Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s fire in your veins.   

It flickers to life when she looks at you. When she catches your gaze from across a crowded room; or in the middle of a fight; or at the end of the day, the flames of your campfire throwing her exquisite features into stark relief. You wonder how it is that just her eyes on you makes everything twist and tease. How it leaves your thoughts thick and foggy; your limbs heavy with some strange, new, aching want. 

You wonder how it is and why it is and when it started, and as you cast your thoughts back across all of your days together - one whole season now, nearly two; that thought alone makes you woozy with pride and wonder - you realize it must have started the moment you first laid eyes on her. Because, your heart hasn’t beat in steady time since you sat across from her in your mother’s kitchen and watched, transfixed, as her long fingers laced her boots and adjusted her knee guards. Watched as she stared you down - ice-blue eyes burning with an unspoken challenge - and warned you about making the likes of her mad. 

She was so beautiful and powerful and arresting, and for a brief, maddening moment you wanted to know exactly what it would be like to have all of her ire - the blistering heat of her wrath and barely-controlled fury; the passionate fits of her pique - directed squarely at you. By the gods, just the thought of it made you itch; made you clench your thighs together; made you sneak away in the middle of the night to chase after her. Because of course you wanted her mad - you wanted her standing over you, imposing; you wanted her eyes locked on yours, unflinching; you wanted to see the pink stain on her skin as her blood coursed beneath it, untempered. You wanted to feel the way she made the air change around you, like lightning before a storm; wanted to be consumed by her tempest. To feel your pulse race; to feel alive.  

She was like some mythic, untamed thing - seductress and man-slayer and unlikely hero - statuesque in her gleaming bronze armour and soft brown leather. It was like a fever dream, and of course - of course, you told yourself, of course - her eyes on you would make your palms slick with sweat; would tug at your belly; would leave your breath ragged if you let your return gaze linger too long. She was a siren, unchained from her rocky island prison and you were like any other unsuspecting fool caught up in the lure and the ruin of her song.   

Of course of course of course.   

Her power over others was a gift; a curse. The price one paid to be with her. But of course one day you’d find yourself immune.   

Of course of course of course.

And so you followed her, enchanted. Because, what other choice did you have? An ordinary life as a farmer’s wife; a mother? Long days spent in the fields and then evenings by the hearth spinning wool? A babe on one breast and another on the way? A husband to answer to - in your home and in your life and in your bed? Toil and tedium to temper your spirit? Like your own mother, and hers before her, and so on down the line? No, no, you were not made for that life. The thought of it was like a cruel hand at your throat; squeezing; crushing. There was only ever one choice - you could perish, or you could save yourself.  

Your bag was packed the moment she walked out of your door. Your fate was sealed.   

Because she was the answer to a prayer you hadn’t realized you’d been on your knees asking. And once you’d found her, you wanted desperately to know what it was like to be her - confident and charismatic and commanding. Needed desperately to know the power of her magic. To feel it seeping into your bones; settling into the marrow there; touching every part of you as it coursed through your blood - as if you could somehow distill its secrets through association; as if it were something you could soak up in her presence.   

She was everything impossible made possible. Wild and glorious and free. She could show you the world; teach you to slay monsters; give you a purpose. She could be your muse.   

Of course you followed her.   

And along the way, someone, somewhere must have read the secret desires of your heart.  

     (You want.)

There’s fire in your veins.   

It courses through you when she’s close to you - single-minded and searing. Burns its way to the surface; leaves your skin feverish and flush when her body is near. She’s the furnace that keeps you warm at night; that’s always running hot; throwing off a delightful heat that dances gently across the distance between your bedrolls. She’s the smithy that stokes something deep inside of you; that raises your internal temperature to dangerous highs. You’ll never be cold with her by your side.   

But you’ll never be sated either, because fire is insatiable, and yours for her is ravenous.   

This is a new hunger; it’s confusing. It doesn’t quiet once you’ve had your fill; or make you sleepy with contentment; it doesn’t leave you satisfied. It’s raw and demanding, and it’s always just there, low in your belly, gnawing gnawing gnawing. But then, you’re still young; still growing; still finding your place in the world and by her side. Of course your appetite would change, too. It was foolish to think that it wouldn’t; that the spell she casts over you might even diminish. It’s been two winters, now, with her on the road; two winters and the pull she has over you has only gotten stronger.

Once, you thought it enough to be like her, now you want nothing more than to be near to her. To touch and to hold and to feel. It’s not entirely new - you’ve always liked having her close, that’s without question. Always liked the way she smells - a mix of sweat and soap and sunshine; always liked the surprising softness of her skin; the warmth in her silence; the comfort it brought. But then one day you awoke in her arms; her tears bathing your cheeks; your face pressed against her breast; and you could hear her heartbeat. It sounded like yours; like it was pounding out a message for your ears alone; one that said stay stay stay. And her arms felt like home.  

