[Read the disclaimers!]

Disclaimer 1: This story is in response to Nacey's
"Resolve-the-Season-Cliffhanger" challenge. That means spoilers by
definition. If you don't particularly want to know [in the most vague
generic terms] what happened at the end of season 4, you'll want to skip
this one.

Disclaimer 2: The characters in this story belong to Renaissance Pictures
and Universal/USA Studios. Not to me. I was just messing with their heads a
little. Nothing profitable or constructive is intended.

Disclaimer 3: There is a powerful, touching, sensitive story about the
events after "Ides of March" that needs to be told. It still does because
this isn't it.
 
 
 

*****

In a place far removed from the cares of the world was a perfect, peaceful
valley in which nestled a bright, shining white city, and in this city was a
bard of Poteidaia who was trying to make conversation and failing miserably,
and being a bard thinking that if anyone ever needed a deus to ex machina
her out of an awkward situation, it was she.

"It's beautiful here, isn't it?" Gabrielle said with a determined smile on
her face.

"Yeah."

"Really, really beautiful."

"Mnh."

"I like...I like the sun," Gabrielle decided. "I like the sun best. No, the
breeze. What do you think?"

Xena shrugged. "Whatever."

A word of more than one syllable. This was good. This was progress.
Gabrielle plowed on. "I like the breeze because it's, like, a bonus. The sun
is sort of a given. It's all part of the theme."

"What theme is that?" Xena leaned on the white marble railing of the terrace
and looked out over the valley. Amazingly happy-looking people wandered in
an amazingly happy-looking fashion to and fro on the daisy-bordered paths.

"The white theme. Did you notice? See, it started out with the bright white
light, and then they're picking it up in the sun, and in the white temple
where we came in, and the way the buildings and streets in this city are all
white marble, and the way the officials all wear those little white togas,
and our..." Gabrielle had been going to say "our white dresses", but the
white dresses were a distinctly sore point with Xena, and the look that was
now crossing her face at the mention of the hated white dresses was not what
Gabrielle would call "light" at all. "Well," Gabrielle said brightly, trying
to change the subject. "Well. Well."

There was nothing to change the subject to. Nothing. She didn't know how
long they had been here, but it had been far long enough for all the sun and
the breeze and the white marble to blend into the same vague white-light
blur.

"It's only been two weeks, by my count," said Xena, as if having read her
mind.

"Yes, but a very wonderful two weeks," said Gabrielle, smiling really really
hard.

"This isn't an afterlife. This is a dull holiday in Knossos. Doesn't
anything ever happen around here?" Xena turned the dark look around the
terrace and back on the shining white marble temple towering above the
buildings of the shining white city. "Does it even rain? How do they keep
all those damn white flowers alive without rain?"

"It's a spiritual plane," Gabrielle said. The effort of maintaining the
smile was starting to make her face hurt. "They're not real flowers. They're
metaphors."

"What do you think would happen if someone was to, say, tear up a bunch of
metaphors by their roots? Do you think it would get any reaction at all?"
Xena eyed a passing official, who smiled a fatuous smile in return and
walked on by, his white toga ruffling in the breeze. Like all the officials,
he was very handsome, and his toga was very short. Xena watched him
retreating with much more interest than she had watched him approach, and
Gabrielle said rather sharply, "Xena, don't stare."

"I'm just trying to figure out if they wear anything under those."

"They're spiritual beings, that's practically sick or something."

"Do you think it would be sick enough to get us thrown out of here?"

"Xena," Gabrielle squeaked.

"I can not spend eternity here." Xena massaged her temples. "No matter what
I did in my life, it couldn't have been bad enough to deserve this."

"You're approaching it all the wrong way. Things aren't supposed to happen.
It's a metaphor. You're supposed to, to contemplate the perfection and the
unchanging...stuff." Gabrielle had noticed a sharp decline in her vocabulary
over the past few days, and was trying to attribute it to her diet. "Now me,
I...I'm coping well. I've adjusted to the change."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm happy here. I am," Gabrielle said. "It's so peaceful. It's so quiet."

