Gabrielle was up later than Xena, again. She simply could not sleep, and she was not sure as to why. She had a slight pain in her shoulder from a minor scuffle earlier in the day. One of the thugs they had fought had managed to scratch her with his blade, but it was minor and already taken care of. No, that was not why she couldn’t sleep.

She decided that it would be better to give up on trying to find the reason, and rather simply try to slumber, but as minds are want to do, hers began to wander. She thought about all of her adventures that had happened to them, all of the pain, as well as joy that they had gone through, and all of the changes that had happened to them. She held her hands up to trace patterns in the sky, a habit she had had since she was a young girl, and noticed them for the first time in a while. They were rough, calloused and the back of her left hand had a fading bruise on it. Her hands were no longer those of a naïve girl. No, they were the hands of a person who had experienced much, even if the rest of her didn’t seem to fit the bill. Gabrielle smiled a little, all of her experiences, she would not trade them for the world. Never. After all, if she traded them, then she would be trading Xena away as well. Now a frown graced Gabrielle’s normally cheerful face, as she thought about her friend, and her hands.

Xena’s hands were very rough through years of holding weapons and running around the world. Those hands had killed more people than Gabrielle could count, had shed more blood than could be held in a small lake, and yet, there was something infinitely gentle and expressive about those hands. It became easy to tell the tall warrior’s mood just by watching her hands. When they were moving slowly, Xena was happy and at ease, but when threatened, her hands were like lightning in her quest to defend herself, and her companion.

It was increasingly amazing, Gabrielle thought, about what Xena was able to do with her hands. She could probably lift a horse if she had to, and could certainly take care of several men at a time. But in the time Gabrielle had known her friend, she had seen those hands do so much more than that. Xena’s hands had brought her back from the dead, had healed her wounds, had embraced her as family, had soothed her aching muscles through massage.

Those hands, like their owner, had many skills. The bard smiled faintly as she thought about all that those hands had done for her. And the smile widened as one strong hand came to rest on her stomach and a low voice whispered in her ear, “Will you go to sleep already?”

“Sure Xena. Goodnight.”

“’Night.” Xena muttered, and placed a soft kiss on top of her friend’s head before pulling the blonde girl in closer and falling back into the land of dreams. Gabrielle followed a moment later, but not before intertwining her fingers with those of her friend’s.