Now you can’t imagine being anywhere other than close to her; so you find the ways.  

You work in stealth and shadow. A full-on frontal assault is a fool's errand; doesn’t play to your strengths. At least not yet. Not in these early days; on these shaky, unsteady legs - made more unreliable still with only a pointed look from her, or the affectionate sigh of your name from her lips. No, you take by degrees; by a hair and a breath. Tease the flames; test your mettle; revel in the afterburn. Take a little more. 

You walk a step closer on the road, so that your hands nearly brush against each other as you stroll along. Sit nearer still when you stop to rest, so that your thighs are separated only by a whisper, and you can feel the arc of delicious potential every time your muscles twitch. Lean in more than usual as she bends low to murmur a plan or some encouragement in your ear, so that her breath tickles the hair on your neck; coaxes a shiver from your flesh. Lay your blankets out so that their edges overlap and you’re tucked in under the same fur; so that you can feel the outline of her body in the pocket of air around you. You take and take and take, all these little moments, every bit of space. You are a thief, and you think she would be proud if she knew.   

And then it occurs to you late one night - only after you’re too far committed to tactfully retreat - when you’re camped under an inky blanket of sky and she is deep in sleep, breathing slow and even, and so near to you that your fingers could trace the contours of her cheeks and nose and lips without even having to reach. It occurs to you then that she is too smart for your little game of subterfuge. You study her in the dim and the shadows, as she lays vulnerable at your side; her bare skin kissed by starlight; her face open and untroubled in slumber; and you feel the radiant dawn of realization break over the horizon of your quivering heart. Every inch of ground you thought you had taken without notice had been given freely instead. You’ve been feeding scraps to the flames of your desire when all of this time she has been quietly laying out a buffet for the taking.

The thought grabs hold of your heart so fiercely it brings tears to your eyes, and they prickle and sting with the same intensity as the tingling in your lips anytime you look at her face for too long. You bring a shaky hand to your mouth to catch the soft gasp you feel rattling at the back of your throat. One ragged exhale on the still night air and her eyes - bright and alert and discerning - will be open and on you in an instant, and this moment will be lost. So, you swallow your uneven breaths, and when you feel brave enough under the weight of this new understanding, you wet your lips and let your fingers brush across the soft curves of your mouth, imagining her lips under your touch; her fingers on your own. And then you wonder, as the tip of your tongue steals a gentle taste, what it would feel like to map the peaks and valleys of her mouth with your lips instead.   

Your eyes slip closed and your body thrills at the prospect. She is never far from your thoughts, but this is the first time you’ve ever allowed yourself to think of her like this; her lips and yours and the ways they might fit together; the multitudes of possibilities. It’s terrifying and exhilarating and profound; and you like the way it makes you feel, even though your heart is beating so fast and hard against your chest it’s painful; like it might tear through your ribs and muscle, and gallop off into the night. It makes you want to hang on to her; throw your arms around her waist and hold on. You shift closer to her, and let yourself drift off to sleep; your fingers still on your lips; her name on your tongue. The stars overhead look on, and keep your secrets.  

     (You need.)

There’s fire in your veins.  

Licks its way dangerously around your heart and mind and better judgement. Consumes you from the inside when she touches you. When her hand wraps around your arms as she pulls you against her and sets off a chain reaction that skips along your every nerve, until your body is singing and her name is the refrain. You would do anything she says if she says it with her hands. You’ve never felt this way before; never burned this hot; this heavy. No one has ever made you feel like this before. Not even your husband.  

Oh gods, you had a husband.  

A husband.  

It feels like a dream now; like something you watched happen to someone else. A momentary fit of madness. But it wasn’t someone else. It was you. You had chosen. You were going to leave - you had left.   

You. Had. Left.  

Left this new and wondrous life behind. Left her behind. Her. For a husband, and all the things you swore you never wanted. All the things you had run from when you stole away in the night. 

The memory of it - what almost was and what came to be - is a torment. It scrapes across your heart, stings with the biting rasp of a thousand barbed needles. Pulls and tugs and twists you into a torturous sort of knot; coils around your chest; tightening tightening tightening, until darkness dances on the edge of your vision and you’re left clawing some unseen hand. You had chosen and it wasn’t her.  

You had chosen and by the gods it was the wrong choice. That is the truth of it - the sad and hard truth of it. You see that now, even if you couldn’t then, and knowing it makes you flush with shame; makes your brow sticky with beads of inescapable dread; fills your insides with the churning agony of regret. Because you had said 'yes'.

