Coming Back
By Carly
She had smelt of blood, and sweat, and all the things of battle. There was the pungent scent of hot leather, too, and an acrid burning smell – that was from the barn, he realised dimly. For a moment he’d forgotten that particular fight, as though there had only been one; Xena standing up against a goddess, and winning. As though she’d been standing in the halls of war ever since she dropped the girl child out of her.
If anything, he recognised the blood and the burning from a battle long ago, when he’d first seen her. He’d thought he’d known everything about her from looking at her, then. Had seen the barbarian tribe camped out on the plains of Corinth and had guessed it would take a single sortie to wipe them out.
It wasn’t the first time she’d surprised him. That initial battle, which provoked the long drawn-out siege of Corinth, was a wonder of strategy, something that military tacticians spoke about for decades afterwards. He’d assumed, then, that she – and the man she was with – would follow it up swiftly, take the city, take the whole land. And then, when she refused, that the man would leave her and take the city himself.
Her hands dripping with blood, her hair singed with fire. He’d watched her then because he could not understand her. The blood dried to dark stains, the hair lay in rough strands, and the fight went on. Oh, the battle for Corinth had been swift, but there was some other fight that he could not understand. She made choices that made no sense to him. He watched; he could not stop watching.
It wasn’t as though she didn’t understand all the strategies of battle, all the ways to win a war. It was not as though the man she were with could not have decisively ended the siege, put every citizen within that city to the sword, and carried himself off as the victor. There was something else drawing them, and he watched and watched, but he could not understand.
The end came swiftly upon them. A night something like the one they had just had, a night of blood and fire, and inexplicable decisions. Her man had made his way to her side, even though it meant death to him. She had given up the siege, given up an entire army, when it had all been in her grasp.
It could have been a thousand years ago.
Except, Ares realised, that he could no longer think like that any more. A thousand years, or a day – they would mean something, now.
“Ares.”
He looked up. He’d been sitting, waiting on the beach while she bathed – bathed to get rid of the odors of fire and blood that had surrounded her. She didn’t want it any more. He wondered when it had stopped being her scent. Now she smelled like the salt of the sea, and faintly like flowers – he supposed it was a soap.
“What now?”
He stood, looking at her, the way her hand rested on the weapons at her side, the way she tilted her head, to listen. He couldn’t help but smile, but she frowned, and shook her head.
“Try to be a better man than you were a god, all right, Ares?”
He laughed at that, and finally she joined him.
“What do you plan – I mean – what are you going to do?“
When had the inexplicable become clear? When had he realised that going back, even if it meant death, had been the only thing Borias could have done that evening? He wasn’t sure. He wondered what else was finally going to make sense to him, now, and he unexpectedly leant down and brushed his lips against hers.
“Wander the earth,” he told her, remembering the coming back.
A breeze blew over them, carrying with it the scent of the sea, the salt and the sand. He made himself turn away in that wind, and walk, breathing it, tasting it, walking away, knowing the coming back, remembering always, always, the coming back.
Please e-mail the author of this story with your comments. carly@lifestart.org.au.
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