Work Text:
ROOM IN THE INN
It had been several months since he had allowed himself the luxury spending the night at an inn. Tonight, with an autumnal chill in the air and his left shoulder bothering him even more than it usually did after a long day of traveling, it certainly seemed worth it. Traveling? That word implied that you were going somewhere. He was wandering. He hadn't had a destination for how many years now? He wasn't sure he could count.
How long had it been since he had been around people? He wanted to sniff his armpits to check how he smelled, but doing that in the presence of others was probably more repulsive than the actual scent would be. It didn't really matter. The people in the tavern surely had smelled worse. Anyway, he was sitting by himself, almost in the corner of the room, just watching the men who gathered there. As long as he could remember the good times he had had in places like this, he felt he was still sane. That sanity, or his justification for it, would only be assured of remaining until he had consumed three mugs of ale. After that he was on his own.
He watched a group of men who had joyously gathered and claimed the center table. They were no longer youths, probably husbands and fathers, maybe farmers or soldiers, but definitely comrades. They drank ale from large gray pottery mugs served by buxom women. He watched a bright-haired man, who reminded him so much of Iolaus, flirting with the young woman serving the ale. He knew his friend would have had the server, unless she were married or engaged, in his bed by the end of the evening. He laughed. With Iolaus being married or engaged hadn't seemed to make that much difference. He wondered if this man would have equal success.
* * * *
"I tell you, I heard she was dead."
"No way, she's just a legend anyway."
"Why would people start circulating a rumor that she was dead?"
"I remember when my parents took me to that museum for her and her friend. All those funny little dolls and weapons. I couldn't believe there had ever been a woman warrior like her, but my sisters sure liked it."
"Girls do."
"She's a legend, a myth."
"Like the gods."
"Yea."
"Like Hercules."
"Wait a minute." A tall long-haired man at the end of the table, who had appeared more interested in his ale than the conversation, raised his head and looked around the table. His eyes focused someplace more distant avoiding the old man sitting in the corner. "My mother claimed she knew, Hercules."
"Your mother claimed lots of things, Alcaeus. "
"Don't talk about my mother. She was a good woman. She did a damn good job of running the country until my brother, Macareus, was old enough to take over."
"Sorry, I guess it is just that all of us grew up listening to stories about the Queen Kirin's little problem with recognizing her own husband."
"That's me you're talking about. I'm the little problem. How do you think it feels not knowing who your father is? Knowing only that it was some stranger that you mother thought was her husband? You can't talk to your mother about that. You can't talk to your brothers about that. Especially when one of your brothers is a king." Tears were running down his face.
"Cut him off, he's had too many already."
"I've had one too many," Hercules thought. "One too many ales to remember where I am. I thought I heard someone say my name. I thought I heard someone say Queen Kirin."
The group of men at the table continued to drink, talk, shout and order more ales without regard for the man sitting with his head in his hands. Usually Hercules didn't get involved with such assemblages unless they got rowdy and started a fight. Recently, even if they had started a fight, he would avoid getting involved unless it looked like someone innocent was being targeted.
Getting old, and somewhat obtuse in your thinking, were good reasons to limit your involvement to those altercations where it was absolutely necessary.
He sighed and took another slug of his ale. In another few minutes he would be feeling the same way as the younger man, but he knew his hangover in the morning would be even worse.
* * *
The conversations had amalgamated into a dull roar that echoed through his brain. What was left of his heroic internal voice told him to go to the outhouse and then to his room. That is, if he could stand up. It got embarrassing sometimes when he couldn't and found himself the next morning
to have slept at the table in the tavern. He remembered carrying home patrons in his condition, but probably no one wanted to try to carry him and he had no home to which to be taken. He held on to the side of the table as he pulled himself to his feet, feeling to see if there were legs under him as he headed toward the door.
"You're not going to believe what this guy just told me. Xena, the Warrior Princess, is dead!" He heard one of the servers exclaim.
That was what Hercules thought he had heard earlier, before the talk about Princess Kirin distracted him. There was an open seat at the end of a bench at the center table. He found himself sitting down with the men whose conversations he had been trying to follow all night.
"What do you want, old man?" One of the men asked in a none-too-friendly tone.
"What did you say about Xena?"
"She's dead. She died in a far land. I heard it from a sailor who said that little blond wench who traveled with her was on his ship."
"Gabrielle?" Hercules asked.
"Yea, that's her."
"I thought she was in Rome." Another of the group asked.
Hercules had heard those stories, what was it, five years ago. He had dismissed those, too, because they told of a Xena who had not changed in 25 years. He knew that he had changed, and he was the son of Zeus. As far as he knew Xena had no immortal genes, unless of course some of Ares's rants had been correct. He guessed it wouldn't matter now, that she was dead.
"I knew her," Hercules muttered.
"Sure you did, old man." A call went out for another mug of ale for Hercules to drink.
Challenged by the accusation, he drew upon his memories and told a couple of stories about his adventures with Xena. His mind was still sharp enough to relate stories that could be convincing even after three or four mugs of ale. Of course the listeners may have had drunk that much, or more, so the stories probably didn't have to be that convincing.
"Maybe you did know her, old man." Another man commented. "Too bad you didn't age as slowly as they said she did."
"If you were really her friend, I am sorry for your loss." The tall man at the end of the table muttered, looking for his mug that his friends had taken from him earlier. Hercules couldn't see his face; it was hidden by his long hair.
"Why don't you go up to the room, Alceaus? You're too drunk to have a good time tonight."
"I was heading to the outhouse and then to my room. Care to join me?" Hercules said.
"Yea, they can lean against each other and hold each other up."
Hercules got up a little more gingerly, but once up, found himself able to move with ease. Perhaps the ale had dulled the pain in his right knee, it happened that way sometimes. He extended his hand to the man at the end of the table and pulled him to his feet. He was surprised that standing the man equaled him in height.
"You OK, son?" He asked.
Alceaus brushed his hair out of his face. Hercules stared at him with a questioning look.
"Did I hear you say that your mother was Queen Kirin?"
The man nodded his head.
"And your father is?"
"You heard them. You heard me. You seem to like to listen to other people's conversations. I don't know who my father was. He was some stranger that my grandmother tried to pass off as Kirin's husband. Must have been damn convincing, because my mother wasn't stupid. She wasn't a slut, either. But I don't know who my father was."
"I think it was me."
As noisy as the bar was, the air was now filled with silence. Hercules reached up and gathered back the man's hair to more clearly see the face before him, he traced the features with a finger of his right hand. He'd seen that face, in royal mirrors, in polished shields of his enemies, in still ponds, and in the dark centers of the eyes of lovers. He'd seen that face the night, a night when much like tonight he didn't know exactly where or who he was, that he had taken a Princess in his arms and made love to her, knowing that it had to be right.
"What? Who are you?"
"My name is Hercules."
* * * * * *
It had been close to thirty years since that night when Xena's baby had been born. The night Hercules had fashioned a dagger out of the bones of his grandfather, Chronos, and used that dagger to kill his father Zeus. >From that day forward, he was a man without a father, a man without a son, and a man alone in the universe. Now in a split second it had changed. He had a
son. His son had not been killed by the gods, because they, like he, had never known of his existence. Now the gods were dead, but he, Hercules, and his son were alive.
He wanted to hug him, he wanted to kiss him, but right now the most fatherly thing he could do for his son, now a grown man, was to help him maintain his stability to travel from the tavern to the outhouse and then to his room in the inn. For most it would not be a difficult journey, but considering how much both of them had had to drink, for them it was going to be legendary.
McJude
September 2002