A LITTLE TOO MUCH DARK SIDE

A "missing scene" from FALLEN ANGEL.

"Ares."

The voice behind him almost made Ares jump.

It sounded a lot like ... Xena.

Except that, dammit! Xena was dead. He had let her out of sight for the stupidest reason – Athena had caught him watching Xena through a portal, and had mockingly dared him to prove that he wasn't obsessed by going completely Xena-free for ten days – and when he broke down at the end of day eight and checked up on her, that idiot Joxer was taking her down from a cross. Worse yet, Hades swore up and down that neither she nor Blondie had come to his domain. Maybe he was still pissed off about that business with Callisto and the body switch.

Anyway, the bottom line was that Xena was gone, and he was feeling completely rotten. It was not an obsession, he told himself; it was perfectly normal for the God of War to be upset when his best warrior was snatched away right from under his nose. (And just when he had such hopes of her coming back, because really, Blondie was getting more insufferable by the day.) That was it, nothing else. Yeah.

And now, he was standing at the altar in one of his temples, picking listlessly through the offerings, missing Xena and feeling sorry for himself, when suddenly there was that voice.

Ares wondered if gods ever went mad. It had never happened to him before, but with Xena there was a first time for everything.

There were light steps behind him. He tensed. The logical thing to do would be to look back, but for some reason –

"Aaaares," the voice said again, huskily. He felt the warmth – no, the heat – of her breath on his neck. For some reason he also caught a strong whiff of sulphur.

"Xena?" he said, not quite daring to believe it yet.

"Who do you think – the Queen of Egypt?" she said, a touch of mockery in her voice. Definitely her. His heart gave a wild leap, momentarily knocking the breath out of him.

When he could speak again, he said, "You're not a – ghost, are you?" Ares didn't particularly care for ghosts, though in Xena's case he might have been willing to make an exception.

"Oh no." Her chuckle had a strange edge – actually, it was more like ... a cackle. "Does this feel like a ghost to you?"

He felt the touch of her hand on his neck, and his heart did some more strange things. He thought he had lost her forever, and now she was here, in his temple, talking to him, stroking his neck ... even if her touch felt a bit – different. She could have used some hand lotion, and she definitely needed to trim those nails.

That thought was interrupted by Xena's tongue in his ear. Oh, that was too much. He turned around. Maybe it was a dream, or maybe –

Oh crap.

It was Xena all right. Except that – well – she wasn't quite herself.

Her skin was covered with tiny lizard-like reddish scales. Her eyes also had a reddish tint instead of the usual blue. Two large, yellow, webby bat-wings were half-spread behind her back. She also had a tail – and he didn't mean the blond tagalong. And then there were the horns. As far as Ares was concerned, two horns were a pair too many, at least when growing from the forehead of a human female. But Xena had four. Two long, slightly curvy ones, and two small and almost dainty.

Ares backed up, bumping into the altar. Xena cocked her head and smiled mischievously. She reached out and touched his chest, then ran her hands down his stomach.

"Why, Ares – is that a dagger in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"

"Uh – stop that," he stammered, moving sideways to avoid her touch. If there was one thing he knew for sure, it was that he didn't want those long black talons close to – anything important.

She smirked and hit him playfully with her tail, making him jump.

"What's the matter, God of War? A little too much dark side for you?"

He swallowed, his mind swirling. "You – you look – uh, different." That wasn't a particularly clever line, but he was all out of clever lines at the moment.

"I'm a demon from Hell, Ares," she said a little bitterly.

"From where?"

"Hell. Kind of like Tartarus. Only duller."

"So," he said, doing his best to collect his thoughts. "I guess you didn't get any time off for good behavior, huh?"

"Well – it's a long story," she said, frowning a little. Then her expression changed to a grin. "Never mind that. I have some great news for you, Ares."

Somehow, he seriously doubted that.

"What?"

"You know how you wanted me to rule the world at your side?" She put her hand on his arm; he glanced down uneasily but then decided that it was safer to let her keep it there. "Well, I think I'm ready to take you up on that."

"Oh." By now, he had recovered his wits sufficiently to reflect ruefully on his luck. All those years, he'd been waiting to hear Xena say those words. He just never imagined that when she finally said it, she'd look like – that. And reek of sulphur. He wondered if it would help to give her a bath.

"See, Ares," she said, unnervingly poking him in the chest with the knuckles of her other hand, "I am so through with all the do-gooding."

He nodded. "That's, um – nice. Say – how did you manage to get out of that Hell place?"

Xena gave him a coquettish little grin. "You'll love this." She leaned closer (it was all he could do not to flinch away) and lowered her voice conspiratorially. "The original idea was to conquer Heaven. That's kind of like the Elysian Fields. So we got there and we were fighting the angels, and then I looked around and thought – what do we want this place for, anyway? It's just a bunch of rocks and a pink sky. Really pink. And barely bigger than my home town. At least the Elysian Fields had some nice gardening." She cackled again and elbowed him for emphasis, flapping her wings. "So while this huge battle was going on in heaven, I kinda looked around and found a way out. Clever, huh?"

"Very," he said. He wondered if it would piss her off if he backed away a little.

"So now I'm thinking – who needs Heaven? I'm ready to rule right here on earth! Especially, of course, if I can do it with the right – consort. And who better for the job than the God of War?"

"I'm flattered." He managed to sound flippant. "But – what about your friend Gab-"

Before he could finish, Xena's fingers were at his lips, one of her claws rather painfully nicking his nostril. A grimace of rage flashed across her face. This time his heart almost jumped out of his chest, and not in a good way.