You had said 'yes', and you had left, and then he died, and you never had to face the consequences of choosing a life where you didn’t choose her. Instead you carry the truth of it with you. Remember the way it felt as the last vestiges of your girlhood disappeared on the shaky, heaving breaths of your new husband; the soft gasps as his strong, youthful body fell suddenly limp and heavy in your disbelieving arms, spent; the swift and inglorious end that came in one decisive thrust. It was all over before you ever really understood what was happening - the life slowly draining from him, and the relief racing through your heart at the realization that you had been released from your impossible obligation. And then she had put her hand on your shoulder in comfort, and the fire that ripped through you at her touch was a knife to your belly and your heart and your very soul. Agony. Ecstasy. The guilt that followed; the rage that knitted it all together.   

What a terrible way to be spared a life of tepid desire; of unrealized potential; of unfulfilled passion.   

But you had left because you thought you could fix him; that your love would be enough; that all fires burn with the same heat given enough time. Oh, but it was foolhardy to think you could ever escape the allure of her flames; that anyone could warm you so thoroughly; so elementally. Your husband was a good man. Sweet and mild like the soft, golden light that had painted the early autumn sky on the eve of your wedding, but try as he might he could never arouse in you anything more than a fleeting fancy - the gentle flutter of butterfly wings against your ribcage. Pleasant; warm; safe. But she was, is, more - the stampede of a hundred wild horses; the whole of the cosmos splashed across the milky sky; the hanging gardens of Babylon. Danger; wonder; beauty.  

Just the thought of her stirs those same butterflies to life in your chest faster than any look or touch or kiss from him ever did. One look whips their delicate wings into a furious frenzy - a whirlwind that starts in your breast and tears through you, unrelenting. And one touch? One touch is a flashover. Heat so sudden and intense that every part of you is given over to spontaneous combustion. An inferno racing under your skin, through bones and sinew, consuming the parched underbelly of your ardour.   

There was no comparing the two, and you knew it - despite the things you told yourself to quiet your unease - there was no comparison and you knew it even as you placed that floral crown atop your head, and spoke your vows beneath the temple arches, and kissed your dearest friend goodbye after it was done. Because you had felt the dark, heady pulse of want, and it had ruined you for anything that was simply pleasant and warm and safe. 

You wanted passion in your blood; the taste of peril in your kisses; curves and swells and softness to fill your hungry, questing hands. Because you had tasted her; the truth of her; the life in her blood, and her heartbeat. You had sunk your teeth into her neck, and drank greedily. She was delectable. She tasted like desire. And even though you were feeding the monster inside of you, you were feeding a part of yourself too. You were drunk on her, and all these seasons later you’ve never sobered up.   

Now a whole winter has come and gone since you lost your husband, since you nearly lost her too (two; three; four times still again), and you can’t hide away from the truth any longer. The truth about the fire that’s raged within you for years; the fire that she breathed into your veins; the fire that you told yourself was just the fancy of youth; the thrill of adventure; an echo of her own determination singing through you. You can’t hide from it any longer - not that you really want to.   

Because you want to be hers and hers alone; you want to give what she won't take; you want to be her prey, tangled in her web; caught in the crosshairs of her passion. You’ve wanted it since the beginning; since she held court in your mother’s kitchen, perched on that rickety stool, all long bones and short answers, like some fucking giant the way she took up every inch of space around her, and with each precise, elegant movement stole all of the air from the room; from your unsuspecting lungs; and used it to fan the flame sparking to life in your blood. But now it’s spilled over into your chest and belly and limbs. Burns for all to see; blazing orange along the edges of your eyes, like watch fires roaring through the night. 

She kissed you once - in your mind; in a dream; in the place that exists beyond life and death. She kissed you once in spirit and it scorched your mouth. You can still feel the blisters beneath your tongue when you wet your lips. You ache to feel that burn sweep across your tender flesh. The sear of her kiss on your throat and your breast and at the apex of your thighs. The delicious burn of her touch. She is the flint, and you are the tinder, and together you could make a glorious spark. You want to lose yourself in the flames. You want her to be the blaze that sends you heavenwards; a dazzling wave of heat and colour; a thousand tiny embers licking at the night sky.   

You want to burn, and you’d build the pyre yourself, if you could. Lay your willing body amongst the cypress boughs and weep with joy at your rapturous, incendiary end.  

     (You smoulder.)   

End of Act I.

Chapter Text

You are made of tinder.   

