JOXER WAS hot and cold by turns, shivering uncontrollably though the Sumerian heat flooded the room. He dozed fitfully, pain and heat and cold refusing to allow him rest, and once he woke up and he was in his bed at home with Jett and Jace, watching a spider walk across the ceiling and not wanting to call their attention to it because they would want to kill it, and once he woke up and he was in a battle outside some village he'd forgotten the name of long ago, and that man he had seen crawling away holding his own guts in his arms this time did not crawl but stood up and shouted at Joxer, calling him all kinds of names and all of them true, and one time he woke up and he was on his knees in the snow on the mountain and his heart tearing itself to pieces within his chest, and again, and again, and again, and it was cold and he couldn't get up and he couldn't tear his eyes away and he wanted to die, and again, and again, and again. Gabrielle. Gods. Gabrielle.

"Shh." A soft voice, soft hands. "She'll be right back. Joxer...easy now, hush."

He didn't want to hush. She went away? What was up with that? On the other hand, why would she stay? He'd almost gotten her killed, made her kill her teacher, disgraced her as badly as he'd disgraced Xena. He had to find her. He had to beg her forgiveness though he would never receive it. He tried to get up, and the world exploded into pain.

"No," said the voice, firmly now. "No. Lie still." The hands pushed him down and try as he might he could not shake them off. The hands. Holding him down, he couldn't move, and those soft voices that brought such pain with them, and he was trapped, and they were holding him, and they were about to...

"Joxer!" The voice cut through the fog, expecting to be obeyed. "Hold still. Please, baby. Listen to me. Hold still. Everything's all right now. No one's going to hurt you."

Bull. He tried once again to get loose, and something deep inside him tore. He would have screamed if he'd had the breath to do it--and if he hadn't known how much they liked it when he screamed.

"Joxer, sweetheart. It's me. Xena."

He blinked, forced his eyes open. He couldn't see clearly, but he could sense--or was it another dream? "Xena?" he asked, not wanting to know. Gods, not Xena. He couldn't face Xena.

"Yes, it's me. You lie still now, okay? Everything's all right."

He tried to focus on her face. "Gabrielle--"

"She's asleep. She wouldn't go rest until she was sure you were going to be all right, so you lie still and relax, okay? Otherwise you'll make her upset, and I don't like it when Gabrielle's upset, do I?"

His gut twisted in fear. She was still angry. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

"Shh."

"I'm sorry. I know you..." He tried to dodge it yet again, but it was forcing its way to the surface and he was too weak to stop it. "...I know I shamed you."

There. It was out. Joxer was too tired to react. Let her do what she would with him. It didn't matter now.

It was a long moment before Xena spoke. "Joxer, what are you talking about?"

"I'm sorry," he said again, numbly. The words had no power, they never did. What good did it do to be sorry after the fact? "I should have thought of something else. I shouldn't have given up my sword, I..."

Xena took his face in her hands and pried his eyelids open with her thumbs, forcing him to look at her. Her expression seemed odd. "Joxer..."

He couldn't stop talking. He was too weak to even breathe it seemed, and yet he couldn't stop talking. "I know... shamed you, know... weak, I should have fought them, shouldn't have let them..."

"Joxer, I..." Her voice sounded weird, almost not like her at all.

"I knew. I knew you were mad, could tell the way you wouldn't look at me, I..." It was so cold. Cold like that water in the harbor, cold like the depths of the ship at night when it was stormy and they were all chained in the hold for human ballast to keep the ship from sinking, even if they might wish it otherwise.

"I... I didn't think you wanted to talk about it. I thought if you did, you would come to me, I..." There was something wrong. Something wrong with her voice, with her expression, and Joxer wondered if this was just another dream.

"You would have been madder," he said. "A real warrior wouldn't..."

"A real warrior wouldn't turn aside when her friends needed her," Xena said softly, and the words cut worse than the sword had.

"I'm sorry," he said again helplessly, "I..."