"Uh-uh-uh. We're not going to talk about that," she hissed. "The little bitch betrayed me. Don't worry, she'll get hers eventually." Xena shook her head and shaped her features into a seductive smile. "So. What do you say?"

"I – I don't know, Xena. I'm – kind of happy with my job the way it is."

"But I could give you so much more," she said with a sudden softness, tilting her head and brushing back her wild black hair. "Come on, Ares. We could have some kicks." It occurred to Ares that when Xena looked at him this way, she was – well, almost sexy from that angle. If you looked past the horns and the scales and so forth. Lowering his eyes, he noticed that she also had hooves. That didn't help one bit.

She gave him a reproachful, almost plaintive look. "Don't tell me you don't like me anymore."

"Oh, it's not that," he said hastily. It was really damned unlucky that she had him trapped with his back to the altar. True, he could always zap himself away, but he wasn't sure what kind of powers Xena had as a demon and what would happen if he tried it. Besides ... he didn't entirely want to admit it to himself, but a part of him wanted to stay. Only out of morbid fascination, of course.

"Then what is it?" She smiled wickedly, her hand resting on the handle of the sword at her belt. "You know I'm everything you've ever wanted in your warrior queen..."

"And quite a bit more," Ares blurted out unthinkingly. That was true, of course; he had never expected wings and – the rest to be a part of the job description.

Her smile became a teasing smirk. "Ooh. Big bad God of War, afraid of a girl with wings and horns." She stroked his face with the back of her hand as her voice dropped to a sultry near-whisper. "Just think of all the things I could do with those."

He decided that he didn't really want to know what she meant by that.

"Maybe it's just going to take a little getting used to," he said sheepishly.

She stepped back and eyed him thoughtfully, then gave a delighted, throaty little laugh. "You know, I have an idea. You could come back to Hell with me and eat of the fruit of Hell and then you'd become just like me. How's that?"

"Thanks," he said quickly, "I really don't like fruit." The thought of growing wings and horns and scales didn't hold the slightest appeal. One of Ares' few secret vices (that is, one of the few he bothered to keep secret) was that he rather liked to sneak the occasional peek at himself in the mirror, and he suspected that if he took up Xena on her offer he wouldn't much like what he was going to see there the next time. Meanwhile, Xena was looking at him as if she was going to eat him alive.

"It was just a thought," she said, her wing flapping as she shrugged. "So. Cut the crap, Ares. Are we a team or not?"

She tapped a hoof impatiently. Damn, damn, damn. Ares' mind was racing as furiously as his heart. If he said no, he'd miss the only chance he was ever going to have with Xena. If he said yes – well, he could wait and see how it worked out. Maybe he could have Aphrodite give her a makeover. Aphrodite loved makeovers, though admittedly she had probably never started with a challenge like this one. Besides, he told himself, if he didn't accept she'd probably go and team up with some other war god, and they'd be unstoppable. So, really, saying yes was the practical thing to do. Right.

"Sure." He hoped he would be able to sound nonchalant. "I'll give it a shot."

"Excellent," Xena growled, her eyes sparkling with what he hoped was nothing worse than excitement. She grabbed him by his vest and drew him close, and before he could ask her if she had ever considered breath mints, her sulphur-breathing mouth descended on his lips. His eyes half-closed, he saw her leather wings spread out and envelop him. His body was racked by a bizarre mix of fear, revulsion, and desire.

As he closed his eyes completely and let himself sink into the heat of the demon's kiss, there was another strange sensation, like a whirlwind sweeping around him – and then, Xena was gone.

Ares shook himself and looked around in bewilderment. Maybe he had gone crazy after all and the whole thing had been a hallucination. Except that he could still smell the sulphur in the air, and looking at his arms he noticed scratches from her claws.

Then he sensed another presence in the temple. He whipped around and saw something white and feathery that looked vaguely like – Callisto? All right, this had to be a dream.

"What happened to you?" he said brusquely. "Did you fall into a vat of bleach?"

"She's gone," Callisto said placidly. "And, by the way, I'm an angel."

He blinked at her, too dazed to try to figure this out. "Where to?"

"She's been resurrected. She's back from the dead."

He digested this, putting aside for now his rather complicated history with Callisto – if this was Callisto.

"You mean, as her old self? Without the, uh – " he made a vague motion indicating his forehead.

"Not quite her old self." Callisto looked past him with a beatific smile. "You see, to neutralize the demon, we had to knock out her dark side completely. She's back to life as a complete innocent, with no awareness of anything bad or violent. So I don't recommend trying anything, Ares. She probably won't be able to kill a fly, let alone be your Warrior Queen." She sighed blissfully. "Just thought you might like to know."

Before he could ask her any more questions, the feathered Callisto disappeared in a silvery white glow.

Ares paced around the temple, still shaken by everything that had happened. Had Callisto told him the truth? Finally, he opened up a portal and summoned up a vision of Xena. He found her in a little town in Illyricum, not far where his old buddy Kal's temple was. She and Gabrielle were sitting next to each other, looking pale and dazed, wrapped in blankets.

No dark side, huh? Ares suddenly realized that he didn't feel too badly about that. He'd had a bit too much of Xena's dark side for one day. And besides, he had a feeling that getting innocent Xena's dark side back was going to be a lot easier than getting Demon Xena back to normal.

He closed the portal and transported himself to Kal's temple.

THE END