For all his grandstanding in the letters he'd sent out that morning, for all that he'd written about being ready for whatever happened next, Lou had never expected this. He'd told Xena he might never see her again, but he hadn't expected to die so soon. He might have told her that he was ready, but he wasn't. He didn't want to die.

The matter was, at the moment, rather out of his hands.

He was vaguely aware of motion (and pain, more pain) and then something was in his mouth. Liquid. Lou gagged but couldn't bring himself to cough again with the pain in his throat, and after one startled, panicked moment he swallowed as much of the foreign substance as his mangled throat would allow.