Hi readers! This one took a little longer than usual, despite its relative shortness - apologies. To compensate for that, absolute favorite Hermes is here ;) And thus concludes the first part of this story, I suppose, with a shattering revelation...

Thanks T, again, for the beta read!

- ares -

"So she's met Aphrodite, then? How did that go?"

I was in Hermes's Olympus palace, polishing a dagger while he checked the latest cryptocurrency trends. I didn't particularly see the appeal of investing, but Hermes enjoyed it and had made a fortune off of it. His glance flitted between his various computer screens. It had taken a while, but Hermes had eventually persuaded Zeus to allow the internet on Olympus; he had claimed he couldn't do his various jobs — communication and trading to name a few — if he was cut off from the human world in his own home.

"I thought it went well," I said, and held the dagger up in the light to check for overlooked blemishes. "Aphrodite didn't seem to want to murder her on the spot."

Hermes spun in his desk chair to face me. "I can't believe you took that risk."

"Yeah, in hindsight I can't either, but I wasn't in the right state of mind to think it through." I put the dagger down and reached for my glass of nectar.

"Are you ever?" he laughed.

"Touché," I said with a grin. "But I'm glad it happened. They were going to meet eventually."

"I suppose," Hermes nodded. "What did Aphrodite say about her?"

I finished my nectar and got up to refill our glasses, not bothering to summon one of Hermes's servants. "Nothing much. She didn't recognize her, I think."

Still a little vexed by my enduring refusal to be waited on, Hermes watched me pick up the amphora and pour the nectar. "I mean in general. She hasn't exactly stayed out of your business when it comes to women," he said. He was right, of course. Aphrodite could handle me having meaningless sex, but she always swooped in, sooner or later, when she heard through the grapevine that I'd caught feelings.

"No, seriously," I said, and handed him his glass before sitting down. "She didn't really say anything. She barely acknowledged her."

Hermes frowned. "With Aphrodite, that might be worse." He leaned his elbows on his knees and sipped thoughtfully. "How do you know Emma is safe now?"

"My birds are watching over her." As they had been for months. It was how I'd known about Daniel Beck.

He nodded, satisfied with my answer, but appeared to be contemplating something for a little while. Eventually, he met my glance, scrutinizing me a second before asking, "How are you happy with her, Ares?" The question wasn't critical, or sarcastic, or even incredulous. He genuinely seemed to wonder.

"What do you mean?" I busied myself with the dagger again, rubbing the polishing rag across its spotless metal. I wasn't sure I liked where this was going.

"Don't get me wrong, I like Emma a lot," he said. "But you haven't really fought since that time I interrupted you, have you? And even that was tame."

I stubbornly kept my focus on my dirty, working hands. "Your point?"

"Where's the fire?" Hermes lifted his glass for a sip, but seemed to think better of it. "You need fire," he continued emphatically, "You'll get bored without fire."

With a wide grin I looked up now, releasing the rag. "Oh, there's fire."

Hermes threw a pen from his desk at my face; I snatched it from the air and tossed it back at him. It hit the space between his eyebrows and left a small blue mark. "You know perfectly well that's not what I meant," he said, rubbing his forehead with his index finger, but he smiled. "You're the most hotheaded god on this whole mountain. You and Emma are too... comfortable with each other these days. That can't satisfy you in the long run."

I flipped the dagger around my hand absentmindedly. I was used to the other Olympians misunderstanding me; I was too different from them after all. But sometimes they still thought that all I wanted was to wage war and provoke conflict — still stuck in how I'd been thousands of years ago — and it would've been nice, just nice, if they could see I'd become more than that, if they didn't ignore everything I'd learned in Rome. I knew that Hermes saw it, but even he couldn't help a backslide every once in a while into how he'd viewed me, rightfully, for the lion's share of my life.

"You don't get it, Hermes. I don't need that kind of fire. She's enough the way she is. She…" I frowned to myself, and took a moment to collect my thoughts. "She's not submissive," I said then. The corners of my mouth involuntarily tugged upwards a little. "She talks back to me. No mortal woman ever talks back to me."

I recalled the very first time Emma had challenged me. It was a single word, a single text message. Seriously?, she'd sent me. I'd stared at my phone for the better part of a minute, confusion making space for irritation and then for awe when I realized she had done what not a single woman had before her. It had been a turning point — I might've started falling for her then and there.

