His hands still quivery, he buttoned up his pants and took a half-conscious glance around. The room was surprisingly well-lit, considering there were only several candles and an oil lamp on.

He shook his head, blinking; gods, he was still out of it; even his sense of time was off, which he realized when he saw how completely dark it was outside while he thought it was only just afternoon.

He never realized when Octavius had left, either. But he clearly had, because there was just the two of them here, in what had to be the Emperor's private little office, which from now on would always be the place where the Emperor watched the God of War fuck his Empress.

Smirking, he looked to where she was still lying on the desk, her chest rising and falling in the still shaky rhythm, the sight filling him with anger and something strange that he couldn't pinpoint, some sinking feeling in his stomach.

Something cracked under his boot; the oil lamp they must have knocked off the table in the heat of the madness that he still felt cruising through his veins. And this time, finally, it lasted, filling him with pleasant heaviness of being sated, with post-euphoric bliss of having quenched a long-lasting thirst; and yet, he couldn't enjoy it fully, it was flawed, somehow. He swung with his boot, sending the pieces of ceramics flying across the floor.

Was she crying? He stepped closer, his anger fading.

"Don't touch me," she said, the numbness in her voice taking him aback.

For a while, he just stood there, paralyzed both with the burning urge to say something, anything, and the absolute lack of words or any idea what it should be.

"Don't," she weakly protested when he pulled her up to a sitting position and wrapped his arms around her. It was disconcerting, her absolute indifference. Dread gripping his gut, he drew her closer to his chest, pressing his mouth to her forehead, to the damp, salty skin, unexpectedly cold against his lips; holding the back of her head, fighting off the unsettling feeling that the tighter he held her, the more she was slipping through his fingers, irreversibly.

"I love you," he whispered, breathing in the hairline of her forehead.

She sniffled, her breath quickening, but said nothing. He didn't expect her to; he didn't expect the words to leave his mouth, either.

When she finally broke the silence, it slashed through him like a blade. "You wouldn't have done it if you did."

What the hell was going on, he had no idea anymore; the dreadful realization crept into his stomach, the obviousness that this wasn't her being a prude, that this was something of a whole different meaning. That he fucked up again. He hesitated, torn between wanting to ask what she meant and not wanting to hear the answer, his blood starting to boil.

"What the fuck does that mean, huh? Oh, did you think I would stand by and watch him fuck you? He's lucky he's still alive." He swallowed, pressing his lids shut. "What the hell are we doing, Xena? How on earth did we even get here, for fuck's sake…"

She left his embrace and walked over to the window. "I didn't choose it, Ares, you did. I told you, if you fail my trust, neither of us will survive this."

He scoffed, watching her lean against the windowsill, the bright fabric of the candlelit tunic contrasting with the darkness of the sky outside. "It's not fair, Xena, you're holding me accountable for things that happened before, things I can't change." He looked past the slim outline of her calves, down to her bare ankles; gods, he wanted her again.

"You don't get it, do you…" she said wearily, not turning back.

He growled, grabbing her from behind and pressing to his chest angrily.

"You're gonna fuck me like a whore again?" her numb voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

"What?" he frowned. "What the hell does that mean?" He swirled her around till their eyes met.

"What we just did."

He held his breath, the flashes of the scene running through his mind in search for anything that— "You didn't exactly stop me."

"Which doesn't change the fact I didn't want it, not in front of—"

"Xena, I've never seen you that turned on."

"My body responded to it, it doesn't mean anything."

"I don't get it."

"Of course you don't…"

"So, this," he ran his fingers across her swollen lower lip, down past the peaks of her breasts, down to the slick heat he knew awaited him between her thighs, "this means nothing?" He stroked for a while, listening to her breath getting shallow.

"It means nothing," she said, not very convincingly.

He sank down to his knees, lifting her tunic, diving in to kiss where his fingers were. "It means everything to me..." He kept kissing, feeling her hand rest on his head, stroking, her fingers grazing his scalp softly, all of it doing something strange to him, some knot tying in his stomach. He stopped when he heard a loud sniffle.

"What's wrong?" he asked, cupping her face.

"I love the way you kiss me…" she whispered.

"So much it makes you cry?" he smiled against the pulsing skin of her temple, stamping it with his lips.

"How can you do what you did and now do this?"

