Watching this ep, a lot of disjointed thoughts kept rattling around in my head (not in itself unusual), but somehow they seemed connected. One was how Xena keeps bumping into herself, not just others' views of her, but her own view of herself when we first met her (in her own series, that is) vs. her view of herself as it has changed during the last few years. The second thought dealt with how this season has so intertwined scenes from the past with forecasts of the future, particularly in terms of what "destiny" really means in all this. The third has to do with key people who have disputed X's purported destiny. If I were Xena looking at all this, I might feel I was damned if I did a particular thing and damned if I didn't. But I might also see that part of my problem could be that I've been trying to do it alone.

We certainly see what X meant when she told Najara in The Crusader what could happen when her "focus is a little off" because of too much concern about Gabrielle's welfare. She's finally told G about the crucifixion vision, but I'm with those who think X neglected to mention why she was not exactly in a position to help the bard this time. Regardless, G will have none of X's angst about milk that hasn't been spilt yet. In essence, the bard becomes the warrior - shifting the focus to the present, to developing strategies for the battles they face in the here and now. G refuses to allow either of them to be crippled by X's overprotection mode. She questions the warrior's decisions when they seem geared more for G's security than that of people they're supposed to aid. G empathizes with X's anguish, but she is most concerned with what X has so often said one needs in dangerous situations - "focus." And X's focus seems everywhere but where she is.

X's dilemma, of course, is that their current problem seems tied to both the past and the future. A bump on the head sends X's memories careening back to Corinth, where she lost Borias, birthed and gave up Solan, and apparently mentored someone with methods suspiciously like her own. "I had everyone trapped - like us," she says of that past siege and the present one. Most chilling is her flashback to a betrayed truce with the centaurs. She orders captured Corinthian soldiers killed and dumped into a river where they will float back to their living comrades, like the Horde victims she and G rowed through in The Price. In a fit of rage, she threatens to line up all their enemies on crosses, like Caesar did in Destiny. The word "crucify" reverberates in her head, bringing her back to the present. "I understand what's going on now," she tells G. "This battle is a reflection of one I almost won years ago." Whoever is leading it "knows me. It's like he * is * me. How do I defeat myself?"

I didn't truly understand the import of that question -- "How do I defeat myself?" - until this ep. For one thing, I finally came to appreciate just what she sees when she looks at herself. Heads on sticks and impaled Amazons ain't pretty, but somehow they seemed more removed from present day X. Those floating bodies, those crosses in PI represented more vividly to me what she still most despises and fears in herself. Knowing how to defeat the Horde or Caesar is both her strength and her curse. How does she defeat that in others without recalling everything about herself that she wishes had never been? How does she defeat images of what she could have been, when they held such promise and now haunt her visions of tragic future events? In Remember Nothing, she accepted that there might not have been the Gabrielle she knows now had she not become a warlord. This time she looks up from past atrocities, sees the mountain from her vision and believes there's a direct link to what she set in motion earlier by valuing ruthless power over Borias and her unborn child, and by spawning another monster like Callisto and Ming Tien.

G tells her distracted partner, "As long as you're concentrating on me, you can't think about the problem." X responds, "I * am * thinking about the problem. He thinks and fights like me, and he's winning, just like I should have long ago." "But you didn't," G reminds her. "Because I withdrew my army. But that's not going to happen here. If I had won back then, if he wins now, then my vision of your death may come true." (She neglects considering what might have happened to the Centaurs, to her son or to G had her army * not * retreated.) G is still not swayed. She can't afford to be - anymore than X could have been in OAAA if G had told X that in her vision a Persian soldier killed X. G coldly, practically states that if X's vision is wrong, then "we'll go on," and if it's right, they'll die where they are. So, in a way, maybe both are focusing on what they need to for them to survive this moment.

What's troublesome is that Xena still seems not to fully appreciate the role her partners can play in her destiny. She gives credit to a lot of baddies - Cortese, Alti, Caesar among them, but has trouble listening to the good influences. Borias said of her obsession with the Exion stone, "You waste your men on a search for nothing." He ridicules Alti's prophecies and tries in vain to get X to choose his love and their child over her promised "destiny" as Destroyer of Nations. This time when she looks back on giving her son up, we see a different perception than we did of the more stoic woman in Orphan of War who barters her son away ("I'm willing to withdraw my army. Take this child.") It could be because she didn't allow herself before to see the vulnerable, mixed up girl she was back then, who could mourn the death of this man she spurned and tearfully beg her enemy to keep her son safe. It could be that, in hindsight, she was embuing that past self with her current regret for not accepting the opportunity Borias gave her to choose a path of love and morality. Either way, that past Xena has become different, thanks to the "new" Xena's belated regard for Borias.

When Satrina thinks she has X cornered in the tunnel, she says, "You're outnumbered You can't stop me." X says, "Not if my army takes you first." And who's leading the charge of X's army? Gabrielle. Like Borias, Gabrielle challenges the notion that Alti or anyone else can predict X's future. "Funny thing about destiny. You can't ignore it, can't rely on it." She questions whether the vision is actually a prophecy. "Maybe it's a warning, a sign or a guide. The truth is, we don't know." But can X let go - of the vision, of the past, of her instinct to "protect" G, even when -- as she did in the tunnel rather than pursue the fleeing Satrina - her actions may result in the walls tumbling down on them? Will she still resist the urge to leave G, for fear that, like Solan, she will become a pawn for X's enemies, see things she shouldn't and become like X? "How can I defeat myself?" Maybe it will depend on which self she's talking about and whether she is finally learning (with Gabrielle's firm reinforcement) that the battle for herself is not hers alone.