You catch fast and easy. Your body groans from the heat in your blood; your bones hiss and snap like sun-dried wood; like they were made for the flames. And there’s no relief; not even when the chill sets in on the air, and the dampness settles, and you lay your head down to rest. Because you can’t sleep.   

Not that you mind. It’s your favourite time of day, afterall, long after darkness falls, and everything is quiet. The bewitching hour -  when she’s tucked in under her blankets, asleep, and you are enchanted by the sight. When you’re free to watch her unguarded; to let your gaze wander, along with your thoughts - to gentle places; to tenderness; to that golden thread that binds you to her. And even though you’re exhausted; even though you’re fighting off sleep, you simply cannot look away because she is so beautiful draped in moonlight.   

You were meant to burn. For her. You can admit that now. She is the reason. 

She keeps you up at night.  

Even as she lays curled on her side between you and the fire, lost in slumber. Even as you finally let your eyes fall closed and you feel the gentle tug of unconsciousness pull you under. Even there, on that threshold between the waking world and that mysterious realm where dreams take shape she’s waiting for you. Just as you love her best - stripped of her weapons and all of her armour and her guilty conscience; hair long and loose and gently curling around her face; wearing that secret smile that makes your heart bloom with quiet, aching wonder. The one you’ve come to understand is reserved for you alone.   

She’s there and then she’s softly on your heels as you slip beyond the veil into whatever imaginary playground your mind has conjured up this time; her voice tickling the shell of your ear, as she follows you into your dreams.  

     'Where to next?'

And you take her hand in yours before you take off, running.   

Only you don’t know where you go, or what you do, because you can never remember the dreams. But, your body does, and every night now you wake up trembling. Panting; wide-eyed; frantically aching. You awake with her memory hanging over you; desperate to have her close; to feel the weight of her above you. And then, for a brief moment, you pray that you haven’t disturbed her sleep; though in the next, you’re disappointed when she isn’t already at your side, bent over you in concern.

So you collapse back into your bedroll electric with desire, thrumming from the potential of unrealized release. Every cell in your body a firestorm, raging raging raging. Your skin scorching to the touch; a fine sheen clinging to your brow and behind your knees; collecting in the crease between your breasts - as if all the moisture in your body was trying to escape the heat of your roiling blood. As if this was just another fever it could sweat out. An affliction.  

Were but she your nursemaid.  

The thought is dangerous. Because it calls to mind those few times she was just that. Tending to your fever-addled body with gentle hands and soothing words. The way her long fingers smoothed back your hair; the feel of her strong arms holding you to her as she worked a cool cloth over the parts of you that flushed and burned; her lips at your temple or your ear; your name something sacred on her tongue. You are afflicted; she is the cause; she is the cure.

And you would weather any illness to feel it all again - her fingers, and her arms, and her lips, and her tongue speaking sacred things against your skin; coaxing the fever from your blood with tender, knowing strokes. Tonight is no different.  

Except that it is. 

The first touch takes you by surprise. How, or when, your fingers found their way beneath your clothes and between your legs you can’t say - put there by some unseen hand; directed by some unhinged mind; inspired by some primal instinct (your own your own your own) - and the lush heat they encounter there is sublime. But the second… third… fourth touch… Those are deliberate, and eager, and just as shocking. Not that you’re a stranger to such slick intimacies - you were an inexperienced farm girl before her, but you were never naive.  Or unacquainted with the glorious way your body comes undone when your fingers sweep and swirl and slide and sink, deep, deep enough to make your hips arch; your toes curl; the silken skin wrapped around your busy hand twitch and clench.   

You know how to touch yourself, and you do when you need to, but you’ve always been discrete; always reserved those activities for private moments when you were alone. And when you did find the time you never thought of her; at least, not on purpose. But tonight is different. The brazenness of your need; the sudden uncontrollable dance of hungry fingertips is new. That it’s here and now, and her less than an arm’s length away. With those other-worldly senses that can hear a twig snap from two hundred feet - surely she can hear the hitch in your breath; your fingers at work between your legs. But there’s no time for such considerations when she’s so near, and you’re so close. Her with her long, black hair, and her long, muscled legs, and her long, skillful fingers. Her with her ice blue eyes, and the rasp in her voice, and the quirk of her lips. Her with her leather dress, and the way the scent of it mixes with her sweat, and then hangs off of her; how fucking good it smells when it’s warmed by golden sunlight. 