Stupefied, he pulled back to look at her. "I don't get it, Xena… you got off on him watching, you loved it, you've always loved it…"

"Not with you."

"Why?"

"I don't know, I just don't."

"We'll kick him out next time," he grinned against her cheek.

"There won't be next time," she said, and he wanted to object, but she threw him off balance when she reached down to his pants. "But it's not how I want this to end," she said, her heated whisper charming him. "Make love to me… one last time…" She sat herself on the windowsill, wrapping a leg around him, nuzzling his neck as she pulled him close.

Somewhere in the back of his head, there was a voice of furious protest, but his body reacted of its own volition. He couldn't think of it now, the words, whatever nonsense she tried to piss him off with, no. Not that he could think of anything when he was inside her; anything but how sticking his dick inside someone could feel so mindfuckingly spiritual, like falling into the abyss there was no way back from, having his soul sucked out of him, and he didn't even want it back; he wondered if she felt the same.

He stroked up her outer thigh, his arm tightly wrapped around her back. She had her eyes closed, and when she let her head fall back, her face was moonlit, shining with the eerie vibe, dreamlike. At some point, he wasn't sure if it was real or whether it was one of those dreams again; the dreams she didn't know about. She didn't need to know. She knew way too much already.

"Let's go to your temple," her whisper in his ear brought him back, then made him frown in confusion; because he knew she meant Amphipolis.

He hadn't been back to Amphipolis ever since that damn night, and he wasn't sure he wanted to – was surprised she wanted to – but she wanted to, so, one snap of his fingers later, they were in the ether.

And so, here they were.

The damn red settee that he remembered better than he would like to. He placed her on it, producing a little matching pillow under her head, and watched her, as her eyes roamed around, stopping at the window, her chest heaving, eyes glazing as she kept staring. His eyes followed, the random scenes from three months ago flashing through his mind. He looked away; the window made him think of that nightmare of a morning, her sitting on the ground, naked and freezing.

It was a bad idea to come here.

"Why here?" he asked, snaking an arm around her and drawing her head to his chest.

"I guess it's the last place that felt like home," she said quietly, with such sadness in her tone that he instinctively pulled her closer.

"I imagined you'd hate Rome."

"It's not like I had a damn choice, did I?"

There was hard bitterness in her voice, like it was his fault. "What do you want me to say, Xena? I didn't—"

"I don't know how much longer I can take it…"

"I thought you were looking forward to ruling Rome."

"You damn well know I don't give a shit about Rome."

"Could've fooled me."

"My life's not your business, Ares." She removed his arm from around her and rolled flat onto her back. "You had your chance."

He propped himself on one elbow. "A chance to what? To fuck you in secret? You didn't want a life with me."

"You're an idiot..."

"What the hell are you saying, Xena? That you would've what, married me if I hadn't pissed you off?"

"No. I don't know. For a moment, I felt that…"

He pressed his lids shut, his teeth clenching, heart racing. "Felt what?" he asked, his fingers slowly, tightly closing around her wrist.

"It doesn't matter now."

"It does matter to me," he said, his hand finding hers. Her eyes were shiny when she met his gaze. "It does fucking matter to me…" He clutched her wrist. She looked away, tears falling from her eyes.

"I did wait for you," she said, barely audibly.

"What?" he uttered weakly.

"You asked me if I waited. I did."

"No," he whispered, regretting his question, his breath hitching in his throat, a tingly sensation spreading down his arms.

"I couldn't stop, for weeks… I hated myself for it. I hated us both for it, for seeing you whenever I closed my eyes—"

"No," he said breathlessly, squeezing his eyes shut, the old frustration of being chained in Tartarus flooding him with double force – so, if it hadn't been for Athena, he would've had something to come back to, he would've made it in time to—

"At times, I could almost feel your presence… I thought I was going crazy… When I found out I was pregnant and realized I might never see you again, I thought I'd fall apart…"

He exhaled and gasped to catch a breath, blinking back tears, his throat going dry with the abrupt inflow of air. "You can't be telling me this now, you can't fucking tell me this now," he growled, then gasped, feeling her hand between them, seeking and touching, making him lose his plot.

