2.

Disclaimer: All characters and general concepts are property of Renaissance Pictures and StudiosUSA. No copyright infringement intended. Yeah.

Xena spat out an unladylike curse when she stumbled, kicking up a spray of swamp water, and Ares' hand shot out to grab her arm.

"I thought you knew the way," he said peevishly.

"This is the way."

"This is a filthy swamp. My boots are caked with enough mud that I'm going to take this entire godsforsaken dump with me when I get out."

"The roads are swarming with guards after your little demonstration back there."

Ares glowered. At least she'd lost the frightened doe look after they'd gotten into enough nasty arguments. "They were attacking us, and you—"

"What's your name?" Xena interrupted.

There was a long silence.

"Ares," he said, and his voice sounded strange even to his ears.

She gave him an odd look as they continued slogging through the swamp. "Like the heathen god?"

If he laughed now, it'd probably come out too hysterical. His hand had slipped down her arm at some point, and her cold fingers were clenched in his hand. He pulled his hand away as if burned when he noticed this. Almost immediately, her hand latched onto his wrist.

"If I'm going to fall," she said grimly, "I'm taking you with me."

"I hardly think that's appropriate, given your marital status," Ares said. He winced. That didn't sound as nonchalant as intended.

"What, are you jealous?"

He was not going to answer that. "Like the god, yes. I am the god. It's a long story. Don't ask."

"You're the god of war." The scepticism in her voice could have drowned a battalion.

"I don't need you to believe me."

They walked on, struggling against the occasional hidden root under the deceptively flat surface of the mud. The only sound was the harsh pants of their breathing.

"This Xena," she said suddenly, "she's your... warrior? Assuming you're a god."

He scowled. "I think I liked you better when you were meek and respectful."

"I doubt it."

"How do you know what I liked?"

"No," she continued. "That she was your warrior, I mean. What you said before, about blood and being alive, that sounded moronic. Xena would have told you to piss off, if she was anything like me."

"Harsh as ever, I see."

"And you would have let her, given the way you're treating me."

Ares carefully kept his face blank, concentrating on reaching the sloping bank he could see through the mist. A yawning sensation appeared in his stomach, as if there was a pit behind him that he couldn't see, but any misstep would drop him into it. She'd never talked like this before. This Xena was too open and too willing to look at him, and it was—

"I am grateful, you know," she said quietly. "I wouldn't have been able to leave."

He hauled himself onto the ledge after testing its sturdiness, and only then did he look at her. Her clothes were splattered with mud, her hair was a tangled mass that sent long tendrils clinging to her chapped lips, but gods... "Xena," he said, and reached out a hand to help her up.

She smiled slowly, painfully guilelessly. "Yeah, I guess that's my name." Taking his hand, she climbed out of the swamp, bumping into him and sending the two of them staggering. She laughed a bit breathlessly and said "Thank you, Ares."

Xena shifted uncomfortably and scratched at her neck again.

"Stop that," Ares snapped. "You'll break the skin."

"But it's so itchy!"

"You would have been recognized immediately in those white robes."

"I know that. I haven't complained about that. I'm just obviously not the sole occupant of this garment at this time."

"Spoiled brat," Ares said half-heartedly. She was acting like that time, when she'd been revived with only half her memories and a snapped chakram. He remembered something with Gabrielle realizing that Xena needed both her "light" and her "dark" sides—what idiotic names—to be whole. He didn't give a damn about the wholeness of her spiritual being or whatever the blonde would call it. This was just weird. Like that. Her sparkling, inquisitive eyes in his face like a teenager's who has just left home for the first time.

"You're a million miles away," she said conversationally.

"What happened to the identity crisis angst?" he said sourly.

She flinched. "Asshole," she muttered, settling back into her seat and staring out at the scenery from the back of the hay wagon from which they'd snagged a ride.

A few minutes later she asked, "Where are we going anyway?" This Xena forgave far too easily.

"To get something important," he said.

"A weapon?" Perceptive as ever, though.

"Yeah."

She seemed satisfied with that, leaning back her head, which was covered with a dirty woollen cap, so that the dying light of the sun washed over her face. "This is nice. The castle never got any sunlight."

"Hmm," Ares replied absently.

"Do you talk so little because you're afraid of what you'll say?" she said, exasperated.