"And you're okay with that."

"Yes," Gabrielle almost shouted.

"I would give anything for a little noise, myself."

"Don't say things like that. You know better than to say things like that."

"Peace and quiet, my -- " All at once Xena subsided, and leaned on the rail
once more. "Fine. Peace and quiet. I'll try to like it." Gabrielle was not
standing so far away that she could not hear Xena add under her breath, "I
won't, but I'll try," and she was not so cheerful that she did not know darn
well she was supposed to.

*****

On top of everything else, the scrolls on the low table were years old, and
hadn't been interesting even when new. Hades settled back on the bench in
the reception area and blew out an exasperated sigh.

If he cared to, he could walk across the room to gaze out the temple's huge
floor-to-ceiling windows. From them you could see the entire bright, shining
white city and beyond into the infinite depths of the perfect, peaceful
valley. The minor official who had shown him into the room had actually
suggested he take in the view, in a blatantly transparent game of
one-upmanship. Hades wasn't falling for it. Okay, the Elysian Fields weren't
as infinite or as color-coordinated as the lightworkers' kingdom, but he had
restrictions they didn't have to deal with. There was only so much you could
do in an underworld, after all. And Hades' constructions were much more
intricate and no doubt much more interesting to his subjects. That had
always been the problem with the white-light people. No ability to deal with
complexity.

Hades sat, a puddle of black Olympian ink on a white blanket of
noncomplexity, and tried not to get angry. It wasn't working. He wanted to
be home with Persephone, damn it. Why couldn't this have waited until the
spring? But of course, Ares and Aphrodite had taken advantage of the fact
that Persephone was around and gone to her first, and then she had come to
him. *Do me a teensy-weensy favor, sweetums?* He should have known something
was up when the baby-talk started. Apparently Ares and 'Dite had lost their
pet mortals to the white-light people, and now were sulking because
Olympians were denied admittance to this afterlife. Something that no doubt
would have made the mortals delighted had they known, but there it was. Now
his most annoying niece and nephew were complaining about how dull it would
be without Xena and Gabrielle to mess around with, and how it wasn't fair
that the lightworkers got to have them, and how if they were in the Fields
at least they could still visit every now and then and tease them, and how
they couldn't have any fun now.

Neither Ares or Aphrodite had ever gotten it. Of course, they were young
yet, but still. Being a god wasn't about having fun. It was about doing your
duty. It was about doing things you really didn't want to do, which in
Hades' case right now involved being patronized by the pretentious,
supercilious, holier-than-thou lightworkers for the benefit of relatives he
didn't even particularly like. He wondered how long they would keep him
cooling his heels here. Past experience with the lightworkers told him it
could easily be years. He didn't care. He wouldn't let them get to him.

On the other hand, maybe he'd stand up and start throwing thunderbolts at
random into the valley.

The ivory-and-gold doors at the far end of the room swung open silently. A
sub-senior official dressed in an extremely short and entirely tasteless
white toga came in, holding a scroll. "Hades of Olympus?" he called.

Hades stood up. "I am he." You pompous twit, he mentally added, I'm the only
one in the room. "Two of my subjects have accidentally been admitted to your
afterlife, and I came to take them back to my jurisdiction where they
belong. If you could have them brought here I would greatly apprec--"

The sub-official shoved the scroll into Hades' hand. "Fill out the request
form, please, and drop it in the box once you are done. We'll call you." He
turned and walked back through the ivory-and-gold doors, which closed just
before Hades could put a thunderbolt where it would do the most good.

*****

On the slim chance it would give Xena something to do, Gabrielle suggested
they take a walk through the white city's agora. It was a remarkably quiet
agora since there was no money in this place and people simply picked up and
walked off with whatever they wanted, but it did have people in it, which
meant there was just the vaguest possibility something might happen. The
wares were limited to white dresses and white tunics and white breeches, and
odd fragile objects made of crystal and glass and white porcelain. Gabrielle
studied a strangely formed vase, which would not have looked pretty with
white flowers in it, and wondered about the people who took such things
away. People who liked that sort of thing...People who like this sort of
thing will find this is the sort of thing they like, she composed. She
rather proudly started to say it to Xena, then stopped.

