Journey's End

by LJ Maas

  “I am not proud of most of my life, Atrius.” I answered.

  “I won’t try to tell you that standing before Hades will be easy for you, when that time comes. I would like you to know that through it all, you have earned my respect as a warrior. In the last few seasons, I have seen a self awareness come over you, that is welcomed by all. I have always been proud to call you, Lord Conqueror, but it has been only recently, that I am pleased to also call you friend.”

  “Thank you, Atrius. That title honors me more than any other.” I answered, my back still facing him.

  “Tell me then, friend,” I asked, changing the subject. “How do you feel about this young woman, Anya?”

  “I... well, I suppose I love her.” Atrius responded with some embarrassment. I understood, but who else was I to ask such a thing of?

  “And, does she feel the same as you?”

  “I believe so, Lord Conqueror. We’ve never actually said the words, but... well, you know how it is... you sort of get a feeling.”

  I wanted to tell Atrius that I didn’t know how it was, that’s why I was standing here, surely looking like an idiot, asking a soldier about love. The last thing I needed or wanted was to look a fool. I wondered if it was worth it, trying to ascertain what my feelings were for my young slave. There was no way a beautiful young girl was going to fall in love with the Conqueror of the Known World, was there? Besides, what I was feeling for Gabrielle wasn’t love, was it? There would be only one way of finding out. I had to decide whether a relationship with Gabrielle, as ludicrous as that sounds, was worth a little humiliation.

  I turned around and pulled a small chair in front of the seated man. I turned it around and straddled the seat, resting my arms on the chair’s back, in front of me. I opened my mouth to speak, before I could turn tail and run.

  “Atrius, how do you know?”

  “Know, Lord Conqueror?”

  “If what you’re feeling... if what she’s feeling... I mean, if it’s really love?” It was too late to back down now, the question was out there already, and so, I looked at him with grim determination, hoping he was smart enough not to make me explain.

  Finally, the light of understanding burned in his brown eyes and he nodded his head, a small smile of realization crossing his lips. “I see.” He said at last. The import of the players involved, eventually getting through to him.

  “It’s not very easy to explain, it’s the way I feel when I’m around her, but more than that, the way I feel when she’s not by my side. If she’s away from me, I worry for her and when she’s with me, I worry I’ll do something stupid in front of her. It’s feeling something like pain waiting all day to see her, and then the minute I’m with her, the pain continues because I know shortly, I’ll have to leave her. It’s knowing, that everything she says or does, simply fascinates me. It’s in the way I have to remind myself to keep breathing when she smiles at me. Most of all,” Atrius finally took a breath and I noticed how his eyes took on a gentle expression as he spoke of Anya. “It’s knowing that I’ll probably make a complete jackass out of myself, in front of her, but that she won’t notice, and if she does notice, you can rest assured she’ll overlook it. I know none of this is very concrete, but the only way I know to say it, is that she completes me.”

  Just as he finished speaking the words that were highly uncharacteristic for the battle-hardened soldier, I heard screams followed by peals of laughter coming from outside. Rising and walking to the balcony that overlooked my gardens, I watched as Gabrielle tucked a small lap quilt around Anya’s legs, the slightly older woman sitting on one of the stone benches. The young slave then turned and pounced on one of the small girls, lifting her up and twirling her own body around to giggles of delight from the tiny child.

  This was the one, the smallest, that always seemed to find me, as she did yet again. Pointing a chubby finger upward to the open balcony, Gabrielle raised her eyes to meet mine. She smiled and I found myself, just as Atrius predicted, reminding myself to keep breathing. The little girl waved happily up at me and I couldn’t help waving a few fingers back, freezing in mid motion to look around, self-consciously, to see who might be watching. I cleared my throat and tried to appear stern once more, but I think the females below understood that it was all bluster.

  Gabrielle kissed a chubby cheek and the girl squirmed from her grasp, running off through the maze of stone paths that wound through the beautiful garden. I’m not sure if those flowers ever heard laughter before this, let alone a child’s laughter. No one was ever allowed in my private gardens, but since Gabrielle had run of the area, the guards knew better than to deny her, and her new friends.

  Once the small blonde released the laughing girl, Gabrielle lifted her head to look up at me again. With that one glance, everything Atrius just said made complete sense.

  Is that what this feeling is, little one? Is that why I worry when you’re not with me and sit, captivated, by your innocent and unintentional charm? Is it true? Am I feeling something that Xena the Conqueror thought was never meant for her?

  The moment of our eye contact lasted no more than a dozen heartbeats, but it felt like an eternity to me. As I looked down into those eyes, that always seemed to hold something more than what the rest of the world saw, I realized the truth of it. Gabrielle, you complete me.

  * * *

  By late afternoon, my schedule of petitions for the day was exhausted, as was I. I searched for Gabrielle and when I couldn’t find a trace of her, I asked one of the guards, who was stationed on this floor of the palace.

  “She’s helping in the school, Lord Conqueror.” He answered.

  “I didn’t even know we had a school.” I responded with some confusion.

  “Well, the lady Delia started it up, Lord Conqueror, and she asked your Gabrielle to assist her.”

