A Kind of Madness

I stayed where I was. It must have been the highest part of the mountain, I think, with something of winter still remaining. A curve of snow, a lake of ice. The only colour a splash of blood – mine or hers? – a smear of red in all this white.

I discovered I was still on my knees, still rocking a little, as though I were still moaning. Still mourning. She was alive, however. I knew that, because her arm had thrust into the air, and she’d caught her chakram. I shook my head a little, trying to remember why the chakram had been skimming through the air, anyway.

Oh. That was right. She’d thrown it because she knew that my madness was caused by the Furies, in my head. She’d thrown it because she knew they’d appear and mock me as she died. Yet as she drowned, under my maddened gaze, something of her stayed. She’d saved me after she died.

I began to pull myself up carefully, just beginning to notice the pain of her blows on my body. Xena had let herself die for me. I shook my head, then stopped as everything spun. No. Xena had taken a risk, for the Amazons.

One of those things was the truth, maybe both of them. I staggered out of the snow, pausing a moment to hold a handful of snow against my fast-swelling lip, my eye. The funny thing was, I’d known I was mad. I just hadn’t thought of the Furies.

It had begun a long time ago, my madness. I think I saw it, insanity like a living breathing thing, when I’d subjected Xena herself to the Furies. It had seemed like a sure enough plan, to allow Xena to see what only the gods know; the meaninglessness of human existence. To force her to become one with me, the only person she knew who could bear that knowledge and live.

Except when I saw her, at the edge of the cliff, her weapons fallen by her side, something odd had awakened within me. As though she wasn’t the only one with a burgeoning wisdom. I think it was pity.

There was a strange drumming sound, and I paused on my awkward way down the mountain side. Moving to a better vantage point, I noted that my army had broken camp, and was moving south. They’d abandoned the battle and they’d abandoned me. It was understandable, of course, from a military point of view. There was no purpose engaging in a battle without any material or strategic gain. And there was no reason to obey the orders of a madman, who thought he was a god.

I waited there, watching a moment, wondering what a man did without an army to order and a battle to fight. It occurred to me that perhaps more practical concerns – finding food and shelter – would play a greater part in the rest of my life than had previously. It wasn’t a particularly appealing thought, but it did make me think of my horse. I remembered leaping from his saddle in such anger –

One of those strangely human emotions which Xena forced from me. Anger. Pity. I’d let her win when we fought in front of the Furies, because I didn’t want to lose her to madness or death. I knew at that point they were the only two options for her, because coming to me, looking at the world with my eyes, was not a possibility. I didn’t want madness or death, so I let her win, let myself fall foolishly beneath her sword, and waited to see reason appear in her eyes again, before fading away.

How I was mocked for that. Reprimanded for the misuse of the Furies’ powers, of course, but mocked for wasting them on a mortal woman. I shrugged it off, pretending to the Olympians and myself that she was merely a diversion. That was the beginning of my madness, I see it now. The first time I’d used to power of Olympus to seize her –

But no. I’d bargained with Hades, to return men from the dead, something he warned me he’d never allow again. And after that I’d given up on every one of them, to go after Dahak. Well, that hadn’t been for her. It couldn’t have been because of her that I could see a life apart from Olympus.

A whinny alerted me, and I turned slowly. Ah – there he was, my stallion, his bridle caught on a low branch of a tree. I approached him slowly, but he was quiet – probably as aware as any man of his master’s return to reason. I untangled his bridle, rubbed his muzzle, muttered a few words to him. I could mount and ride far away – ride after my army and challenge the captain of the guard for leadership – ride towards the coast and make a new life –

It hurt too much to ride. I contented myself with walking slowly beside my stallion’s side, continuing down the path. What kind of madness was it, when a god gave up Olympus again and again for a mortal woman – who would fade so quickly, within the blink of an eye?

After my betrayal, they had exiled me, given over my power to Athena. That was when I first noted a vulnerability in the halls of Olympus, a certain apprehension. What I had done was taken seriously, far more seriously than any of the other times I had misused my power, turned against one or the other of them. It was as though they all felt the possibilities. A word began to be whispered about Olympus – one that had not been heard in a thousand years. Twilight.

The exile was a mistake. What else did I have to think about, without the possibility of interfering in some battle or other? Who else could I focus upon? I was drawn the moment I was free to some frozen hill far from Greece.

My lip twitched a little at that. Xena did have a tendency to lead me to the high places – and leave me feeling very, very cold.

Only one of the other gods was foolhardy enough to go after the weapon that could kill us both. Kal was simply desperate; I was already half-mad, I’m sure of it now. She had infected me with an insane interest in her life, her tiny, dirty, ordinary little life. I thought of it, I followed her into it. The other gods meant nothing at all to me, it was as though mortality in all its horror – and had I not experienced it, several times? – held a strange fascination for me. I went after mortal women, as though it was the taste of them I sought. It was not.

But I even as I fell I was afraid. I’d deny Athena’s mocking accusations to her face, and then find myself going into the depths of Tartarus itself to admit my love. I would accuse the gods of unwarranted fear of the Twilight – and yet it would be I who held the dagger, staring at Eli as he fell choking to the ground. Wondering what I’d done, and disappearing before I would have to see Xena’s reaction. Forgetting any other consequence but the look on her face.

I think the other gods stood a little aloof from me, after that. As though I might do something else equally strange. Humouring me, even. So that even my refusal to help them destroy Xena and Eve was accepted. And my black rage after she took her poison was endured.

I’d reached a cross-road. The Amazon camp lay somewhere west, in the woods. I knew enough not to breach their boundaries. There were three other directions I could head towards, of course. There was no need for me to take position on a little rise, above the woods, finding a spring for my horse to drink from, for me to wash the worst of the blood from my face. I could have gone on. I did not.

One look at her face and the madness awoke within me once again. This time I embraced it. I was dizzy with longing, I was crazed with joy that she lived. I wanted her, I couldn’t breathe for desire. I wanted her.

Surely that was when my madness began. Not when the Furies decided to take over my mind, to take revenge on Xena and myself. I can see myself squatting above a bloody battle between mother and daughter, and know only madness could have led me to cheer them on. Jeering at one, whispering insanely at another, wild in a moment and calm in the next, boiling with fury and grief and desire. At one point I trembled to kill, but had no idea who, or why.

I sent Xena mad long ago. I made her see the world as I did, a place where individuals did not matter on the great scale of time.

Xena sent me mad, slowly, insidiously, absolutely. She made me see the world as she did, where the only things that mattered at all in the world were individuals.

I gave up my world for hers. I laid my hands on two heads, individually, first the one, then the other. And then – with a turn of my head – another lived, because of me.

My horse whinnied again, and I looked down at the road. She came towards me slowly, looking at the injuries on my face, then lastly at my eyes. I knew that Xena let herself die for me, then, when she smiled. And I knew that I’d let myself live for her, and always would.

...h.o.m.e...
bleeding-heart[dot]net