"What?"

"Nothing," said Gabrielle, a little sadly. There was no point in composing a
nice little phrase like that, was there? No scrolls to write it in, no
audiences to perform it to. She'd tried telling stories to people when she'd
first arrived, but they all smiled that amazingly happy smile and wandered
away. But of course, Gabrielle told herself firmly, I was wrong to try it
because I should be occupied only with higher concerns on this plane, and I
am. I am I am I am.

"I am so bored I could scream," Xena said.

Gabrielle quickly suppressed the traitorous thought that the most boring
thing around here recently was Xena's continual harping on how boring
everything was. "You're not approaching it with the right attitude. You need
to contemplate the peace of eternity. It's a metaphor."

"I would give anything not to have to ever hear about the peace of eternity
again," Xena said. "I would give anything to have a little excitement around
here. I would give anything to see someone I know. Anybody who could give me
something to do. Ares... Caesar... Callisto..."

"None of whom are likely to show up in a place like this," said Gabrielle
and pushed away another traitorous thought: Xena just didn't get the point.

"It's my afterlife," Xena said. "If it's supposed to be so great, then give
me just one person I can yell at without feeling guilty. Someone who can
give me a little bit of excitement, okay?"

"What am I?" Gabrielle said hotly. "Hummus?"

"That's not what I meant and you know it." Xena threw an arm around the
bard's shoulders in a quick, roughly affectionate hug. "I meant it's not
lively here. Not like back in the world. Not even like in the Fields. At
least there's people we know there."

"We earned a better fate," said Gabrielle and tried to believe it.

A sad expression crossed Xena's face. "A lonely fate. We'll never see anyone
we loved here. They'll all spend eternity in Hades' domain, and we'll be
left alone."

Gabrielle put a hand on her arm. "We're not alone. We have each other."

"Just the two of us? Forever?" Xena smiled. "I can live with that."

They looked into each other's eyes for a long moment; and off in the
distance somewhere, something crashed to the ground.

Xena didn't stop smiling, but her face twitched for a minute. "Did you hear
anything?"

"It sounded like something fell over."

"Nothing falls over here," said Xena, still smiling, and there was another
sound as if one or many of those strange crystal vases had been knocked
over. "Ow," said a loud and not unfamiliar voice. "Sorry."

Uh-oh, Gabrielle thought.

Xena backed off a step, still with the same smile on her face, but it had
taken on a rather frightening aspect. "This...is...not...happening," she
said.

It was. Several of the amazingly happy people were standing on their toes
and craning their necks looking in the direction of the noise. It was the
first evidence of curiosity Gabrielle had seen from anyone around here, and
she might have joined in had she not known, probably from the first thump
somehow, what the cause was.

The crowd parted, and Joxer wandered into view. He was, as usual, trying to
take in everything at once, the buildings, the people, the stalls, the sky,
and he veered dangerously close to a stack of white amphorae. "Joxer,"
Gabrielle said firmly, trying to bring him to attention.

He blinked and looked at them. "Oh. There you guys are!" Xena turned around
slowly to face him as he trotted up, and she was still wearing that smile,
and Gabrielle's self-preservation instinct caused her to take a couple of
prudent steps backwards. "I have been looking all over for you," Joxer
announced.

"Joxer," said Xena very calmly, "what are you doing here?"

"Xena! Listen, you would not believe the things people are saying. There's a
rumor going around that you're dead, can you believe it? Hi, Gabrielle. How
have you been? I was in this tavern and these guys are saying the Romans
killed you, and I laughed at them. Then they got mad and there was this
fight. Does this look okay?" He presented the back of his neck for
inspection. "I got hit with a chair or a horse or something, I think. Is
there a lump coming up? Why are you wearing that dress?" He paused for a
moment. "Why is everyone wearing that dress?" Gabrielle watched in somewhat
horrified fascination as he put two and two together repeatedly and watched
the results come up different every time, and finally his eyes slid sideways
and he got a good, solid look at Xena's face. "Oops," he offered.

