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Title: Her Immortal

Author: Aresbitch

Summary: A peek inside Xena's head during her last fight.

Notes: Thanks to LK for taking a second look. Warning, this is set during the ending of AFIN 1. Angst for those of us who hate the finale.

~~

The pain is everything, so it becomes nothing.

Instead she casts her mind back to Greece, and a god standing on a bridge. He's smiling, almost laughing, strong white teeth gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight.

She finds that even though she grieves for his lost humanity, she is grateful that he was a god the last time she saw him, on that bridge.

Bowing to her.

The memory makes her laugh, a sharp noise that doesn't belong on the battlefield, and she spits out the blood that fills her mouth.

Who'd ever have thought that the god of war would bow to a tavern keeper's daughter?

Or that she'd cry the moment she realized it was the last time she'd see him, framed in the setting sun, eternally young, always just beyond her reach.

She recognizes the love blooming in her heart, staining her inside as blood stains her skin on the outside, and she welcomes it, allowing it to fill the empty spaces within. There is no reason to deny it any longer.

She's leaving more than just Gabrielle behind, her daughter off in some land, fighting for peace.

She's leaving him too.

The arrogant god who liked to play games with her, who gave up immortality for her, who promised to wait on a farm for her, who kissed her so passionately after hurting her so deeply, who fought her and then fought for her, who held her as she died and loved her enough to stop asking for what she couldn't give him.

Images tumble in her mind, one into another like dough kneaded by strong hands, and it becomes the life she will no longer live, the memories she will no longer make.

Ares.

She pushes forward -

~~

end

~~