Welcome to AresJoxerCupidStrife

Title: Ares
Author: Shamenka
Pairing: C and S (still not together)
Rating: 15+ maybe nc-17 for language?
Warning: Deals with the fall out over the death of a premature child.
Archive: The lists and me - anyone else just ask.
Feedback: Most welcome.

Summary: Truth has the tendency to hurt - rather a lot!

Ares
by Shamenka

As soon as his tears ended Strife had pushed himself free from his
confinement in Cupid's arms and turned away from him. With nothing else
worthwhile in his life, Cupid was compelled to follow his soul's mate, so
very desperate to touch him once more.

"Stree?" He called out the pet name he's used so very many times in their
life together, especially while they were making love. Stree-iiife was how he
had dragged his beloved's name out in passion. Stree was his name for him,
and his alone. It was a name he hadn't given voice in four long years.

"Don't." Strife paused in his journey, briefly, to whisper that one word
command. Then he walked on, a little faster than before. Not even bothering
to glance at his unwelcome companion.

"Don't what?" Cupid asked, running slightly to catch up, having let his step
falter when Strife spoke to him.

"Don't use a dead man's name for mine." Strife still didn't turn around to
face his former mate.

"But you're not dead. You're here, very much alive and it's your name!" Cupid
could hear the whine in his own voice and winced at it.

"Stree was a name that belonged to some poor sap of a man a long, long time
ago. And then that man got lucky, he died. I was there, I remember it clear
as day. That man died and there was nothing anyone could do for him. He is
dead, so is his name. Let him rest in peace." Strife stopped walking again as
he delivered his explanation to Cupid, he still didn't look at him however.

"It is your name! You are not dead. Uncle Hades brought you back almost as
soon as you died. He told me so himself!" Cupid finally caught up enough to
walk side by side with Strife. He looked at his mate's face as he spoke,
stealing quick glances at that beloved profile. And at the rage it wore like
armour. "What is wrong with me using your name? Hmm?" His voice was soft and
teasing, gently trying to raise a smile from his love's delicious mouth.

"My name is Strife. S-t-r-i-f-e. It's short and easy to remember, Strife! Try
saying it to yourself. Somewhere else." Strife finally flicked a hate filled
glance at Cupid. It didn't seem to have the desired affect and that clearly
annoyed the younger God.

"When we were together, where we belonged, your name was always Stree. And,
hey, look, we're together!" Cupid grinned at his mate and didn't let the
smile fade even when he felt his heart beat cold. Strife was the perfect
image of fury.

"We are not and never will be together. You have no right or call to call me
by anything other than my given name. If you have something to say to me, say
it and leave. I don't need you in my life, I don't want you in my life. If I
want unimaginable pain and torment I'll go piss off Uncle Hercules and let
him pound me six ways from tomorrow! It'd be a lot less painful than this
shit you're putting on me now!" Strife grabbed a hold of the cross-strap that
secured Cupid's quiver to his side and shook the Love God with vigour.

Cupid hadn't realised where they had reached until Strife released him and
he spun towards the front door of a single floored dwelling house. It was
Strife's Elysian home. Where his father had no doubt brought their daughter.

"I love you." Cupid said. Facing Strife, meeting his eyes and wishing he
could see the love that had always shone in them. "I need you, I want you, I
have to be a part of your life, to have you as part of mine!" Of all the
reactions he expected Strife to have, laughing at him was not on the list.

Strife pushed open the front door and walked in to his home, still laughing.

"You sound amused?" Ares sat beside a crib, rocking it gently. Inside lay
Serenity, her half alive soul soundly asleep. Her form every inch as she had
been the moment she had died. Enough power had been pushed through her
fragile body to mature her to ten, maybe eleven months old before she had
lost the battle and died in Strife and Ares' arms. It was little wonder
theWar God was so close to that sleeping child and her so grievously betrayed
father. Ares looked up at Strife and watched the mirth and pain dancing in
his eyes. Even though he was in deep emotional pain he looked the closest to
alive at that very moment that he had in more than four years.

"You know me Unc, someone says something fuck off stupid and I will laugh
every time!" Strife tip toed over to his daughter's crib and watched her
sleep. "Did she give you any trouble?" He smiled at his favourite uncle, this
time it was a genuine, happy to see him smile.

"None what so ever. So, who said what stupid remark that set you off? Come,
tell me, it's good to hear you laughing like that." Ares smiled, an old
familiar teasing smile that Cupid recognised from the time before. Before
Psyche, before he had hurt Strife. Before Strife had died. In truth it was a
smile he never thought to see again.

"Him!" Strife indicated Cupid with a casual flick of a thumb over his
shoulder. "He said he loves me and expected me to buy that shit as true!"
Strife laughed again, slightly more hysterically this time.

Cupid watched as his father gently made Strife lie down on the couch beside
Serenity's crib and touched his mate's eyes.

"You look exhausted, little one, sleep!" And he pushed the younger God into
the same sound sleep his daughter enjoyed by his side. Once assured that
Strife was not about to wake up he grabbed his son's arm, dragging him
through the house and into the atrium. "Shut up!" He snarled, warning the
Love God to hold his tongue as they walked through Strife's home.

Once in the atrium, all gentleness was gone from Ares' body language. It was
so clear to Cupid that his father didn't like him, if not actually hated him.
Yet another relationship Psyche had cost him.

"You have one fuck of a nerve! Coming down here, pestering someone you hurt
in the most appalling way possible. Who the fuck do you think you are? You
expect him to just fall over into your arms with a sigh and a swoon? Huh? You
weren't there when he needed you most. You were off fucking your brand new
love. You effectively killed Serenity when you didn't even bother to turn up.
And believe me, when you killed her, you killed his heart too. It just took a
lot longer for his body to catch up!" Ares' face was a deep unpleasant red
colour. Cupid had never seen his father so angry, ever!