"Oops," said Xena.

"Oops."

"I'll give you oops."

*****

The sub-official came out of his office and walked right by Hades as if he
wasn't there, and stared out of the large windows. The outer doors opened
and two or three more lightworkers came in and they all started talking at
once to the sub-official. Two more lightworkers came from the inner office,
one of them with a half-rolled scroll under his arm and the forgotten end
trailing behind him. Some of them looked out the window, some of them went
back through the outer door, and the scroll carrier walked in irresolute
circles for a full minute before disappearing back into the inner office.
The sub-official turned away from the window, and he was actually wringing
his hands. "Oh, is something wrong?" Hades asked happily.

"Just a little mix-up." The sub-official put on a patently false smile.
"There just seems to be a small problem with someone who's not supposed to
be here, that's all."

Hades stood up. "Which is exactly what I have been saying all along. You
give Xena and Gabrielle to me and the mix-up will be all smoothed over and
that solves your problem, and I take them back to the Fields and my niece
and nephew leave me the hell alone, you will pardon the expression, and that
solves my problem. Now, if we could just expedite this process..."

"Not now," said the sub-official distractedly, "we're busy." He brushed by
Hades and went through the outer door.

If Hades hadn't been in the lightworkers' domain, and if he hadn't known for
a fact that such things never occurred here, he would have sworn that faint
noise coming up through the windows was shouting.

*****

"Xena!" Gabrielle shouted.

"Not now, I'm busy!"

"Xena, let go, you'll kill him!"

"I can't kill him," Xena growled, "he's already dead, that means I can keep
this up for days and maybe I will."

"Xena, for gods' sakes!"

"Mdgm," said Joxer, which was about as much as he could contribute to the
conversation while Xena's fingers were still locked around his throat. He
was turning a very interesting shade of purple. "Xena," Gabrielle hissed,
"people are staring."

That was all they were doing, actually. Two officials had pushed their way
to the front of the crowd but just stood there, nervous and unhappy. "Oh,
for..." Gabrielle took one of Xena's arms and tugged. "I could use a hand
here," she said, but the officials didn't move.

Xena barked suddenly and let go of Joxer, backing off. He fell to his knees,
sputtering. "You... you... you *idiot*," Xena roared, "first of all you go
and get yourself killed the *minute* I turn my back, and second of all, you
go the *wrong way*! You're not supposed to *be here*! How can anybody get
*lost* on their way to the *other side*?!"

Joxer wheezed something which sounded like a question involving the word
"dog".

"Because it's not the real underworld, that's why," Gabrielle told him. "Oh,
for pity's sake, Xena, leave him alone. He didn't do it on purpose, it's not
his fault he's here."

"Then whose is it?" Xena snarled. "I have to blame someone."

Even though she knew that she would be paying for it for the rest of her
afterlife, Gabrielle heard herself saying, "Well, you're the one who wanted
someone around who could make things interesting."

For a minute Xena looked like she would say something that would probably
have made the officials fall down in a dead faint; but instead of speaking
she spun around and stalked off through the crowd, which wisely parted for
her.

Joxer sat on the ground, regaining his color or, to be more precise, losing
it. "She's really mad," he deduced. He rubbed his throat ruefully. "That
hurt more than you'd think it would. Considering."

"She's just upset because you died, is all." Gabrielle thought of making
small talk, but things like "It's nice to see you here" were probably pretty
insensitive under the circumstances. In the end she just did as she always
did with Joxer, which was to pick up their last conversation more or less at
the point where it had let off. "Joxer, how could even you not notice you
were dead? Don't you think things look a little different around here?"

"They're kinda white, now that you mention it."

"That's because it's pure. It's a metaphor."

"How did we get here anyway?"

"We," said Gabrielle with a slight emphasis on the pronoun, "wound up here
because of what we did in India. I'm not sure why you're here. You should be
back in the underworld where you belong."

