"I hate that bastard!" Ares snarled, dropping into his throne less-than-gracefully. "Why can't I kill him? He's not even a full god!"

"Because Zeus says so," Strife replied from where he stood beside the throne, then immediately wished he'd kept his mouth shut.

Ares glared at him a moment before reaching up and grabbing him by the front of his leather shirt. He yanked Strife down to his eye-level.

"Who asked you?" He said, then threw Strife half-way across the temple. He smiled briefly when Strife made a satisfying splat on the marble floor but his bad mood quickly returned.

"There's no way I'm going to just let that half-breed wander around messing with my plans! Mom gets away with trying to kill him so why can't I?" he continued his tirade.

Strife pushed himself up into something resembling a sitting position, shaking his head in an attempt to make the world less fuzzy-looking.

"In a bad mood today, brother, dear?"

Strife looked up and after a moment of concentration was able to focus on the figure in black leather that stood near him.

Discord.

He resisted the urge to say something nasty to her. Her foot was just a little too close and he kind of liked his teeth right where they were.

She looked down at him, her lip curling in disgust.

"Really, Ares, you shouldn't leave trash just lying around. It makes the place look bad."

Strife glared up at her. Now he wished he had said something. It was a real bitch replacing teeth but it would have been worth it to get in the first insult.

She didn't give him time to think up anything, just dismissed him with a snort and walked over towards the throne.

"What do you want, Discord?" Ares asked, sounding less than pleased to see her.

Strife got some satisfaction from that. Discord had always been confident in her abilities to please Ares but it hadn't been working lately and just that made his day. Of course, Strife hadn't been able to do anything to pull Ares out of his bad mood either but that was nothing new.

"I just want to make sure you're all right," Discord said sweetly as she moved around to the side of the throne. "You've been acting so strangely lately. No new wars starting, old wars threatening to end, Xena off doing good deeds without any interference from you...." She let the thought trail off, her point made.

"I don't need you to remind me of that," Ares said, his voice dangerously soft as he looked at his sister with narrowed eyes.

"I'm just worried about you." She trailed a finger slowly up Ares' arm as she spoke.

"I don't need your concern either." He shrugged off her touch.

"Then what do you need? I'll bet whatever it is I can 'help' you with it," she said suggestively, leaning closer. A move which showed off her cleavage quite effectively.

As he got to his feet Strife could have sworn he felt ill, and not from getting thrown across the room. "Gag me," he muttered under his breath as he watched Discord's attempted seduction of Ares.

The whole brother-sister thing wasn't what bothered him -- that was kind of a moot point amongst the gods -- it was the fact that this was Discord and she just rubbed him the wrong way, always had. So what if she was his mother. It was a relationship neither of them acknowledged. She hadn't raised him. All she'd done was give birth to him and any responsibility she might have felt towards him had ended there. The feeling was more than mutual.

"Mommy Discord" just didn't fit her. Although it would have been an effective insult if Strife didn't feel queasy just thinking the words. He would certainly never say them.

When she reached out to stroke Ares' cheek affectionately Strife couldn't take it any more. Or at least his stomach couldn't. "I thing I'm going to hurl." he said aloud. "Any slut could drape herself all over him. Don't you ever get any new tricks?"

Discord looked at him, fury marring what some would consider to be a beautiful face. In Strife's opinion, it was an improvement. She pointed a finger at him as though about to hit him with a lightening bolt or something equivalent, but before she could do anything he was slammed back against the wall of the temple by a fireball.

"Keep your mouth shut!" Ares snarled, cutting off the stream of fire and letting Strife drop to the floor.

"Oooh, that was lovely," Discord purred, stroking Ares' cheek again.

He slapped her hand away. "I didn't do it for you. Now get out of my sight before you end up the same way!"

Discord quickly backed away. She shot Strife a furious glance as though blaming him for this turn in events before disappearing in a flash of blue light.