  I chuckled aloud at that bit. Gods, that’s all I need, for Gabrielle to spend more time around Delia. Figures the two of them would come up with a plan like this.

  Unsure as to when my young slave would find her way to me, I decided to leave her a note, and take Tenorio out for a relaxing run. I look back at my actions now and wonder. What if I decided not to leave Gabrielle a note? What would have transpired between us, if I hadn’t made my way to her rooms, discovering the scroll, lying outside its case on her writing table? I ask myself that same thing over and over some days, for on this day, it became official. On this day, I lost my heart.

  My name is Gabrielle. I am a slave and I belong to Xena the Conqueror...

  So, the scroll started out, but I was long past that portion now. I was more than halfway through. It was a horrible thing I was doing, destroying my young slave’s privacy by reading the scroll. It was rolled up tight, but was lying outside its case, as if waiting to be finished. I wanted to stop; I chided and berated myself, yet still, I could not stop reading. It was as if, Gabrielle were finally speaking to me. She was telling me her most private and intimate thoughts, and I, like the criminal I am, gave in to temptation’s call.

  What is it about her that causes my many fears to melt away, as the winter’s ice under the heat of the midday sun? Why do I feel so much more than a mere slave when in her presence? A more apt question might be; why does she insist on me being more than a slave?

  Even when I can’t see her, I feel her powerful blue gaze upon me, trying to extract my secrets from their hidden recesses within my heart. She does not know what it means to be a slave, but I will not say she does not know what fear is. I, myself, thought of her as the most fearless woman I have ever known of, but on the evening she taught me to stand up for myself, I learned that not only does she know fear, but it is often her closest companion.

  I could not, nor can I still, explain what it did to me that night. She gave me permission to defend myself. Has she saved me or cursed me? She has only called me her slave but once, while I was in her presence. Now she uses the words, you belong to me. I could take this admission as simply my master asserting h
er ownership, but I feel there is more to it. She asks me if I belong to her and I feel that she is asking me so much more than that. Often, when she asks that question, it is with a certain degree of sadness, even trepidation in her voice.

  She has caused me to do something that I vowed would never happen. I promised myself, every heartbeat of every day, for nearly eleven summers, that I would not do this, yet it has happened. The unthinkable has occurred and I don’t know how to undo the damage, worst of all, I do not know if I want to. She is called Xena the Conqueror, and the name is appropriate, isn’t it? She’s conquered me, hasn’t she? She has breached the barriers I spent half my life creating, and of all the things I swore would never happen, she alone has been able to bring forth. She has caused me to feel.

  My problem is, that I don’t know what I feel. Is it friendship, compassion... Gods, Love? How does one recognize the difference, without ever having experienced the emotions before? Pain and humiliation have been my constant companions since I was first placed on the auction block. What does this woman know of these things, she who has never suffered the degradation of being owned like chattel? How is it then that she knows just the right thing to say to ease my constant fears? How does she know how to touch me, so that I do not simply feel her caress on my skin, rather deep in my soul?

  I cannot say why or how she knows me so well at times. We are so very different, are we not? There are so many questions and so few answers. I am better educated than over half the population of this castle, yet there are so many things that I have yet to experience. I have been instructed well and my own knowledge is vast, yet I have been kept sheltered from so much. Why do I feel entirely safe in her arms? Do I fool myself when I think there may be a bond... dare I use the word affection, growing between us?

  Does she know the turmoil this causes me? She who seems all knowing to me, does this woman know that I wake up in the night, to hear her whispering my name in her dreams? Does she realize when she’s not looking; I gaze at her and am amazed at her beauty? Does she understand that hers is the first pleasurable touch I’ve ever encountered?

  Last night I pleasured her for the second time, in no way that any man or woman has ever taught me. It was all instinct and something rather primal I felt locked up deep inside. It was forceful and commanding, and although I know my master’s arousal was great, mine was as well. That surprised and frightened me. I touched her this way, not only because it pleased her, but also because it thrilled me. In almost eleven seasons, I have never experienced any form of release from the acts that I performed or that were committed on me. This woman, however, can whisper in my ear and I feel warmth, swirling in my belly. When she touches me, I am instantly wet and awaiting the contact that always promises that she will not stop, until I experience that release.

  Last night, I was caught up in that pleasure, not only hers, but my own pleasure as well. I straddled her body, my wet center pressed against her muscled abdomen and suddenly; I felt the rocking of my own hips as they ground into her belly. I was mortified, knowing punishment would be swift, but it never came. Her large hands took hold of my hips and she actually encouraged my movements. She pulled me down, pressing my need harder against her skin, my own increasing wetness making it easier to slide myself across the hard muscles, covered with silky skin. In my head, I knew that my actions were not those of a slave, and when she began to moan and persuade me with her words, I knew those were not the actions of a master.