"Not you. Me." She placed her hand on his forehead for a brief minute and held it there. "I didn't know, I didn't...want to know. Forgive me, baby." Her hand was cool where he was so hot, though the shivering wouldn't stop. "Forgive me."

Forgive? What was there to forgive Xena for? "But..."

"Shh." She took his hand and placed it on something lying at his side. Cold and smooth under his fingers, like ivory, like...like the hilt of Suleiman's sword. He lifted his head, despite the pain, trying to see. "Xena, what..."

"Yours. You've earned it."

"I can't. It's a prince's sword, it.. I don't deserve..."

"You don't deserve so little, but it's all that I have right now." Xena gently pushed him back down once more, and Joxer marveled. He must be very, very sick because he was imagining he saw tears on her cheek, and he must be dreaming the whole thing. "Listen," she said. "I'm not angry. I'm not ashamed. I'm proud of you, Joxer, I'm very proud of you and I want you to get better, all right? Now go to sleep and when you wake you'll feel better. I promise."

Xena was proud of him? "Promise?" he whispered, not daring to believe.

"Promise." She took his hand and squeezed it gently.

Promise. Joxer clung to that word. He squeezed her hand in return, a feeble flick of the fingers, no more, and allowed himself to sink down into the darkness. Gabrielle was safe, and Xena was ...proud. If this was true, then nothing waited for him there he couldn't face. Nothing at all. He wanted to say something to Xena, thank her, but could not find the words, and fell asleep before he could even start looking.

-----

"What happens now?" Gabrielle asked dully.

She couldn't seem to really care. Beyond the fact that she and Joxer and Xena and Eve were all together, none of the rest of it seemed to matter. She knew it was mostly a function of the fight and the herbs Xena had given her to help her rest (and Joxer was right, they did smell like fermented cow dung), and she had to know what was going to happen in order to figure out what they would do next--but still, she couldn't seem to really care. She slumped on the chaise Xena had pulled into Joxer's chamber for her, clinging to his hand as he slept. Xena had bullied her into sleeping in her own bed, but she had wakened within a couple of hours and insisted on coming back here. Xena was so darn bossy sometimes.

"Nebula's going to have the Guard announce the execution has been postponed." Xena sat in a chair on the other side of the bed, Eve sitting quietly in her lap. The baby had fussed until she had been brought in to see for herself that Joxer and Gab were all right, and Xena had bowed to the unspoken pressure and allowed her to remain, though not without grumbling about being blackmailed by her own child. Xena had been grumbling ever since they had come upstairs, almost non-stop. "She said she can always use the excuse that the priests didn't think the day was auspicious."

"You mean she can lie," Nebula announced cheerfully.

Xena and Gabrielle looked up. The Queen had apparently invited herself into the apartment and now pulled back the curtain to Joxer's chamber and waltzed in, alone, her confident swagger unmarred. "Which is exactly what I did, so no offense. How you feeling, Blondie?"

She sounded like she was genuinely concerned, in a rough, offhand Nebula-ish way. "Okay. Not hurt," Gabrielle amended. Physically the cut and sore muscles were nothing, and Xena's herbs the worst of it. She saw Nebula's eyes travel to the bed, and sensed her reluctance to interrupt. "He's fine," Gabrielle said. "He's just going to have to rest for a few days until that cut heals up, is all." She saw Nebula relax, relieved--and found to her own surprise she was happy to have put Nebula's mind at ease. Surprise upon surprise today.

"What do you intend to do?" Xena asked the Queen. "The crowd's got to be angry."

"Well--" Nebula dropped into a chair. "You know how you just said I was going to lie to them?"

"You'll lie to them some more?"

"Actually, what I did was I lied to you." Nebula waited for the response, and when it didn't come, she went on. "See, what I really did was when it came time for the execution I went out and faced them by myself."

"You did what?" Xena half-rose out of her chair. Eve cooed.

"See, that's why I lied to you, because I knew you'd overreact. Anyway--" Nebula shrugged. "I took a page from Joxer's book. I told them the truth."

"You, you...without the Guards, without..."

