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When In Rome

by Kamouraskan

Disclaimers: Characters from the television show Xena: Warrior Princess are not owned by me, to my regret. This is written purely for enjoyment with no thought to monetary gain.
Post FIN, I guess, though I have kept specific references to a minimum.
Thanks to the members of the Bardic Circle, especially Extra, Jaden, Jess, JFalconer, and as always, Claudia and the great Mary Morgan.

Chapter 10

Xena glanced at her companion before stating, "you look good."

Gabrielle nearly paused in mid step. "What? Oh. You mean Numai looks good."

Irritably, Xena responded, "no, if I'd meant that I would have said it. I mean, you look good. The way you walk, the way you crinkle your nose, the glint in your eye, that's you. No one else."

"Well, so do you. Couldn't mistake you for anyone else." At that moment, Gabrielle became aware that she was holding Xena's hand, and with a growl of frustration, flung it away. "This damn body!" she exclaimed.

Xena glanced about to make sure that no-one had noticed. "What?"

"This damn body. The taste buds are alive… the eyesight is so clear and the colours it sees…"

"And all that's bad?"

"It's not just that, it's all young and it has…" Somehow Gabrielle did not look like an old woman while blushing and waving clenched hands.

"Juices?" Xena mocked lightly.

Gabrielle glared at her, but managed to keep her voice low and unheard by passing Roman soldiers making their way to the mob gathering around the base of the Coliseum. "Whatever, but it's making things very difficult."

Xena continued walking but with a stifled grin, and said, "it wasn't juices that made you hold my hand." Gabrielle shot her another glare that Xena evaded by ducking into the bushes. "Anyway, we're here. You're on watch," she said, as she began scrabbling around.

"Got it." Trying to appear relaxed and alone, Gabrielle's gaze wandered over to the where the growing crowd seemed to be hotly debating what should be used in a sacrifice to show their gratitude to Mars. She breathed a sigh of relief that there was no one looking in their direction. Nevertheless, as an excuse for her presence, she bent over and began collecting some of the red poppies that were sprouting between the bracken at her feet. Behind her, she heard Xena give a grunt of satisfaction, and then she heard the scraping sound of concrete being moved along concrete. "So," she murmured from the side of her mouth, "where are we going to go where we can't be seen?"

To her frustration, Xena didn't answer. She began dragging something Gabrielle couldn't see along the ground. In frustration, as their rear ends touched for a moment, she gave Xena's ass a backwards shove.

But when she turned about, she found she was all alone. She stood there in stunned solitary amazement by the shrubbery for a moment before admitting out loud, "that was pretty impressive, I have to say." Then she saw in the short brush, a stubby bit of brickwork extruding from the ground with what seemed to be a cover lying beside it. Whatever it was, it led downwards, was dark inside and had to be where Xena had disappeared.

"Xena?" she called down into it tentatively. "Are you okay?" The darkness did not reply.

She leaned further over the opening and said into it. "What's happened?"

From the darkened depths she heard a rueful, "nothing."

"NOTHING?" There was a moment of unrepressed fuming. "Okay, warrior. Do you want to know what nine hundred years of anger exploding on your head feels like? What's wrong?"

"Ow."

"Ow?"

"Uh huh. I hurt myself… trying to show off"

Gabrielle shook her head wonderingly. "I don't believe I've ever heard you say any of those words, at least in anything near that order before."

"Part of the all new improved me. Isn't that what you want?"

There was silence from above. Xena called up again. "Gabrielle?"

"What I want is getting very complicated. And I wish we could stop talking about it."

"Well, I want and need you down here. There was a glass window in the vent, and I caught a few splinters as I slid down."

"So you're telling me you have glass in your ass?"

There was a ghostly wry chuckle. "Ah, there's what I've been missing all these years. Your way with words."

"There's an old curse I heard once. May you get what you asked for."

"Cute. You know, sooner or later some God-worshipping Roman is going to ask you why you're talking to a bush."

"And let's not forget the glass in your ass."

At the muttered grumble, Gabrielle found herself wearing a grin. After taking a quick look about to make sure that all attention was still on the crowd on the other end of the square, Gabriel lifted one leg over the edge of the concrete ingress and prepared to drop down. "How deep is what ever this is?"

"You can lower your legs and get your feet on my shoulders."

As she did so, she couldn't put off asking another question. "What is, or was, this?"

The answer was another growl. "Get down here and I'll tell you. And while you're still up there, slide the cover back in place."