  I leaned forward, bracing my hands on the bed and continued my body’s movements, only focused on my own mounting need. Her sounds sent jolts of pleasure through me, then I felt her hands slide up my body to each enclose a breast. She pinched and pulled on the sensitive tips, causing me to begin to pound myself against her. I had absolutely no control over these actions and the feelings terrified and gratified at the same time. When I, at last, leaned back, silently screaming in release, I felt those long fingers slip inside me. Before my body could recover, she was producing the sensations again and again. Her voice... Gods, that voice. She sat up and wrapped one arm around me, the other continuing to fill me, repeatedly. She spoke to me, in that low, seductive tone, telling me all she would do to me, all she wanted of me. They were sweet, sensual, sometimes vulgar words, but the sound, combined with the idea that she might make them a reality, propelled me over a cliff that I thought I would surely, never come back from. All I could think of, as we lay together much later, was that these were not the actions of a master and her slave, rather, two lovers.

  One night I woke up, terrified and screaming, from a nightmare that I hadn’t suffered from for many seasons. The large woman took me in her arms and looked genuinely distressed; thinking something she’d done, triggered the unsettling vision. She held me close and whispered tender words until I felt my heart resume its normal cadence. It was at that moment I knew. Again, it is not something I can explain logically, only a feeling that I have. I knew on that evening, that she would do anything for me. She would go hungry, to see that I was fed, suffer any cold, to keep me warm. It struck me also, that she would feel the sting of a blade, before she would ever let harm come to me. The other feeling that I endure is that she doesn’t know why she feels the same things. I wonder however, does she feel it too? Does she know?

  Yet still, knowing is not understanding. What will come of me if I am wrong?

  When I realized I was having trouble reading because of the lack of light, I looked up in alarm at the setting sun. Quickly replacing the scroll on the desk, in exactly the same order as I found it, I quietly made my way to my own chambers. All the while, my hands nearly shaking at the discoveries I made.

  If I hadn’t been quite so preoccupied with my own thoughts, I might not have missed the small blonde who sat tucked into an alcove on the stone staircase. Nor would I have missed, what I was only to discover much later in our relationship. Had I been a small fly on the wall, I could have watched as Gabrielle silently entered her own rooms, lit a candle, and then walked directly to her writing table. A gentle smiled graced her features as she lifted the scroll up to the candlelight. Returning the parchment to her desk, she plucked a long golden hair from her own head. Carefully the young woman wrapped it around the scroll once more. Right before she blew out the candle, a look that seemed a combination of fear, tinged with excited expectation, crossed her face. Taking a determined sigh, the young woman left the room, to gently tap on the door across the hall.

  CHAPTER 13

  LOVE BADE ME WELCOME; YET, MY SOUL DREW BACK

  OUR EVENING MEAL was a quiet affair; both of us lost in our own private thoughts. My young slave seemed as pensive as I, on this evening. I told her I had a little work to do and the next couple of candlemarks were her own. I kissed the top of her head and sent her off to her scrolls. When she looked back at me, I thought I saw disappointment written on her face.

  Sometime later, I sat at my writing table, within the silent confines of my study, surrounded by the ceiling high shelves packed with scrolls and parchments. I pulled the silk robe tighter around my body, as if to ward off the chill and damp that always settled in the castle, once the sun was drawn from the sky. I meant to get some work done writing letters, a seemingly never-ending task. All I could do, however, was to ponder all that I learned from Gabrielle’s scrolls.

  So many thoughts and emotions seemed to be racing around in my head; I can scarcely remember my own name. Does Gabrielle feel anything akin to what I feel for her? She feels something, her scroll made that much apparent, but what if it was nothing more than friendship? Yes, she feels pleasure from my touch, but I am basically giving her no choice, am I? Gods, am I forcing her into feeling these things? Is it similar to training a falcon to sit on my hand in order to receive its reward, when it’s not what the bird would do naturally? All these doubts and self-recriminations came at me until my head began to pound.

  I saw a movement to my right and saw a tentative blonde head peek into the room. Gabrielle was never t
o interrupt me in my study, in case I was in a meeting. I purposefully left the door open to this room, hoping she would eventually find me.

  “My Lord?” she asked, standing in the doorway.

  “Come in, little one, I’m alone.”

  Gabrielle smiled and walked up to my desk, standing beside the large chair that held my long frame. I slipped an arm around her hips and just as easily she ran her fingers through my hair, brushing back the dark locks, that fell forward into my eyes. It seemed such a natural movement, and I squeezed her in response.

  “What is it Gabrielle?”

  “You said that you wanted to teach me, My Lord. The game... King’s Men?” she reminded me.

  “Ahh, so I did. Are you still interested? It’s a complicated game.”

  “I’ll do my best, My Lord.” She answered.

  When I walked into the outer room, I was pleasantly surprised. A warm fire burned brightly in the fireplace, a number of large candles and a lamp were lit, and moved close to the playing table. Finally, a goblet of sweet wine rested by my favorite chair, which was positioned in front of the marble table.

  Gabrielle looked up at me expectantly and I couldn’t resist reaching over to place a light kiss on her forehead. “This is lovely, thank you, Gabrielle.”

  Nearly a candlemark later, we were hunched over the table, beginning the first real game. Gabrielle memorized the moves that each distinct piece was allowed to make, and it became apparent to me why she was as intelligent as she was. The young woman possessed a remarkable memory, easily remembering the sometimes, complicated pattern of steps each piece took, to effect a turn.