Hermes laughed, restoring levity to our conversation. "That's because you completely missed the rise of feminism. Women do that now," he grinned. "You should've seen Apollo in the seventies! He was insufferable about it. Said he'd just stick to men, if I remember correctly."

I did regret, a little, having hardly been in touch with Apollo between the 1940s and the turn of the twenty-first century. He must've had the time of his life with the rise of pop culture, wild fashion trends and the sexual revolution.

"Well, he gave up on that," I said with a chuckle. "Who's his latest? I haven't talked to him lately."

"Some nymph in Ecuador, I think. Or maybe it's…" Hermes snapped his fingers impatiently. "What's his name, that Bollywood actor."

"Anyone who'll have him, I suppose," I said sarcastically, and we laughed together, but the sound died as quickly as it had come. I spun the sharp tip of my dagger on the myrtlewood tabletop before speaking again. My voice was subdued and low, lower than I would've liked. "It's not just feminism, though, that makes Emma different."

Hermes raised an eyebrow, finished his nectar, and waited for me to continue.

"I scare people, Hermes," I said, my eyes trained on my fingers as I spun the hilt again and again and again. "You know that. Mortals don't confront me because they're terrified."

For decades, it hadn't bothered me in the slightest that I intimidated people, be it with my physical size, my cold attitude or the combative atmosphere I naturally spread unless inhibited. I hadn't cared enough about humans, about being around them, to lessen the effect — why waste all that energy? But then I'd met her, and after a while I'd started to care again. I'd started to make an effort to restrain it again.

"Elisabetta wasn't, once she got to know you," Hermes countered. "Virginia wasn't. Hell, even Claudine wasn't."

"Claudine was terrified, and then insane, and Elisabetta and Virginia knew me as Adriano and James." Elisabetta knew who I really was now, in death, of course; I'd told her the first time I came to visit her in Elysium. She'd taken it rather well — not that I'd expected any differently. The dead didn't feel strong emotions.

I looked up to meet Hermes' gaze. "Emma knows who I am and what I've done and she's still not afraid to speak her mind, to tell me off, to take the lead."

"But does she know who you are?" he said skeptically.

"She's seen me in full armor, bloodied, injured. She knows where I go, what I do," I said defiantly. "She's asked me candidly if I've killed people. I'm not hiding anything from her, not about that."

Our silence after those last three words held a palpable tension. We exchanged a meaningful look, but Hermes thankfully let it go. "I know she knows those things," he said. "I know you tell her. But she's never really seen it. She's never seen you drive your spear into a heart, or slit a throat, or shoot a soldier point-blank, or seen the smile on your face while you do it. It's all theoretical for her. How do you know you don't scare her if she hasn't seen the entirety of you?"

I let out a sardonic laugh. "What do you want me to do, bring her to my next battle so she can watch from the sidelines?"

Hermes wasn't disheartened by my cynicism. Of course he wasn't. Nicest guy on Olympus, after all. "You could share your memories with her." His voice was warm, compassionate.

"And share how I felt in the process? I'll skip it, thanks."

"That's what ticks you off about the idea?" He grinned. "That your girlfriend might know how you feel? That she might see how much you like the bloodshed?"

I rolled my eyes. "You wouldn't know, Hermes, the worst that could happen to you is someone getting weirdly passionate about diplomacy."

"Diplomacy is fascinating!" he said. His voice was scornful, but his eyes twinkled.

I sniggered briefly, though not cheerfully, at that, and used the moment of silence to drink my last bit of nectar. "It's not about me, Hermes, or her seeing that," I said then. Of course it was, a little. But I could live with that. "It's that I don't want her to feel my rage, my bloodlust, or the euphoria. She wouldn't understand what was happening to her."

Sharing memories might be easy for him, with that positivity that colored his experiences. Whoever saw his memories would see them the same way he did, with the same emotion that Hermes felt looking back. They would feel that emotion as if it were theirs. And that meant that for me, it was dangerous to share. I had happy memories, of course, but what was happy for me was often chilling for others — and most mortals wouldn't comprehend looking upon violent scenes from my past and liking it. Even though the sensation didn't last, they wouldn't understand the pure, delicious fury they'd felt. It wasn't like Hermes, really, to forget all of that and practically suggest I traumatize Emma. Maybe it was that ridiculous optimism of his.

