fandomtownies | The Perk, Friday Afternoon

Things at the Hyperion right now were... hectic. Returning from Pylea had been difficult enough on its own, what with Fred to situate in the hotel and all the last-minute portals that had needed to be arranged to send the Fandom crowd back to school (and other places), but that wasn't the worst of it. They'd returned to find the couch in the lobby occupied by Willow, who'd come to inform them -- well, Angel in particular, Wesley supposed, but them -- that Buffy was dead. A hellgod had managed to open up a gateway to billions of hell dimensions all at once, and somehow Buffy had been able to sacrifice herself in order to close it.

So naturally Angel was out of commission as well. He'd gone with Willow back to Sunnydale to help with whatever he could, and judging from the silent intensity with which he'd packed most of the contents of his suite, Wesley doubted he'd be back anytime soon.

So it was down to himself, Cordelia and Gunn to run the place and take care of the mentally-unstable Texan living on the second floor, while Cordelia griped about missing her throne and Gunn complained about not having gotten to experience the hell-world for himself and Lorne had apparently resolved to stay the hell away from the people who'd smashed up his bar again (at least, until the next crisis, Wesley surmised). So really, there was no good excuse for abandoning the hotel, however temporarily, for any kind of substantial visit to the island.

But it was highly unlikely that Wesley would manage to get Perk-caliber coffee anywhere else right now, and really, he needed to breathe and to think somewhere very far from all the craziness. So an hour, he decided. He would be here for an hour, send some texts to some friends to let them know he was here in case they wanted to talk, have some coffee, and then go back to Los Angeles ready to help with... all of that again.

...Okay, maybe two hours.

[[if you think you got a text, you did! oooopen.]]

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Funny thing about the Perk's coffee: it was really hard to come by in ancient Greece, so when Gabrielle got a chance to take a break from the clinic in the afternoon she and her newly-patched-up shoulder headed down to get a caffeine fix, too.

Iced. Because it was really warm outside, and that was the opinion of someone who'd nearly been burned alive on more than three occasions, and she was not slogging up and down all those stairs in this weather with hot coffee, thank you very much.

"Wesley," she remarked when she caught sight of him. (She hadn't actually checked her phone. After a couple of weeks in a time period long before electricity that didn't come from Xena tying kites to giants during thunderstorms, and therefore no cellular reception, she wasn't really thinking about it.) "It's been a while since I've seen you."

"And you as well," Wesley said, which of course made sense since generally people saw each other at the same time. Unless one of them was wearing a blindfold. Which he had not been. "Los Angeles... madness, that sort of thing. How've you been?"

"The god of war tried to talk me into being his new right hand," Gabrielle replied, rolling her eyes like this was an annoyance on the same level as getting a song stuck in your head.

Actually, she tended to get earwormed less often than she experienced some kind of Ares-related hassle, so . . .

"...I just got back from actually directing a war?" Wesley offered in return. "You first."

This? Totally normal conversation for Fandom alums, folks. No, seriously.

Gabrielle laughed, and took a seat. "I'll have to make this quick; I'm just on break from work," she began, but nobody in the universe would believe she could tell a story quickly. "But I have to hear what happened to you, too."

"There was this . . ." She rolled her eyes again, her lips thinning into a tight line that suggested she was really trying to keep a lid on what she wanted to say. "This woman who decided she wanted to be Ares's new right hand, like Xena used to be. So, she tried to kill Xena to prove her worthiness."

Again with the sigh. Honestly, villains of the Very Special Ancient Greece, trying to kill Xena was such a clichéd trope by now. Get a new schtick.

"Well, it got his attention, all right. He threw the three of us into some . . . I'm not sure, exactly. Some dimension where he controlled everything, I guess. Supposedly, he was testing Mavican: if she killed Xena, she'd prove herself to him. But if Xena killed her, we'd be stuck there forever. The catch -- because there's always a catch with him -- was that Xena and I had been merged into one body somehow. During the day, Xena was the one out there, but when the sun went down I'd take her place."