You bite back a moan at the sensory memory, bite down hard on your lip until it draws blood; welcome the tinny, copper taste on your parched tongue. It feeds your ache, and inspires in your fingers a more desperate rhythm. You feel the uneven staccato of your pulse under your fingertips; hear the way they glide through your desire - by the gods, you’re so wet. You want to close your eyes - to chase after those elusive dreams that left you breathless and wanting; or melt into a fantasy, instead - but you refuse to look away. This is a very dangerous game that you’re playing - touching yourself while your best friend sleeps beside you; her name on your fingers, and on the gasp caught in the back of your throat, and written in invisible ink across your heart. It feels like riding at full gallop without a saddle; like dangling from a cliffside on a fraying rope; like the sensuous, slow pierce of teeth into willing flesh, and tasting, for the first time, true lust.  

You should stop. You should stop.

     You could stop, if you wanted to.   

But you don’t. You like dangerous games. You like playing with fire. You like the burn. You touch yourself, but it’s not enough.  

You want her to open her eyes. You want her to open her eyes and catch you. You want her to open her eyes and catch you fucking yourself with her name on your tongue. And then you want her to finish the job for you. You want her buried so deep, deep inside of you; touching parts of you that you know only she can reach, while you’re painting her skin the colour of twilight with the crush of your grip. You want to look into her eyes and see all of her laid bare before you. So you sharpen the lance of your gaze as it cuts across the distance between you, carrying with it an unspoken dare  - wake up, wake up, wake up and finish this.  

And then the edge is suddenly and violently upon you, and you’re flying over it with one tremendous heave, and time slows, and your lungs catch, while your whole body shatters and sighs all at once. You see stars; entire galaxies painted behind your eyelids; and you float, weightless, mindless in the afterglow of your release; wrapped in such a soft cloud of euphoria. You could almost imagine that she was lying naked, next to you, sated, too. Until the pop and hiss of the campfire pulls you from your stupor, and the world resolves itself around you once more; quiet; unchanged. 

Except you are forever changed, while just an arm’s length away she sleeps on still, none the wiser. Only, you know that come the morning she’ll know what you’ve done. She’ll smell you on your fingers when you reach to pass her the bread; or when your hand goes to her shoulder to help fasten her breastplate. She’ll know - of course she will. She’ll know and then she’ll assume that you’ve been entertaining the idea of someone else. That blacksmith’s apprentice in village yesterday; or the young tanner you met last week; any one of those floppy-haired boys with their soulful eyes, and their gentle smiles that she thinks are your type because you’ve spent all this time letting her - and letting yourself, too - believe it. She’ll know and she’ll assume, and then she’ll find some feeble excuse to leave you behind for days on end the next time you happen upon a town with some doe-eyed, shopkeeper’s son.  

It hasn’t even happened yet, and already you feel the bristle of your ire piquing. Hate that she still thinks you could ever want anything else; that there might be some part of her that believes you would be better off with someone else. But, more than anything, you hate that you’ve had a role to play in keeping those thoughts alive; that you were the one to give her reason to believe.  

The tears gather in the corners of your eyes, and you hear the whisper of your conscience - what a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, Gabrielle - but you won’t let them fall. You will not cry for the choices you’ve made; for the way she makes you feel; the desire that licks at your thighs. I’m sorry, your heart seems to howl, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But no matter how many times you apologize you’re still not sure who, or what, it’s meant for. Instead, you close your eyes and pray for a dreamless sleep. The stars overhead look on, but offer no counsel.  

     (The fire flickers.)

You are made of kindling.  

You burn slow and steady; then all-consuming; all at once. Like the way spring gives itself over gently to summer, before the heat suddenly bears down, hot and heavy and unrelenting. 

You are the changing seasons too. And so it goes: moments bleed into other moments, bleed into days, bleed into sleepless nights, bleed into a week, then two, then more. Jerking awake with a gasp, needy and breathless; your head in a cloud of want; your body buzzing from a phantom touch; and no recollection of what it was that brought you there. Just an incredible, wild longing for the woman asleep beside you.  

And then it just stops.

Not the dreams, but the frantic way they wake you. For a brief, quiet moment you’re relieved. Until you start to remember. And that is like the changing seasons, too - gradual, then bursting with colour and heat.  

The details reveal themselves lazily, at first; rising gently to the surface of your memory like a soft morning mist swirling skyward. Or, like the feathery touch of gossamer fingers combing through the yawning mess of your tangled thoughts. And in their wake they leave behind fleeting images, hazy and unfocused; like old memories; like a glimpse through milky glass of something that is to come.  

And when they resolve themselves you see: the flash of bare limbs tangled up in twisted sheets; eyes so bright they’re almost silver in the deep, dark night, like the blinding glint of steel caught in the sun’s rays; lips, full and moist, pressing against your breast; sweat-dampened skin, bronzed and glistening in the firelight; the cascade of gooseflesh; the flex of muscle; the arch of her elegant spine; the tilt of her neck when her head’s thrown  back. 