"Yeah, that's fair." He nodded slowly. "But if you're right about her, she's bound to see you at some point."

"Well, at least it'll be her own experience, not some colored secondhand look." I said it casually, almost off-hand, but I knew when I looked Hermes in the eye that he was thinking the same thing as me. The subject had been broached. But we were quiet, the dagger had long fallen flat on the table, and neither of us had any nectar left in our glasses to pretend to distract ourselves with.

I knew Hermes wouldn't let it go this time. He wasn't one to avoid difficult conversations — I was actually surprised he hadn't brought it up before. But maybe he'd wanted me to initiate it, and got fed up with waiting. Impatience ran in the family, after all. Even Hades, whose life literally consisted of waiting for souls to come down to his realm, couldn't help but fall prey to it from time to time.

Neither of us looked away, not even when Hermes slowly set his glass down, leaned back in his chair and rested his right ankle on his left knee in a position that looked much more relaxed than I felt.

"We'll have to discuss it eventually, Ares," he said then, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

I leaned back, too, to rest my head on the back of the couch and stare up at the high marble ceiling. "I know."

"Why do you think—" he started, but I cut him off, sitting straight in a split second.

"I have no idea how it's possible, Hermes, honestly," I said. He knew that I knew exactly what he was talking about. Better get it over with.

"Aren't you curious?" he asked, an eyebrow rising.

"Of course I am. I've tried to find out, but there's nothing," I said defensively. "They're not related. I couldn't find a single shared ancestor."

"What about the underworld?" Hermes ventured.

"I asked Persephone ages ago. No one has left in centuries."

"Hmm. Odd," he said. "And Emma doesn't know about her? Or about Apollo's prophecy?"

I took a second or two before I answered, albeit reluctantly, "I haven't told her."

Should I tell her? How was I supposed to tell my mortal girlfriend of only a few months that she was very likely destined to become immortal and stay with me? That that had been prophesied almost three centuries ago? And that we'd all initially thought it had referred to someone else, someone whose death had determined the course of the Second World War, no, of the rest of the twentieth century?

I wasn't trying to avoid talking about Virginia with Emma, I told myself. If she asked about London, I would tell her — to a certain extent. But it had been a relief that she hadn't asked, and that I could leave her in blissful ignorance. There was no point in subjecting her to the pain of knowing part of it, let alone the whole truth of her connection to Virginia.

Hermes frowned. "That'll come back to bite you in the ass, one way or another."

"Probably," I said and faked a casual shrug despite knowing Hermes would see right through it. He knew not to push it, though.

"Speaking of asses," he said, his frown replaced with a sly smirk. "Even..?"

I side-eyed him, but couldn't stop a slight grin creeping onto my face. "Yes. Down to the smallest detail."

"Weird," he said, drawing out the word.

"Preaching to the choir, Hermes. It's weird as hell." That was a weak way to put it. It had been extremely strange to discover Emma's stunning body and yet know every inch of her already.

Hermes chuckled, but quickly went back to the subject at hand. "Apollo doesn't know either?"

"He says he doesn't," I said.

"But he's a liar," Hermes said conclusively.

"Yeah, but I don't think he's lying about this," I said. "He was very adamant about it."

"Apollo is adamant about everything," Hermes said, and that, I couldn't disagree with. "What about dad?"

I shook my head. "Haven't asked him. I'm not speaking to father any more than I have to. I'm done trying to catch his attention."

A brief silence. Hermes never really knew what to say when I talked about our father. He and Zeus had a great relationship after all — and I wasn't jealous, not anymore, but I knew he felt awkward about having what I didn't.

"And Aphrodite doesn't know about the two of them, then?" he asked, brushing over the subject of Zeus.

"I don't think so," I said, frowning. "But it's only a matter of time before she goes to Apollo and talks about meeting Emma. You know how those two are together."

"Two peas in a pod," he agreed. "So what about her? You think someone created her?"

"Emma?" I asked, even though I hardly needed the clarification.

"Yeah?"

I knew Emma had to be natural if Apollo's prophecy had referred to her instead of Virginia. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out any other possible explanation. It was bewildering and infuriating — what I had with Emma was so real, so pure. And yet…

"What else could she be if not a copy?" I said, my voice hardly betraying how utterly mystified I felt. "They look exactly the same."