He looked at her with a frown. "Do you talk so much because you were afraid to when you were in the castle?"

She laughed, sharp and brittle. "I'm not that deep."

"Halt!" A new voice barked.

The wagon driver complied, turning the cart until it stopped so that his passengers were in full view of the gate guards.

"This is the town," Ares said just loudly enough for Xena to hear. "Superstitious, gullible—"

"What are you muttering about?" a guard said loudly. He turned to the driver without waiting for a reply. "You have uncleared passengers, old man."

There was a tremble in the man's voice when he said "They are just travellers passing through."

"They must be tested by the Hand of the Gods, stupid peasant!"

Ares' hand shot out to stop the pike descending on the old man's shoulder. "We'll go."

The guard withdrew his weapon reluctantly and passed a suspicious look over the two as he stepped back. "Take them," he nodded to his subordinates.

There was a brief altercation when a guard tugged too hard on Xena's arm to pull her from the wagon, and Ares shoved the man's hands away to clutch her protectively to his side. The rest of the guards surged forward at the display, but the first guard waved a hand dismissively and said, "They're coming willingly enough. Don't touch the wife."

As they passed through the town gates, Ares heard Xena snicker beside him.

"Hero," she said quietly as if it were an accusation.

"Chit," he muttered back.

As prisons went, this one wasn't half bad. The straw was decently clean, there was a bucket in the corner, and the rats were fairly unobtrusive.

Ares stifled a snicker as he looked at Xena, who was asleep, perched on a plain wooden bench with her legs folded around her and a stick leaning against her shoulder. She might not remember being a warrior, but...

Speaking of swords, Ares glowered at the guard in the corner, who was drooling all over Ares' sword after he'd confiscated it. The man was slumped over the table with his head pressed against the weapon, shifting occasionally as he slept with the edges of the scabbard digging into his cheek. Incompetent fool. A kid who fell asleep that easily while on guard duty should be whipped and sent home to his mother.

There was a sharp "hah!" of breath and a thud from Xena's corner, and Ares shot into a defensive stance.

"What?"

He watched Xena pull herself up and right the bench. "Ahh," she said with a grimace, "bad dream."

"A nightmare?" Ares peered at her curiously while she fussed with her heavy skirt. "About what?"

She shrugged. "Don't worry about it."

She was embarrassed, he realized. She wouldn't look at him. He reached out to touch her shoulder, but her hand caught his wrist. He pulled away gently before he saw that her hand was shaking.

"Hrothgar?" he said coldly.

"I said drop it!"

"What did he do to you?" he pressed.

The name she called him was quite creative.

He started laughing after a moment, something bitter coating the back of his tongue. "I'm pretty callous, you know. I've never been good at this empathy thing, but," he paused, searching for words, "I care about you, right?"

In the silence, Xena tilted her head back into the streak of moonlight drifting through the thin slit of a window until the heavy black shadows of her lashes looked like macabre clown paint on her cheeks. "Hey," she said.

"Yeah?"

"Where was I born?"

She asked about her home, her family, and then she asked about him.

Ares awoke to the glow of false dawn and found himself leaning against a stone wall with Xena's head propped against his arm. They'd fallen asleep talking about the Twilight, as far as he could remember, and she'd expressed great scepticism concerning her role in the whole matter. He felt a twinge of guilt for not mentioning his attempted betrayal of the Olympians, but gods, what was he supposed to say? "I love you, so I tried to blackmail you"?

Her guard had slipped while he talked, and he'd seen the ugly black bruise crawling over her shoulder. He didn't mention it, and she didn't ask anything awkward.

The cold seeping from the stone penetrated his back like icy water, and he shivered violently.

"Ow," Xena said, sitting up and holding her head. "Don't jerk around like that. I hit my head."

"I'm so sorry for being cold," Ares said dryly.

Xena gave him a solid shove as she stood up. "Don't breathe into my face."

She easily dodged the half-hearted swipe that Ares took at her head, and was in the process of bringing her knee into his gut when there was a loud clanging from the bars.

"Hey! No fighting!" A guard slammed his spear against the bars a few more times. "The Priests of the Hand will see you now."

The man who had been fumbling with the keys pulled open the door to the cell, and a couple of guards clanked in to attach chains to their hands.