Joxer looked around. "It seems nice enough. Too bright, but aside from
that."

"It's a highly advanced spiritual plane," said Gabrielle. Joxer looked at
her quizzically. "It's very peaceful and beautiful," said Gabrielle, and he
was still looking at her. "It's a wonderful place," she said, and he
continued to look at her, and she found herself saying, "It's boring,
nothing ever happens, everybody is smiling all the time, Xena is going
stir-crazy, and if I don't hear someone raise their voice or laugh or cry or
sing -- Joxer, don't you even *think* about it -- I'm going to scream."

"So it's more than just the too-bright part?"

"And now you're here," said Gabrielle without thinking.

Joxer went into an instant sulk.

"Oh, come on," she said, trying hard not to think how much it cheered her up
to see someone around here not wearing that peaceful, spiritual, vapid
smile. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Well, I'm glad to see you guys too." He turned his head away from her
pointedly. "It's not like I didn't have to get all dead and everything to
get here. No, don't mind me."

Oh, this is a good one, Gabrielle thought admiringly. This is historic. He's
always thrown the best sulks of anyone I've ever known. "You know we're glad
to see you." She offered him her hand. "Come on. Get up."

He glanced at her suspiciously for a moment, then heaved a sigh and reached
for her hand. He probably would have taken it, sulk or no sulk, but she
never got a chance to find out because at that exact moment a half-dozen
short-togaed officials surrounded them, picked Joxer up bodily, and carried
him off. "Hey," Gabrielle protested. They disappeared into the crowd, and by
the time she had recovered enough to shove herself after them had vanished.

Gabrielle found herself suddenly and abruptly alone, surrounded by strangers
smiling amazingly stupid smiles. Her vocabulary came back to her all at
once, and she said an extremely bad word popular in the Parthian foothills
but nowhere else. It was starting to occur to her that this might not be the
best of all possible afterlives after all.

*****

The outer doors opened, and the sub-senior official reentered the room.
"Hades of Olympus," he said.

Taking a deep breath, Hades got to his feet. He prepared once again to
launch into his speech, but before he could open his mouth the sub-official
said, "What do you think you're doing, you bloody idiot?"

"I beg your pardon," said Hades in a very cold tone.

"How dare you," the sub-official said, and he actually had the nerve to poke
Hades in the chest for emphasis as he said it, "how dare you stash one of
your unevolved barbarian Greeks in our kingdom? He's not here five minutes
and already a fight's broken out." A small knot of officials entered and
dumped Joxer unceremoniously on the floor. "We haven't had any fights on
this plane for millennia! Do you hear me? Millennia! And -- "

"I have been trying to tell you," Hades said, "that my subjects were here,
*by* accident, and I have been *trying* to take them away for the past -- "
He caught sight of Joxer for the first time. "That isn't one of them.
They're female."

"It's yours, get rid of it."

"I need the two we were talking about and I need them now."

"You can't have them." The sub-official waved his hands irritably. "Someone
upstairs is adamant they have to remain here. This is the one that started
the trouble. Take it and go."

Hades knew that if they could just discuss this like reasonable beings
they'd be able to work the best possible outcome for all parties concerned.
He knew that that a calm and logical approach to the situation was the best
way of resolving it. He knew that losing his temper would do no good
whatsoever. "You stupid little pompous twerp! I want to speak to your
superior! I demand to see someone in charge! I'm not some pipsqueak angel
you can push around! I'm a God of the Underworld, dammit! You -- don't
move!" This last was aimed at Joxer, who was trying to crawl to the door.
Joxer meekly sat down and remained where he was.

"We don't allow divine intervention here. No exceptions."

"It's got nothing to do with divine intervention! It's entirely a
jurisdictional dispute. The fact is they belong to me and you have no right
to keep them without my consent."

"I'm not authorized to release any of them except this one." The
sub-official's jaw jutted with the unmovable stubbornness of the born
bureaucrat. "Take it or leave it."