Totally normal conversation, see?

As Gabrielle explained, Wesley nodded along in the appropriate places, frowned in others, and then his eyes went wide at that last bit. "Which put the bulk of the strategizing on you, I expect," he guessed. "If she couldn't detain you and wait for you to change back, then she couldn't win. How did you manage it?"

"Well, the strategy -- we shared that. I had no idea what Xena was doing during the day, but she could watch what I was doing. The whole thing was . . ." She looked down at the table and added quietly, "A little bit like the Hunger Games, actually. No weapons to start with. All we had was whatever we could find in the forest, and Ares's word that if any of us needed his help we could just call on him."

No dwelling on that; she shook her head.

"Then Ares showed up and gave me a weapon; that's when I found out that he was really testing me. I could have killed her. I almost did, except I refuse to give him that satisfaction. I was the one who found out that what Mavican wanted more than anything was to be remembered in history as Xena's equal. Xena's the one who played on that and trapped herself in a cave with Mavican." Gabrielle's smile was a proud one, but there was just a touch of ruthlessness in it, too. "Where she could be forgotten forever, if she didn't get out. That was enough to panic Mavican, so she called for Ares, and well . . . that meant she failed the test. We got to go home. She didn't."

"So much for full permission," Wesley murmured. "Well. Good on you, and on Xena as well, for putting that together. It sounds as though Ares deserved that bit of rebellion, and as for Mavican... well. You did what you had to." That was a strategy he was just getting used to himself, in fact. "I can't imagine it was easy."

"It's the least he deserves," Gabrielle muttered with some heat. "And this was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life -- but we pulled it off, even when I wasn't sure we'd ever be able to. So his little test turned out to do some good after all; just not the way he planned it."

She waved a hand. "But that was just three people in a forest somewhere. How did you end up directing a war? That's a completely different kind of challenge."

Which she would prefer never to have to undertake again. Ahahaha.

So maybe 'directing a war' was a bit more dramatic than what he'd actually done, which had been mostly wearily shaking his head at things and occasionally yelling at soldiers to go places. Whatever. Still counted.

"Well, I suppose it started with a couple of friends of mine getting sucked into a portal to a demon dimension," he said after a moment of figuring out how best to begin. "Some friends and colleagues and I followed, and we wound up discovering that the dimension in question was a sort of... theocratic dictatorship, with human slaves and ceremonial beheadings, that sort of thing. So we wound up, ah... storming the castle. In protest."

It sounded a little silly when he put it that way. It sounded a lot sillier in the actual plot, though. So.

Oh, sure it did. To other people, maybe.

"It's always interesting when that happens."

It sounded pretty normal to Gabrielle.

"I take it you were successful? Everyone got back all right?"

"Oh, yes, everyone's fine," Wesley confirmed. "Including... well. We even met a girl who'd been a slave there for about five years, and brought her back with us. She's... not entirely stable at the moment, but my colleagues and I are hoping we can help get her adjusted to the real world again."

Or he might just fall in love with her, crush hopelessly for a couple years, finally start to date her and then watch her die in his arms. Maybe that.

Well, way to grab Gabrielle's attention.

"I wouldn't be surprised if it takes her some time," she said, sympathetic and honestly concerned. "Freedom is never an easy thing to adjust to after you've given up hoping for it. You won't give up on trying, right?"

Yeah, Wesley, that . . . would not be much unlike some of her past relationships. Most of them. Possibly all.

Surprised that Gabrielle seemed to empathize, Wesley tilted his head for a moment before answering. "No, we... no, we fully intend to help her for as long as it takes," he promised. "Right now she's still, er, writing on her bedroom walls and eating meals under the table, but it's the beginning stages yet. With time, and... probably once Angel comes back, I'm sure we'll start seeing more progress."

He hesitated. "Do you have... experience with this sort of thing?"

The Perk, Friday Afternoon

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