"Look, I didn't know he was pregnant. I didn't know he was ill. No one, and
let me make this totally clear to you.. Father! That no one came to me, no
one mentioned it to me. Not you, not Apollo, not Discord. No one. If one of
you had I'd have been there, done all I could to save our daughter and begged
his forgiveness before the entire world if need be. The first I knew that he
had lost our baby, not his and your baby, but ours, mine and his, was about
two weeks ago. Not one of you thought I had any right to know about Serenity,
did you? Not one of you amended that fucking stupid scroll I sent out, all
you did was ignore me, us. You've never even spent five minutes with Bliss,
but you're down here with my Strife, my Mate and my daughter. Shit, but it
was an accident, my falling in love with Psyche. And an accident that my
mother and Hercules compounded by his insisting that she and I wed. Even
mother didn't bother to point out that I was already married. She went right
along with Herc willy nilly. And he did it just to get her off his back no
less. So, then I returned to Olympus, love struck by my own arrow and still
no one thought to mention Strife to me at all! He wasn't even in our home,
for fuck's sake!" Cupid was as angry as his father, every inch the son of War.

"And you thought we were going to leave him there? So you could do what?
Throw him out personally or force him to watch you fuck Psyche in the bed
you'd shared with him the previous night? Which was it going to be? When the
fuck did you remember you were already married, huh? And why the fuck should
we have to remind you that you were already married?" Ares shook Cupid in an
exact copy of Strife's earlier action.

"I felt him die!" Cupid screamed at his father. "I felt him die when you let
Callisto kill him."

"That was two years after you brought that bitch to Olympus! Congratulations
Cupid, you felt him die! He felt your fucking delight every fucking time you
screwed that cancerous cunt! Every damn time you came, he knew what he had
lost and he died a little more. And it was me that had to hold him while his
heart broke over and over again. It was me that had to hold him when that
fucking scroll was delivered. It was me that had to bury his dead child, and
then his dead body! Where were you? By the time Callisto stabbed him there
really wasn't much left over for her to kill. You'd more than effectively
seen to that. And for the record, just how often did you screw the bitch?
Huh? Would your tally match up with mine? And you think that telling him that
you now love him again, seeing as your bitch has fucked off with his mother
no less, should have him forgiving and forgetting? I think not, sunshine."
Ares gave Cupid one final shake before he stormed off across the sun touched
grass square on which Strife liked to play with Serenity. Getting as far away
from Cupid as he could physically manage in that confined atrium.

"How could he feel me, us? I never felt him when he was with other lovers."
Cupid found himself following his father as he had followed strife earlier.

"Every act of adultery is an act of calculated mischief. And who, pray tell,
is the God of Mischief, hmm? And what others did he lie with? Name one, I
dare you!" Ares could concentrate sarcasm into a substance more deadly than
the most powerful of acids.

"Every act? But Psyche and I were married. Zeus ratified it, gave her Godhood
and everything. Surely it couldn't have been adultery if he'd ratified it?"
Cupid was grasping at straws and he knew it. He was desperate to assuage the
guilt he felt threatening to drown him.

"And your previous marriage to Strife was conducted and blessed by Hera!
Goddess of, amongst other things, Marriages. Which Zeus is not. He's every
bit as guilty an adulterer as you are." Ares turned to see his words strike
home. He had to make sure Cupid got the message, and that message was that he
wasn't wanted there, in Strife's life or in Serenity's death.

"But he has to know that Psyche and I have not been together like that for a
long time. Not since I realised that it was Strife I truly loved and that he
was dead. He has to know, if he felt every time I orgasmed in her, surely he
felt every time I didn't?" The very idea of his Strife having to experience
his mate's adulterous orgasms left Cupid feeling like he wanted to hurl. He
could imagine how Strife must have felt all those years. And he couldn't even
imagine how he was going to begin to show his Mate how sorry he truly was.

"Why the fuck should he? He was dead and then he was alive again. All his
previous ties died with him and he was finally free again. As free as anyone
could ever want to be. Free of you, free of your second hand orgasms and your
tawdry little affair with 'the bitch'! Why should he let you hurt him again?
Why should I let you hurt him? You don't deserve him, forgiveness or
anything!" Ares met his son's eyes and held them. He remained outwith
touching distance, almost as if he thought touching his son would contaminate
him in some way. "Go away. Leave him alone. He's finally building a life for
himself down here and he sure as shit stinks doesn't need you in his life, or
his bed." Ares smiled at Cupid, a smile that many soldiers had known spelled
their doom. "Last, but by no means least of all - he does not need any part
of you in his body. Why should he settle for soiled goods? Settle for someone
whom he simply couldn't ever trust ever again? Don't you think he deserves
some happiness in his life? Maybe he might fall in love all over again, maybe
he'll even get married again? Father some more children? He makes such
beautiful children, don't you think? And if he finds someone to love that
will be there for him when he needs them, then I'll be right beside him
cheering them on all the way."

"No!" Cupid tried desperately hard to shout his denial at his father, but
could only manage a faint whisper as he clutched his gut, while it twisted in
agony at the very idea of Strife with someone else. It was an idea he hadn't
even contemplated, that his Mate could lie with others, as he had.

"No?" Ares mocked his own son mercilessly. "What? You don't think he makes
beautiful children? Or no you don't think he should be allowed any happiness?"

"He can't... he can't be with someone else. He is my Mate, my Soul's only
Mate!"

"And when you have lived with that knowledge for four years, maybe then
you'll begin to understand. Maybe then you'll be worthy of him. But I doubt
it, son, I very much doubt you'll ever be worthy of him ever again. If you
ever were."