Dark seemed friendlier without fire.

Xena watched the shadows cast by the small fire she’d just lit, and wondered why the wood seemed gloomier now than moments before. Now she was bathed by flame.

For an instant she turned her back on the warmth, and looked out instead at the chill autumn landscape, bare trees, drooping leaves. A cold autumn moon staring down.

She shivered, and turned back to the fire, over which a chunk of meat and onion roasted. If Gabrielle had been there, she’d have been telling some story or other, or asking questions, or complaining, or . . . something. She missed her, Xena admitted, even if it was just for the night. It’d been so long since she’d been alone, that the night seemed strange to her. The moon unfamiliar when she was looking at it by herself.

Finishing her meal, she spread out her bedroll, knowing that it’d be cooler that night without Gabrielle’s presence beside her.

“You better not stay another night, Gabrielle.” She muttered aloud, and then grinned. Xena disliking solitude? Once loneliness had been her dearest friend.

She put her hand to the clasps on her leathers when she felt the thrill of a presence behind her.

She knew he was there.

He knew she knew.

Slowly, she unclasped the catch, and then the other, refusing to allow a smirk to appear on her lips. The voyeur! She whirled around and opened her mouth to berate him, then stopped as she caught sight of his face.

“You’re hurt –“

His face was paler than she’d ever seen – a pallor less white than clear. He was shaking, but his eyes were bright with fever.

“I . . . no, don’t touch it!”

She’d moved closer, seen the weapon impaled in his chest.

“What on earth?”

The object – something like the head of a spear - glowed with a strange blue light, pulsing with the movements of Ares’ breath, the beating of his heart.

“If I pull it out . . .”

“It’ll kill me.” Ares answered. He stood, trembling, his right hand pressed hard under the site of the wound, his left supporting it. The unearthly pallor made the darkness of his hair and eyes seem the inky blackness of a starless night.

Suddenly amidst the cold a fiery anger grew inside Xena, glowing, until she shook.

“Who did this to you? Who?” She asked furiously, grabbing his shoulders, staring at his glittering eyes. “What kind of weapon is this? It’s like –“

“Ice . . . or frost . . .” He groaned, and then Xena took his weight as his legs could no longer support him. She moved him to the bedroll by the fire, took him in her arms, felt the cold of his body. Touching his skin was like plunging a bare hand into snow.

“The frost giants, those who fought Thor?” Xena asked more softly, wondering why it mattered, knowing it did. Revenge mattered.

“No –“ Then he sighed, and was silent, and horrified Xena turned his head, searched for life in his eyes. It remained. The skin on his face frozen, barely moveable; his eyes alone familiar to her.

“You came for help?” Xena asked again, and wished, agonisingly, that Gabrielle was there. She’d have remembered a story, something that told of a frozen heart, and its healing!

His icy lips moved a little, into a small smile. “No.” He breathed.

He’d come to die. For a moment Xena hated him the way she’d always imagined hating him, always promised herself she would, when she could. How dare he! How dare he die in her arms!

Well, she’d show him.

“I won’t let you go. I won’t.” Xena promised him, wrapping his frozen body in her arms. “If it’s ice, or snow, it can melt. What’s hotter than fire, than anger? I’ll melt it away. I’ll burn it with rage. I refuse to allow you to –“

He was murmuring something now, as Xena dashed impatient tears away. She knew what he was saying, what he’d said before.

I’d rather die in your arms than live a thousand years without you in mine . . .

Trust him to keep his word about the wrong things.

Where did the dead go, what did they become? A star, some icy sparkling light so far away? What meaning was that? Xena stared up at the wasteland of the moon, ignoring the tears dampening Ares’ shoulder, daring its round face to display smugness, the complacency of eternity. That wasn’t the infinite love she wanted!

A strange sound drew her back – a hissing.

Ares’ head had been flung back, across her shoulder, but now he moved, drawn by the same sound.

A trickle of white steam hissed from the pulsing blue of the spear-head – as though eaten away by the strongest acid. Xena stared with astonishment. Her anguished tears were healing his wound.

“What –“

“How is it that . . . you always know, Xena?” Ares coughed, staring down at the disappearing weapon.

The last of the blue, icy shard was gone, and in its place a strong red glow shone. Xena laid a frightened hand over the one sign of colour in the white body, and for an instant felt a throb of terrifying power. And then, like the sudden moment of dawn, it exploded over them both, throwing Xena back, and pushing Ares to his feet.

When she opened her eyes he was there, just as he always had been, his skin burnished, his eyes mischievous. Warm. Then a flood of light took him.

****

“Oh, yes, I know that one.” Gabrielle assured her, as they stretched out by the fire. “It’s an old Northern tale, I think. There’s a Queen of Snow, or a Princess of Ice, or some such thing. She tempts a young man, with her remote unattainable beauty. She promises him the world, everything he could want. But she really places a seed of ice in his heart, that grows and grows, so he doesn’t want anything at all. It nearly kills him.”

“Nearly?”

“Well, he’s rescued of course.” Gabrielle hugged her knees, staring into the fire, trying to remember the old nursery tale. “His old sweetheart has followed him to the castle of ice, and can’t understand why he won’t look at her, is acting so strangely. Finally she cries; and her tears of love melt the icy seed in his heart.”

Xena looked at the patterns in the flames, listening hard.

“And what comes next?”

Gabrielle yawned, moved into the snug warmth of her bedroll. “That’s all I can remember . . . but . . . it doesn’t have to end just there . . .”

Xena moved over and planted a tender kiss on her friend’s head.

“Night, Gabrielle. I love you.”

“Love you too.” Gabrielle murmured, and drifted into sleep.

Xena listened comfortably to the steady breathing of her friend, wishing again she’d been there the previous night. Then she felt the fire of his presence and she turned to see him standing before her.

“Ares.”

Naming him made him her own, for a moment. She stood up, and laid a hand on the side of his face, feeling his warmth.

“Tears of love?”

Xena searched his eyes, but they were tender, not sardonic. She nodded.

“That’s what the story says.”

“Well, then –” And he smiled, and her heart turned over, and with a light easy movement was in his arms, and his warm, warm lips were on her own.

The End