Then, clearer, more defined, a carousel of images turning languidly through your mind: her on her knees before you, mouth hot on your belly; your hands clasped tightly with hers, fingers locked around each others; your arms outstretched above your head and hers shaking in effort; a mane of long, dark hair fanned out across your hips, her head between your thighs, your leg draped over her broad, tanned shoulder; the exquisite drag of fingernails down your back as she moves beneath you, singing your name - a rhapsody so heavenly, you could let yourself believe she mistook you for a god.   

It makes you feel powerful; cocksure. The thought that you could render her thus; willing and eager and pliant under your gaze and your hands and your mouth. It puts a swagger in your step and you wonder if she sees it when you walk; when you swing your staff; when you tease her with your impudence. You wonder if she knows what she’s been doing to you in your dreams; when you get that far-off look. You wonder if she’s somehow doing it on purpose.   

But despite the bravado, you’re still just as needy and breathless and wild for her touch. Only now it’s not confined to those private midnight interludes. It’s found its way into the daylight; hijacks your everyday moments; your every thought; confuses all your senses. Because everything is her, and she is everywhere, and where she is there is only this all-encompassing want. Until you’re not sure if you’re awake or sleeping.

Because one moment you’re trailing behind her, and the next she’s pushing you up against a tree, pushing your skirt impatiently up your thighs, pushing her thigh boldly between your legs, until she’s hitting just the right spot, at just the right angle, with just the right amount of pressure to have you dancing on the edge. Only, you’re still ten paces behind her on the dusty road, and you think the wind is carrying her voice back to you but you can’t make out her words. Your ears are ringing; all of your senses are buzzing. All you can feel is her body pressed hard into yours.   

The rasp of the tree bark against your bare back; the cool, jagged bite of her armour on your belly; the crush of her pelvis rocking against yours. It stings but it doesn’t hurt, and if she didn’t have your hands pinned at your side you’d be pulling her to you. Because the feel of the scrape and the chafe and the bruise balanced against the heat and the pressure and the friction is delicious. And you would tell her how good it feels - so fucking good, gods yes, so so fucking good - but now her mouth is on yours, and your tongue is too busy wrapping around hers to form the words.   

But she must hear you all the same because she’s pressing even harder into you - and you didn’t think it was possible to get any closer, but you can feel every swirl and ridge of her breastplate against your ribs. And the rhythm of her hips meeting yours makes you feral; makes you feel like you might explode; like you might escape your body. She hasn’t even touched you yet; her hands are still busy holding yours down. She hasn’t even touched you and you can feel the seams begin to unravel. 

She isn’t even touching you because it’s all in your mind.  

It’s distracting. This preoccupation. The way fantasy and reality collide. The way your dreams overlay themselves on your waking moments. The way every glance is an invitation; every touch is a memory; every time she says your name is an invocation of a thousand other ways she has and hasn’t said it before - a moan, a sigh, a cry of ecstatic delight. It’s distracting and it’s dangerous and you feel yourself slipping - a steady flagging of the tenuous grasp you’ve managed to keep. You’re not sure how much longer you can hold on before you do something that you won’t be able to fast-talk your way out of - like reaching out to catch the juice dribbling over her chin from the half-eaten plum in her hand. Or letting your fingertips trace idle patterns across the tops of her legs when you’re riding behind her. Or running your curious tongue along the thin, white scar at the top of her breast every time she pulls you in close enough for your mouth to reach.   

It’s distracting and it’s dangerous and it’s left you careless. She set you alight, incandescent but mercurial, and you’ve been burning wild and swift ever since. Can she see where you’ve scorched the earth walking by her side? Does she feel the heat radiate off your skin? 

Do you burn her?   

The way she burns you.  

You look for the signs. A tremble; a flush; a hitch in her breath. You catch her watching you over dinner; catch her trying not to get caught watching you, too. You look for the signs, but all you do is stare. At her strong thighs, at her capable hands, at the fullness of her chest. But mostly you stare at her mouth; the way it wraps around her words when she’s speaking; the way it twitches when she’s trying not to smile (but does anyway); the way it folds in on itself when she’s worrying her bottom lip. And you find yourself worrying yours in kind. Find your thoughts suddenly occupied by the memory of that lip. You’ve tasted it a thousand times already, even if you’ve never done it in this world. Know the slope of it under the graze of your teeth; the weight of it cradled between your own lips; the brush of it against your skin, your nipple, your clit.   