"Xena." Gabrielle said affectionately. "Shut up. Nebula, what did you do?"

"I said what had happened. I said that it had been discovered that Khalil had not tried to assassinate me after all, but had been framed in an attempt to discredit the Lion House. I said that ever since I ascended the throne I'd been trying not to rule by force of arm and royal fiat, but to rule with the people instead of over them. I said that because of that I wasn't gonna hide all these machinations from everyone as was traditional but bring them into the open, and I said this is the way I as Queen rule and they were all just going to have to get fucking used to it. I left out 'fucking', but it was implied. Then I waited to see if they were gonna lynch me."

Gabrielle was fascinated. She could see the picture in her mind. Nebula, with her arrogance and her gall and her total conviction that anything she said or did was right--and it was perfect. "So then they killed you, right?"

"Gabrielle!" Xena snapped. Eve laughed and clapped.

"Nah. I think the representatives of the Houses looked like they were about to drop dead on the spot, me airing the Court's dirty laundry in public. But most of the crowd seemed quite happy with it. A scandal's even better than an execution, y'know--more opportunities for gossip. There was a lot of yelling, and somebody started clapping, and some cheering, and I left before they all decided to get drunk and pull down the garret. Which they might but hell, the thing's an eyesore anyway."

Xena took a deep breath. "That is one of the single stupidest things I have ever heard anyone do in my entire life."

"The Court hates me now. So much for 'Gee, we're so glad you're not killed'."

"You're a moron. An utter moron."

"Oh, Xena, don't be so uptight."

"'Uptight'? You kidnap me all the way from Egypt to watch your back and then you go and pull a stupid stunt like this?"

Gabrielle found herself grinning. "You know what?" she said. "You two should have been partners. I can't believe either of you passed up an opportunity like that. You'd be ruling the Mediterranean by now. Unless you'd killed each other."

"Never work, Blondie." Nebula shook her head gravely. "Ms. Great-and-All-Powerful-Warrior-Princess here can't stand the thought of working with equals."

"That's right," Xena said. "I never could." She met Gabrielle's eyes and smiled, one of her rare, genuine smiles. "Not until now." She reached for Gabrielle's free hand and they clasped hands, fingers entwined.

"Gah!" said Nebula after a moment and smacked the arms of the chair for emphasis. "I'm gonna gag if I have to look at any more of this togetherness shit. Yo, Blondie--put a plaster on that thing and be ready bright and early tomorrow morning. There's going to be a Court session and it's not going to be pretty. Xena, I want to talk to you this afternoon when you're done with all the billing and cooing and ready to be sensible. Got that?" She stood up.

"We love you too, Nebula," Gabrielle said.

"Gah," said Nebula again. She paused for a moment and glanced at the bed, then turned and left. "This afternoon," she called back over her shoulder. "I mean it, Xena." She slammed the front door impressively behind her--not an easy thing, the doors in the palace were large and heavy and required quite a bit of effort to open and close at all. Gabrielle returned Xena's smile. "You're so tactful," she said.

"She deserves it, the--"

"I'm not kidding. You're like two peas in a pod, you two."

"Okay. I know you're ill and everything, Gabrielle, but I still don't have to stand around here and be insulted." Now Xena stood up. "I'm going to go put Eve down for her nap, and I think I need one myself. And so do you. Don't talk back to me, missy," she snapped before Gabrielle could reply. "I want you to sleep, got it?"

"Got it." Gabrielle obediently lay down on the chaise, pulling the blanket up about her with her free hand. Xena snorted, and left the room. Gabrielle noted how conveniently this left her alone with Joxer, and smiled to herself. Xena understood. More than that--she cared. Gabrielle settled herself, and as she did Joxer's fingers twitched about hers and he shifted slightly. "Wha's alla noise?" he mumbled.

"Xena's being cranky again."

"Oh, 's that all." He settled and went back to sleep.

"Yeah." Gabrielle settled down herself and allowed the nasty-tasting herbs to take over. "Everything's back to normal."