Hades' palms itched for a thunderbolt, but if he brought the temple crashing
down about their heads it would set the negotiations back millennia. And he
had to get those two women back now or lose face throughout all the
afterworlds. With a dramatic, beautifully disdainful sweep of his cape, he
turned his back on the sub-official and glared down at Joxer. "You," he
said.

"Um." Joxer got cautiously to hands and knees. "Lord Hades. Um...hi."

Entirely the wrong thing to say. Hades went for an ear grab, which seemed
fitting for some reason, and hauled the yelping man to his feet. "You are
going straight to Tartarus," Hades hissed softly. "Somebody's got to pay for
this humiliation and you're nominated. As for you -- " he said in a normal
voice, looking back over his shoulder at the sub-official, who still didn't
even show enough brains to be nervous, "you'll be hearing from my people."
Ares and 'Dite or no Ares and 'Dite, Hades was out of here.

*****

"Xena!" Gabrielle called as she shouldered her way through the crowd. The
bright sun shone down on the shining white buildings, and reflected off the
pristine white marble sidewalks, and glittered on the white pots and the
white vases, and lit the white clothes and the amazingly happy white smiles
of the crowd, and Joxer was right, it really was too bright and it was
starting to make her eyes hurt. "Xena!" She wasn't hot and sweaty because it
was apparently impossible to get hot and sweaty on this plane, but if it had
been she bet she would've. "Xena!" She wasn't getting annoyed either,
because it was impossible to get annoyed on this plane as well, so therefore
she was *not* annoyed. "Xena," Gabrielle growled under her breath, "where
are you?"

She stood on her toes and scanned for someone, anyone, besides herself, who
was not smiling. "Gabrielle!" came a voice from over by a stall bedecked
with white tapestries. "Over here!" Xena waved.

"There you are," Gabrielle muttered. She pushed her way through the crowd,
and Xena met her halfway. "So," Gabrielle said irritably, "you done now?"

Xena had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. "Yes, I'm okay. I took a
little walk. I'm fine." She smoothed out the front of the hated dress. "I
admit I overreacted a little. But I'm okay now..." She looked at Gabrielle,
then beside, behind, and over her. "For gods' sakes, you've lost him
already?"

"First of all," Gabrielle said in a dangerously tight voice, "it's not my
turn to watch him, and second of all, you're the one who tried to kill him."

"I didn't try to kill him. Well, not technically. Where did he go?"

"The officials came and took him away. We have to find him. Assuming you're
done with your snit."

"I am not in a snit."

"You've been in a snit ever since we got here, practically."

"So, Joxer is gone, then?"

"Don't try to change the subject."

"Well, that was fast."

"Xena, I'm warning you..."

"But that was always Joxer for you. He's here, he's not."

"Xena..."

"It's all for the best, I suppose."

I'm not going to take the bait, Gabrielle thought. I'm not, I'm not,
I'm...oh, hell. "Xena! He could be in trouble!"

"Nobody could get into trouble around here, Gabrielle. Not even Joxer.
That's the entire point!" Xena glared around as if looking for something to
throw; fortunately all the neighboring stalls had were unbreakable things
made of various kinds of white cloth. "They're just going to straighten out
the mix-up and put him where he belongs. He'll be fine."

"He'd be a lot happier in the Fields."

"And we'd have our peace and quiet, and we'd be happy too. Come on." Xena
strode off.

Gabrielle trotted after her. "We're going to the temple, aren't we?" she
asked happily.

"Yes."

"We're going to stop them, aren't we?"

"Absolutely."

"So much for our peace and quiet."

"So much for everybody's. Come on, we'd better hurry."

*****

"I thought you were leaving," the sub-official said. The little bastard was
smirking.

"Shut up," Hades said through clenched teeth. He tried to vanish yet again.
Yet again he did not. To Me with this, he thought, and let go of Joxer.
"That's it. You keep him."

"Forget it. Get him out of here."

"I can't. I've been trying."

"Well, you're not trying hard enough."

"Do you know anything about moving between planes? No? Then I'll thank you
to keep your opinions to yourself."

Joxer moved very cautiously over to one of the benches and sat down.

