-wives, gave me."

Xena watched as the blonde withdrew a clear vial from the bag.

"It's an expensive body oil." Gabrielle said as Xena raised an eyebrow. "I thought we might celebrate, or something."

"Good idea." Xena said, adding in a quieter voice, "Meet me in the cabin."

Gabrielle watched her go, and shook the vial in her hand. She started forward, but found Eve walking in the same direction.

"What are you doing?" the blonde asked.

"I want to come along." Eve said.

"This is a private rubdown, Eve." Gabrielle cautioned. "Or haven't you figured out why Xena and I are sharing a cabin?"

"I thought it was to meditate."

"Uh, not exactly." Gabrielle corrected impatiently. She really wanted to join Xena just about now.

"I don't know if Eli would approve." Eve admonished, adopting an enlightened expression.

Gabrielle laughed out loud for the first time in days. She opened the cabin door and went inside.

"If Eli stops by," Gabrielle said from the doorway, "tell him Xena and I are indisposed."

And without another word she closed the door.

--- The End ---