"I never stopped having those dreams," she whispered, draping a leg over his hip and taking him in, her eyes closed, eyelashes shimmering in the candlelight; and his voice was gone, his face sinking in the heat of her neck. "You know what my favorite is?" she breathed, somewhere close to his ear, "the one when Eve's sitting in your lap, and makes you smile—"

"Don't tell me this now," he said, panting, squeezing his eyes shut.

"It's true."

"Just don't fucking say it…"

"Hurts, doesn't it?"

"Is that what this is, you getting back at me?" he licked the sweat off his upper lip, huffing in disbelief. "Fine — here — you're ripping my fucking heart out, enjoy."

"At least now I know you have one."

"You sure as fuck don't."

"You made sure of it yourself."

No, he couldn't do it; he pushed her away and rolled onto his back.

She didn't say anything. It was like that fucking morning in the damn Amphipolis all over again, the damn blue vase shattered into pieces, heaviness twisting his stomach; he was even about to take her to Rome, how fitting.

A cool breeze swept over his face and chest, drawing his gaze towards the window. The night was cloudy. It was starting to rain. He produced a huge blanket and threw it over both of them.

He draped an arm around her, pulling her close to his chest. "Come back to Greece."

"The moment I leave Rome I lose leverage over Athena and the hunt for Eve continues. I'm not going through it again."

"Athena will finally come to her senses… in the meantime, you'll have me to protect you, I'll—"

"And depend on you and your damn mood swings where you stab me in the back the moment I piss you off?"

He exhaled angrily. He was impulsive, that he couldn't help — but for fuck's sake — why did she always have to drive him livid in the first place?

"And, just in case you forgot, my daughter still means your death."

"Oh, I'm sure you'll kill me sooner," he smirked bitterly. "Killing Eve won't stop the Twilight."

"What?"

"The Twilight was always going to happen; it was set in motion when Eve was born, it's not reversible. If she wasn't so pig-headed, the so-called Goddess of Wisdom would've already reached that conclusion, too. But that's Athena for you."

"What about the rest of the gods?"

"They're under her thumb, a bunch of dumb cowards."

She let a long, exasperated breath. Stupidly, for a second there he thought she'd say she'd come back.

"Ares, I'm leaving."

"What?" he asked quietly, dread gripping at his throat. Again, there was something about her tone that chilled him.

"I'm leaving for Syria."

"Why the hell would you—"

"I'm gonna get Syria for Rome. It's a price to pay to get Romans out of Macedonia."

The words took a while to settle in his mind, but he still refused to believe what he heard. Was his mind playing a trick on him? The things he'd told Gabrielle the other day — the proposal, yes, it was true, but that Xena conquering for Rome — it was just bullshit he came up with to rile up Gabrielle…

"As in, you're marching on Syria to make it a province of Rome…"

Somehow, he still expected her to rectify, but there was nothing, she said absolutely nothing. He couldn't say a word if he wanted to.

It was nothing if not his biggest dream coming true. Well, she wasn't marching under his banner, but it didn't matter — the thought of seeing her commanding a Roman legion made hairs stand up on his arms.

There was just a small part of him that didn't quite participate in the excitement, quite annoying, and getting louder with each passing second.

"You won't say anything?" she asked after a longer while. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you're not thrilled out of your mind right now."

"I am," he said, and cringed at how stupid it sounded. Almost like he was trying to convince them both, of something he didn't believe himself.

"Could've fooled me…"

"When are you leaving?"

"Five days."

He swallowed, trying to ignore the sensation in his chest. What the hell was wrong with him? He should be hard with excitement right now.

"Is there something you're not telling me?"

He stirred, uneasy. "About what?"

"Do you have campaigns in Arabia?"

"No," he said before he even thought about it. No, he didn't have anything going on there at the moment.

"What is it, then?"

He clenched his teeth, the question rattling in his mind. His mouth opened and the words just came out. "I don't know."

There was a stir to his left; a wave of her scent hit his nostrils. He hummed, feeling her palm on his face, her thumb brushing her cheekbone, making his lids too heavy to lift them. "It feels so damn good when you do it," he muttered. "I don't want you to leave."

He held in a breath, surprised by what he just heard himself say. His eyes snapped open, meeting her gaze; her eyes were soft, brows slightly furrowed.

"Come on, I'll take you back," he sat up, trying to shake off the cringe.

The sound of the rain was getting louder. He was glad she said nothing, that she didn't ask why.

A small part of him wished she had.

He wouldn't know what to say.