"Maybe if you said some magic words or something. Aren't you
anthropomorphized types into that?" The scroll-carrier reentered the room,
trailing parchment. He had three scrolls in his arms this time, and he crept
timidly up to the sub-official and whispered something in his ear. Rude.
Hades folded his arms across his chest and glared. "What?"

The sub-official listened to the scroll carrier for a moment more, then
turned back to Hades. "We've found the problem. Apparently all three of
these Greeks of yours are tied together somehow. That's why this one's here
when it wasn't even supposed to be off the physical plane yet, much less on
ours -- it was just following the other two. They all have to be in the same
place, or else things become unbalanced."

"And that's why I can't take him away, because I need to take all three
together." Which was close enough to what Hades had wanted all along for him
to settle for it. "So. Get me the other two, and we'll be all set."

"Not so fast. The other two have to stay here. This is non-negotiable."

"Okay, then keep this one."

"No, he has to go. That is also non-negotiable."

"Look, you bureaucratic moron, you're the one who just told me we can't
split them up. I want to speak to somebody with a brain, right now."

"We are not fetching the other two for you, and that's final." The
sub-official's triumph was short-lived, as the outer doors opened and Xena
and Gabrielle came in of their own accord. "There you are," said Hades,
annoyed.

"Hades!" Xena said.

"You know him? ...Oh, I forgot. You've been here before. There, I mean."
Gabrielle abandoned the conversation and went over to where Joxer sat on a
low bench, thumbing desultorily through a scroll. "Joxer, are you all
right?"

"No," he said petulantly. "He's going to put me in Tartarus and I don't even
deserve it, he said so himself, but he's going to do it anyway."

"Xena!" Gabrielle said, outraged. "Are you going to let him get away with
that?"

"Not now, Gabrielle." Xena waved her away. "Hades, I need to talk to you.
There's been a terrible mistake here. There's been several, starting with
this dress."

The sub-official shook his head and said, "Hades, I'll pass your request on,
but I'm telling you now, they're not going to go for it."

Hades put his fingers to his temples and tried to rub away the beginnings of
a god-sized migraine that might last for weeks. "Look. Why don't we do this?
Let's put them in a neutral location while we work out the details."

"It could take years. The overhead expenses in the meantime -- "

Hades snapped his fingers, not a power-snap but an exclamation snap. "We can
put them back on the physical plane. They could keep for another thirty or
forty years, with any luck."

"This dress," Xena said in the tone of a woman who was not used to being
ignored and was quite sure she didn't like it, "and those damned
flowers...Excuse me, did you say 'back on the physical plane'?"

"Gods, these are ancient." Gabrielle rummaged through the pile of scrolls on
the table. "Don't they have anything newer than the Bronze Age? -- 'Physical
plane', Xena, it means the real world."

"Excuse me? You're going to bring us back to life?" Xena glared a glare that
turned the sub-official almost as white as his toga. "Do you know how bloody
hard it was and how much we had to go through to die in the first place, and
now you want to put us through it all over again?"

"It wasn't so bad," Joxer said. "I didn't even notice, really."

"Well, that's because you got the easy way out." Xena turned the glare on
Joxer, who was either used to it by now or so pale already he couldn't get
any whiter, or maybe both. "You would not believe what we had to go through,
first dying and then killing time in this bleached-out hellhole, and then
you come wandering in and as usual everything immediately gets worse."

"Xena!" Gabrielle scolded, and Joxer got to his feet and said, "Just a
minute."

"We are trying to have a discussion here, could you keep it down, please?"
Hades said.

"I didn't do anything," Joxer went on in what was for Joxer a very sharp
tone. "It's not my fault this time. In fact, looking back on it, I'm not
sure how many times it *has* been my fault," he said, "in fact, *you're* the
one who always is losing your temper and trying to twist a guy's head off
and everything for no reason at all, and in case you haven't noticed *I'm*
the one who's going to Tartarus here, and I think that outweighs any problem
you have with the dress code! What about me? What about my needs?"