And sometimes you study her hands instead - those wide palms and the ghost of the feel of them, calloused-worn but gentle in their roughness, covering your breasts; gripping your hips; squeezing your ass to lift you closer. Or her fingers, long and certain; nimble at the laces on your bodice; teasing in the path they track over your ribs; the perfect cadence of their movement as they slide in and out of you, soft and hard and fast and slow, twist and curl, the warm, wet depths they mine. Or her broad shoulders and her strong back, and the feel of them under your lips, and against your cheek, and pressed naked around you.

She’s driving you mad. No, no, she’s killing you - a slow, torturous, depraved death - and you can’t escape it. Because you can’t escape her. The smell of her; the taste of her. All the ways she is and isn’t yours. You can’t escape her, and you can’t escape the way she makes you feel - not that you want to - but you don’t know what to do with these feelings either. They’re too big; too overwhelming. You touch yourself and it’s not enough. You touch yourself and you think of her, and it’s not enough. You are a hostage to your desire; you wish she’d just free you already.  

It keeps you up at night. She keeps you up at night.  

You watch her through the campfire’s glow. You watch her sleep - the rise and fall of her chest; the softness of her mouth; the flutter of her lashes as she dreams. You wonder what she dreams. You always dream of her - in your arms and in your bed and deep, deep inside of you. On her knees and on her back and on her out-stretched arms above you. Your name falling from her lips and your clothes falling to the floor and your hair falling across her shoulders as you fly over the edge together.

You watch her sleep, and even as you watch her sleep you see her gather you up in her arms and pepper your body with kisses wherever her lips can reach, and then when you’re ready tease her hand between your legs. You watch her sleep, and even as you watch her sleep you feel her fingers slip inside of you and her hips rock against yours. You watch her sleep, and even as you watch her sleep you hear her ragged breathing keep time with your ragged breathing. You watch her sleep, and even as you watch her sleep you feel the darkness creep in; feel the pull of oblivion.  

You’re a hostage. And you'll have to save yourself. But for tonight you’ll let yourself burn.  

So you close your eyes and the blackness shatters into a dizzying shower of colour.   

     (The fire roars.)   

End of Act II.

Chapter Text

You burn through the night.  

Like a forest fire, wild and effervescent.   

But your nights are your mornings and your afternoons too. And so it goes that you’re never far from the memory of her; from the painful sting of want. You are blue-white embers rippling with heat. You are throwing sparks heavenwards. You are a wall of flames licking the inky sky. You are forever ablaze.  

She sits beside you, caught in the half-light of the campfire. Head bent in work, sword in her lap, her boots and her armour discarded in a heap somewhere in the shadows. It could be any other night. But it’s not. Even though you sit across from her, head bent in work, scroll in your lap, your boots laying somewhere alongside hers. Just like any other night. But it isn’t.  

It isn't, it isn't, it isn't, you hear some part of yourself whisper.

You are feeling reckless from too much heat; from too many sleepless nights. And your hands have a will of their own. Set your quill and paper aside. Because they know it’s just a pretense; that you haven’t written a single word all night even though you’ve played out a hundred different scenes in your mind. Only, those aren’t scenes you want to write down, they’re ones you want to live out.  

You watch her instead, because at this moment that’s what you really want to do, isn’t it? You’ve watched her in secret and by degrees for three winters now because it is your favourite thing to do, and because you’ve never known a more beautiful sight. You want to watch her, always; in the quiet and the calm; in the chaos and the clamour; and everywhere in between. But tonight you want to watch her in the open, without shame or fear or uncertainty. And so you do.  

You watch the flex of her forearms; the curl of her fingers around her sword, the lazy splay of her legs, the dance of light and shadow across her cheeks and nose and lips. And then you want to touch her. In all the ways that have been haunting you. In concert with that secret, sacred melody your body has been trying to teach you; that ancient, primal dance. You are so tired of hiding that desire away too. 

You want to brush your thumb along the delicate skin below her ear; her exquisite wrists; the crook of her elbow, so soft and warm. You can’t help but picture all of the other soft and warm places her body holds. The undersides of her breasts; the long, glorious expanse of thigh; the smooth plane of her belly as you move lower, lower, dangerously lower to the place where need and ache are silken and slick.  

And, oh gods, just the thought: of you cradled between her naked thighs, hands and mouth everywhere, all at once, charming her body to open wider at your touch. You feel the corners of your mouth tighten with the anticipation of her. You are desperate for a taste of her. Her lips and her tongue. The salt of her skin. The sweat that pools in the valley between her breasts. The desire that pools in the valley between her legs. It drives you mad.  

The wanting. The fantasy. 