This was too much, Strife decided. Ares never had been one for cheerful moods but this was ridiculous. Lately all it took was the slightest little thing to set him off. The simplest of mistakes was punished as though it were the greatest offense and Zeus help anyone in his service who made a major error. Besides that he seemed constantly preoccupied by something although he denied it. His attention was never where it was needed anymore and it was starting to show.

As much as Strife hated to admit it, Discord had a point; Ares was neglecting his duties as God of War. Even when he did do something lately it didn't work or turned out wrong somehow. Normally Strife might have offered to help in some way but he wasn't foolish enough to try it now. Discord was Ares' current favorite and he'd just warned her off. He wouldn't be as forgiving with Strife.

As Strife once again picked himself up off of the floor he came to the conclusion that he would be better off elsewhere until Ares got over whatever was bothering him. Normally he practically lived to serve his uncle. He would hang around hoping that Ares would give him a job to do, but it was just too dangerous right now. Wanting Ares' attention at the moment was nothing short of having a deathwish and that was something he most definitely did not have.

He needed to find something else to do for a while until Ares called for him again, although he was starting to think that it might just be in his best interest to avoid the God of War altogether, whether or not Ares summoned him. Ares had Discord to help him and if she wanted to deal with him and his moods then she could have him. Strife knew he could do his job without serving Ares; he'd just never wanted to. He really did idolize Ares, normally. Lately though, well, he didn't need the trouble or the abuse.

He wanted to be someplace else before Ares decided to kick him around some more. It couldn't be just any place though; he needed something productive to do, not a vacation on the beach somewhere. As he thought through places and ideas, examining and discarding each quickly, a fragment of a conversation surfaced in his memory.

Think of what we could do if we were working together...I'm not saying you have to decide right now or that you even have to consider it at all.

Strife really hadn't given it much thought beyond wondering if the mortal was just desperate or truly insane. He remembered his reply to the ridiculous suggestion.

You've bought yourself a couple days.

He'd been toying with Autolycus. Only giving him those two days to make him sweat a little, give him just enough time to start feeling hopeful before Strife killed him. And he had every intention of killing the impudent mortal.

A couple days. That had been nearly three weeks ago.

Other things had come up taking his mind off of his planned diversion. Dealing with the God of War had become a full-time job and he hadn't had time to think about much else. Now he was going to take the time.

He had an overdue appointment with a thief.

It was an awkward angle. The ruby was placed in the statue's forehead and trying to remove it while suspended upside-down from the ceiling certainly made things interesting.

Autolycus wished he could hurry. The rope holding him in place was too tight around his ankles and it was cutting off the circulation. Actually he was kind of surprised there was any circulation to cut off seeing as how all of the blood in his body seemed to have drained to his head. He knew from experience that if he couldn't finish this in the next couple minutes he was going to pass out.

That would do wonders for his reputation. The King of Thieves -- died because he fainted. Definitely not what he wanted to be remembered for.

The ruby was loosening but he resisted the urge to rush. If it came loose suddenly and he couldn't catch it in time it would go plunging over thirty feet to the floor below.

According to rumor, when this palace had still been occupied, the king had rigged this room with traps that were triggered by even the slightest touch. Autolycus didn't know if it was true or just another wild tale like the one that said this ruby was cursed, but either way he didn't want to chance it.

Working carefully he finally managed to pull the ruby from the marble statute. Grinning he looked at it in the dim light coming through the holes in the roof of the abandoned palace.

"I'm rich. Again." He laughed to himself. "Damn, I'm good!"

"Modesty really isn't in your vocabulary, huh?"

It took a bit of twisting but Autolycus managed to get a look at the figure sitting on the wooden beam near the ceiling where he'd attached the rope that currently held him. Taking his eyes off of the god he looked back at the ruby.

"Fuck. You really are cursed."

Strife found himself admiring Autolycus again. Most mortals, if they knew there was a good chance that a god was going to kill them, would spend all their time praying to that god, begging forgiveness or something like that. Not Autolycus. From the looks of things he'd simply gone on with his life.