"It's always about you, isn't it?"

"No, usually it's about her."

"Hey!" Gabrielle smacked him a good one on the shoulder, then turned to
Xena. "Xena," she hissed, "you're making a scene. Stop it."

"Okay," said Hades. "Just a minute here."

"It's not a 'scene'. It's a 'metaphor'!"

"I would like it very much if everyone could just calm -- "

"Just because," Gabrielle said, wagging her finger at Xena, which Xena
hated, "you have no appreciation for the higher spiritual values, and that
goes for both of you, just because -- "

"Oh, gods," said Joxer, rolling his eyes to the ceiling, "she's not going to
start with *that* again, is she?"

"Gabrielle," said Xena, "been there, done that, was bored to tears."

"Everything bores you lately. Tell me, do I bore you?"

"Well, if you want to know the truth -- "

"SHUT UP," Hades roared. "Everybody SHUT UP!" Everybody did except for Xena,
who started to say something. "EVERYBODY!" Hades roared again and this time
Xena did. "I have had ENOUGH! You WILL listen to me! This isn't some BUFFOON
like ARES you're dealing with here! THIS is what we're going to do! For now,
everybody is going back! You two!" He waved Gabrielle over to the side with
Xena. "I'm putting you back where you left. I don't have time for a good
cover story, so I expect for you to get out of there as fast as possible
before people start asking questions. You, you walking catastrophe -- " he
indicated Joxer -- "I'm going to move you as far south on the Peloponnesian
peninsula as I can, because the last thing I need is for all three of you to
wind up dead again in the next five minutes, *is that understood*? And I
don't want to hear another peep out of *any* of you for at least twenty
years, you got that?"

Everyone started to talk at once.

"Not one PEEP!"

Everyone stopped.

Hades rounded on the sub-official. "Wait here. I'm going to put them away
and I'll be right back." In an overly and rather pointedly multi-colored
splash of light, he disappeared along with the troublesome mortals. A few
seconds later he reappeared by himself. "I have such a headache like you
wouldn't believe."

"They're not going to do that through all eternity, are they?" The
sub-official looked slightly ill at the prospect.

"They might. Now I know why Ares likes them so much." Hades rubbed his
forehead. "Him and his 'fun'..." He paused in mid-sentence.

After a moment the sub-official prompted, "Hades?"

"Ares wants fun?" Hades said, almost to himself. "I'll give him fun."

"Hades, about the negotiations..."

"I think I may have found us an out," Hades said and he smiled. "Look, you
can't keep all three. I can't keep all three. First of all, the rules won't
allow it, and second of all, we'd go insane. So we have to keep them
somewhere else."

"They can't stay on the physical plane forever. It'll only work for another
fifty years or so, tops."

"Not if we put them in for reincarnation."

"Reincarnation?" The sub-official blinked. "That's rather nasty. Is that
fair to them?"

"It's not fair to anyone. That makes it the perfect compromise. We start the
application process now and everything should be all set by the next time
they go off." Hades ticked off the points on his fingers. "They stay on the
physical plane so the jurisdictional issues become moot. Your superiors are
content. My duties are fulfilled. And my niece and nephew get to keep their
pets forever. Everybody's happy. Except possibly the mortals, but then
mortals are hardly ever satisfied."

The sub-official mulled this over for a minute. "I don't know if it would
totally satisfy my superiors..."

"Would listening to that bickering for all eternity satisfy them better?"

"I think my superiors would be fine with this plan of yours," the
sub-official decided. "I think they would fully approve, in fact I'm so sure
of it I'm going to authorize it myself and start the paperwork right now. Do
you want to wait?"

"No, I'd like to see my wife again before she goes back to her mother's.
She's leaving in only four months."

"Four months, we won't even have the first draft done in four months. Are
you sure you don't want to help?" the sub-official said hopefully,
transparent as ever.

Hades looked disdainfully at the sub-official. "I'm not *your* god. Don't
expect me to get you out of *your* awkward situation." He deliberately
pulled up a very big, very black puff of smoke, and left for good.
 
 

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