It took a bit of balancing, but she managed to pull the cover over her head, leaving them both in Stygian darkness, before dropping to the ground. The temperature dropped considerably, but the air was stale and dry. Her mood also seemed to darken, and though she still had a hundred questions, she remained silent.

Off to her left, she heard Xena searching for something along the walls. Answering her unspoken question, she said, ‘we'll need some light and I'm hoping that was water in the flask you have on your belt."

"Water and a flint and don't forget my satchel. Always trained my Amazons to be prepared."

There was an exclamation from the darkness where Xena was standing. "Sconce with a torch still in it."

"So hand it here so I can light it up and look at that ass."

"More things I was wishing but again, not quite this way."

"Bend over and be quiet," Gabrielle ordered as after only a few attempts she got the torch burning. In the flickering light, Gabrielle could see that they were not in some abandoned temple, but in a tunnel of some kind. And not a hurriedly dug, earthen one, but one with decorated plaster walls which stretched off in both directions for some distance.

Using a strigel she'd picked up in the Vestal's washing quarters, she began the delicate task of pulling out the shards. Though used by the Romans to scrape oils from their skin during bathing, she'd noted that the strigel had a fine enough point for other uses. She also observed that although Xena might have changed sufficiently to say ‘ow', throughout the painful process of removing the splinters, her breathing didn't even alter.

She worked carefully, methodically and silently. Occasionally there was a soft grunt from Xena when a shard required some digging to free it, but that was the only sound made for a while. Finally Gabrielle stood. "As much as I liked the rhyme, it's not glass. It's thin slices of marble from a wall decoration. But I need to wash it down once more to check, but I think that's it. If you think it's worth while, I can stitch it up as well."

"Worth while?"

"Well, you don't really think we're going to have these bodies long enough to heal, do you?" Gabrielle tried to sound matter of fact, but some bitterness tinged her response. She moved a little, the better to see by the weak light of the torch.

To her irritation, Xena said lightly, "Probably not. But if you don't have anything else planned…?"

Gabrielle pulled out thread and a needle from her seemingly inexhaustible pack and worked for a time in silence. In her final years she had grown to enjoy quiet, but the stillness of the tunnel was becoming oppressive. Without thinking, she broke it, asking, "you missing that talkative little girl around now?" She cringed as the words slipped from her mouth, but waited for Xena's answer. It only increased her irritation for some reason.

"Nope. I was thinking I said I'd tell you what this place was."

Gabrielle kept her eyes on her work. "Go ahead, I've got a few minutes."

"I get to tell you a story?" Gabrielle didn't respond to the forced enthusiasm. She was careful as she stitched, but occasionally pulled the thread taut with swift, grim strokes.

There was another pause while Xena shifted her upper weight on her hands. Then she began. "Once upon a time there was an Emperor named Nero. All this area up top was his own personal possession. He had a lake about where the Amphitheatre is now, and where your Temple of Venus and Rome…"

"It's not my Temple…" Gabrielle interrupted, though her words were said through teeth that were holding one end of a thread.

"Before it was built, there was this huge statue everyone called the Colossus. So the area around it was called…"

"The Coliseum," Gabrielle inserted.

"Got it. Anyway, he built this mansion on the opposite rise, covered it with gold and filled it with the greatest art in the world. They called it the Golden House. But by tradition, he still had to have a place on the Palatine. After all…"

"It's where the Emperors live. That's where the word comes from. Palatial, palace, from having a place on the Palatine."

"…but he wasn't the most popular guy at times, so in order to go from one house to another…"

"He built a tunnel. So this goes to the top of the Palatine Hill?"

"It used to. I'm betting that it's probably caved in or blocked at either end, but I figure that there'll be more of these ventilation ducts along the way. With luck, there'll be a vent right before they walled it up and we'll get out there."

"And with luck, you're hoping A… you know who, won't figure it out."

There was a hardening of Xena's voice. "Unless, that's not part of the plan."

Gabrielle cut the final thread and stood up. "You're done. According to my reading, the Romans consider dried bull's dung the latest therapy, but considering our situation, that might be redundant."

"So…?"

"There must be enough cobwebs in here to cover even an ass this big."

Ignoring the abuse, or any pain she might have been feeling, Xena turned and stood, facing her former partner. "And all that hard work was just in case there's more than today for us?"

Gabrielle shrugged. "Just want to do the job right."

Xena lowered her head to look into Gabrielle's face. "Enough. What is the job you're here for?" she asked softly. "What's the plan?"