Apparently Autolycus believed in living life to its fullest regardless of what the future held. That was a philosophy Strife could relate to. He had no doubt that Autolycus had been very busy the past few weeks either planning this robbery or committing others. It was certainly what Strife himself would've done in a similar situation.

"You, didn't like, spend a lot of time on this or anything, did you?" he asked with mild curiosity.

"Yes. Why?" Autolycus wasn't sounding too happy down there.

"Well, hate to tell you this -- okay, no I don't -- but that thing has a seriously nasty curse on it," Strife informed him with a shrug.

"You don't say," Autolycus responded dryly.

Strife watched with casual interest as Autolycus worked the ruby back into the statue's forehead rather quickly.

"Aren't you uncomfortable hanging like that?" Strife asked.

Autolycus muttered something under his breath, even being a god Strife had to strain to hear it.

"...thought inbreeding didn't affect the gods, guess I was wrong."

"What was that?" Strife said, resisting the impulse to untie the rope holding Autolycus above the floor.

"I said yeah, it's tough breathing like this but I won't have to be here for long," Autolycus replied smoothly.

Strife had to give him credit for a good recovery but that was three. He'd let Autolycus get away with those two insults the first time they'd met and he'd allow him this one as well, but one more and Strife would have to hurt him a little.

He frowned as he realized exactly what his thoughts signified. He'd come here for some relaxing torture and painful death featuring the King of Thieves as the subject. He'd never once even considered Autolycus' absurd proposal. So how had he ended up accepting it?

Autolycus was busy pulling himself up the rope. His face was red from hanging upside-down for so long but by the time he reached the wooden beam the rope was secured to he was starting to regain his usual color.

Strife offered no assistance as Autolycus levered himself up onto the beam and proceeded to untie the rope from his ankles.

"So, are you going to dissect me or are we going to talk?" Autolycus asked as he worked.

Strife smirked, his usual expression but without his usual malice. Nice and direct. He liked that. Autolycus had courage, intelligence, and a remarkable lack of fear when faced with the inevitable; all fine qualities in a mortal. Unfortunately when all of those qualities existed within one mortal that one usually tended to turn out as the hero type like Hercules. This one was different. He lacked the one quality that usually made a hero: high moral standards. It wasn't that Autolycus didn't have morals they were just very well suppressed. Strife approved of that.

"You don't kill, do you?" he asked.

"Not if I can help it," Autolycus replied as he massaged his ankles to restore the circulation. "I worked with someone once who killed and I didn't like it. No good thief should have to resort to murder."

Strife nodded. That would be a difficulty. Killing wasn't a problem for him. He tended to enjoy it. However, it would be a challenge not to do it. If he looked at it like that then maybe he could live with it.

"About those powers of yours --" Autolycus began as he untied the rope from the beam.

"Forget about them," Strife said quickly, cutting him off. "If I use them, the other gods can locate me. I don't want anyone knowing where I am unless I tell them myself."

"Good," Autolycus replied. "It would be cheating if you used them. You should learn how to do things without them anyway."

Strife thought about that. He used his powers for nearly everything. He was a god. he'd never had a reason not to.

Well, he did now.

He wasn't certain he wanted to get himself into this though. He'd never done anything like this. It was completely unfamiliar territory and while he, reluctantly, admired Autolycus, Strife really didn't him. And there was the problem.

"We don't trust each other," he stated the obvious, knowing Autolycus felt the same. It showed in the cautious way Autolycus moved.

"Yeah," Autolycus said. "Well, we'll have to start small. Trust isn't something that happens overnight. It'll have to build."

"Okay," Strife agreed with a sigh.

Time he had. He had no intention of going anywhere near Ares until he was back to normal, and considering that Ares' strange behavior had been going on for a few months now, Strife was pretty certain that he had plenty of time to himself.

"You've got yourself a partner." Strife extended his arm.

He held Autolycus' gaze as they clasped arms, approving when he saw neither fear nor reluctance in Autolycus' direct look. Autolycus obviously had no doubts about this course of action, so why should Strife?

This was going to be interesting.

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