You’re on fire, and you’re reckless, and your hands have a mind of their own. They move of their own accord, reaching out to still the whetstone she works along the length of her sword. Firm fingers wrap around the fine bones of her wrist, catching it on the upstroke as it returns to the hilt.  

You linger for a moment at the sight of your pale skin next to the bronze of hers. Imagine what a pretty tableau you’d make - the full length of your naked bodies pressed against each other, limbs tangled and twined. Allow yourself a small, knowing smile at all the lovely ways you contrast one another - light and dark  - an inward chuckle at how those differences seem to define you both, and this blessed, wondrous thing you share.  

But then your gaze flicks upwards, and you catch hers, and you realize there will be time enough later for such poetic thoughts (oh, but there will be sonnets; written in stardust and etched in moonlight across her golden skin), because right now all you can see is the lust spark to life in her blue eyes, and the way they pierce the darkness of the night settling in around you. All you can feel is the current as it arcs from where your fingers rest on her arm, then jump across the distance that separates you. All you can hear is the hitch of her breath, though barely above the wild pounding of your own heart.  

Please be real, your mind screams. Please, please, please be real.

And then your desperate hands are on the move again, sliding up her arms as you slide in close beside her. Your touch leaves a trail of gooseflesh in its wake, and you feel the shiver run through her; the tremble as you draw near. She has slain armies and kings; curried the favour of gods; bedded the brutal and the beautiful. You’re just a farm girl from some backwater village. And yet you make her quiver.  

You.   

You had always imagined that you might have this power over her, but to know it is a thrill; a jolt to your system. A steady, heady rush of blood pounding through your heart. Only your heart is in your throat, and in your belly, and between your legs. And the rhythm that it’s beating is her name. Over and over and over again.  

Xena. Xena. Xena. Xena.  

You can’t believe you’ve never heard it before now. Only you have! Just every day since you first gazed up at the night sky and imagined falling love. And you can’t believe you've never recognized it before. Only you did! Just the first time your eyes met hers. And you can’t believe you’ve never listened to what it’s been calling you to do. Only now you do.

It feels like time has slowed to an agonizing crawl, but the moment is measured in heartbeats, and yours are hammering away in your chest so quickly your head is spinning. You’ve lost track of where your hands are in their journey along her biceps; her shoulders; her collarbones. You feel the weight of the breath she’s been holding - you’ve been holding yours too, alongside her. Her eyes wide and unblinking, staring at you while you stare at her mouth. And you might think she was wary; her gaze disbelieving; but you know better; you know her, and you recognize the look. She’s too afraid to move in case it breaks the spell; in case it’s all a dream.   

You try to ground yourself in the feel of your thumbs trailing up the column of her neck; stroking the outline of her proud jaw, then up along the shell of her ear to rest in the hollow behind it. But all it does is make your heart beat faster, and your lungs heave harder, and your breaths grow uneven. Her eyes never leave you. You feel like you’re careening wildly, wildly, wildly. And she’s so still.  

You want to be still in this moment too. Sure and steady and soft and slow. Want to savour each sensation; etch every minute detail in your mind, and on your heart so that when the seas of your life are rough and uncertain you can sit with the gentle memory of what you’re about to do. You want her to be your anchor. But, your hands cupping her face and your eyes locked with hers and your shaky breaths mingling on the air between you simply is not enough to keep you steady. You need your lips on hers, and her nose brushing against yours, and your fingers threading through each other’s hair. So your mouth finds hers, closes the distance between you, dances across the bridge your heart has been carefully constructing these last few years.

You hear the hasty clank of shifting rock on metal, the soft thud of sword and stone hitting the ground, forgotten already by hands now busy at your waist. Her fingertips skim along your back. Her lips beneath yours are supple, yielding. You kiss her, long and languid. Not lazily, just unhurried. She lets you lead, and, oh, the places you want to take her.  

You start with a hand at her leather-clad hip. Kneading it in time with the want you feel pulsing low in your belly. Then lean up and across her body, pulling her closer to you. You’re so very warm. Dizzy from the heat rolling off your fevered flesh; the fire in your blood. It’s a wonder your touch does not scald; your kisses do not throw sparks; set you both ablaze.  

Her body tells you she would not mind. The way she melts into your mouth and your arms and your desire. She would revel in the burn. Take your hand and lay with you atop the pyre built from your need, and laugh with joy alongside you, as the flames licked higher and you stole the air from her lungs.  

Breathless, you slip your tongue past her eager lips and your hand beneath her skirt. You slide with her to the ground; slide limbless into her lap; sink into the kiss. Feel her catch like too dry tinder. And welcome the inferno.  

     (You are the flames.)  

End of Act III.  

-fin-