They followed calmly to the heavy rusted door and into the orange glow of dawn that illuminated the strangely busy town square. Ares squinted into the light as they were directed to stand in line with several other prisoners.

"Hmm," he said when Xena nudged him.

"A lot of the townspeople have their hands wrapped in bandages," she said softly.

"Yeah, because of that," he nodded at the scaffolding occupying the centre of the square, a black silhouette against the bright sky.

They watched the prisoner before them get shuffled into a kneeling position at the base of the scaffold, with the chains around his hands wrapped around a heavily chipped tree stump placed on the ground.

One of the priests stepped forward, raised his hands, and began to speak.

After the fourth "glory" and the second "chosen," Ares could feel his eyes glazing over.

"What is he talking about?"

He nodded at the top of the strange structure. "See that? It's a sharp blade, what they're calling the Hand of God. When that windbag is done talking, they're going to cut it free so that it falls onto the stump down there. The idea is that if the idiot who let himself get chained up there is chosen by the 'Hand of God,' it'll come down onto his hands blade first and cut him. If he isn't, the flat'll hit him, and he'll be branded and banished. He'll probably die in the swamp since none of the cart drivers near here will pick up anyone with the brand or give him food."

"That's ridiculous! The chances of the blade flipping and not slicing into a hand from that height are enormous. What if there's a wind?"

"Then he wasn't chosen by their god," Ares said. "Don't look at me like that. It's not like I believe in this shit either."

"How do you know this, anyway? At the castle, we've never gotten anything but peaceful reports from this village."

"I spent a lot of time looking into the village."

"Why?"

"Because that is what we're here for."

Xena scowled at him. "Getting tested by this Hand thing?"

"No. Look at it."

Xena looked up just as the chakram spun around so that it was outlined against the sky.

"We're here to take it."

There was a snap as it dropped down toward the trembling man with a thin whine. The flat glanced off of his fist with an audible slap, and the man screamed.

"Dad!" a voice from the crowd yelled, and a boy surged forward into the line of the guards. He reached out his hand that was missing two fingers, trying to shove past the guard who had caught him on the staff of his spear.

Behind him, a priest made a motion with his hands, and the prisoner was pulled from the stump and dragged toward the prison while the boy was pulled away by his mother.

There was another gesture from the priest, and a guard standing near the line of prisoners reached out to tug on Ares' chains.

He turned back with a smirk on his face. "Showtime," he said.

"What are you going to do?" Xena hissed, but he was already walking away.

The clanging of the chains against the ground while they were being wrapped around the stump seemed to echo against the walls of the buildings surround the square. The chakram was pulled back into place carefully and fastened with some glittering thin twine. The guards stepped back hurriedly, and the priests watched the chakram intently.

They were waiting for it to stop swinging, Ares realized. Some of the guards were giving him strange looks as he stared upwards just as intently. They were probably used to the prisoners cowering and snivelling in fear.

A puff of wind buffeted the chakram, and it swung in a lazy arc, reflecting a flash of sunlight into Ares' eyes. He squinted without turning his eyes away. He must have missed the priests' signal because there was that snap again, and it was accelerating down toward him. There was another flash as it tilted, tumbling as it fell.

There!

Ares surged up, twisting his hands. There was a scrape of metal as the blade sheared through the chains like so much butter and a dull thwock as it bit into the tree stump. The pieces of chain jangled, slipping off his hands and littering the ground, and he reached down to tug the chakram free. Glancing around the square with rapid calculations shooting through his mind, he pulled back his arm and let it fly.

It bounced off of a shield, skipped across the chains of the rest of the prisoners with a trail of sparks, ricocheted off a torch, another shield, headed straight for Xena, and shit she had her eyes closed!

Ares lurched toward her, reaching as far as he could. If he could just deflect it a tiny bit off course—

It stopped suddenly.

A drop of blood rolled down the edge and splattered against the ground, and Xena lowered her hand, her eyes opening to look at the chakram her fingers were clenched around.

The pounding in Ares' ears lessened, and he could hear the screams and smacks of metal on flesh.

"The villagers are attacking the guards," Xena said, looking around.

Ares shook his head and grabbed her uninjured hand. "They'll be fine," he said. He pulled her along behind him as he ran.