TITLE:  Dark Side of the Rainbow Bridge 1/13
SERIES: Depends on ya'll.  If it ain't worth it, I got other things ta do.
AUTHOR:  Raven4  ( arcadian13_2000@... )
ARCHIVE:  If ya wanna, just let me know so I can blush.
FANDOM:  X:WP, H:TLC
PAIRING:  Ares/Joxer, Strife/ Cupid
RATING:  G (Hey, man, I'm just getting' started) OC, POV
WARNINGS:  A) Newbie author
B) Character Death (DeadStrife tm)(thanks a lot script writers)
C) Possible Mary Sue, but I don't know.  I'm still fuzzy on the whole Mary Sue versus typical character thing.
D) Somewhat limited Strife in this.  I'm just setting the stage, don't'cha know.

DISCLAIMER:  Strife isn't mine.  If he were he'd still be alive and would occasionally wear revealing, 

tight leather, safety pinned outfits.  The Greek Pantheon belongs to the Greek people, but since they don't seem 

to love 'em right anymore, anybody gets to call on 'em.  The Asgaardians belong to the German and Swedish peoples, 

but (see remarks vis. the Greeks).  Herc and Xena folks belong to Ren Pics and Flat Earth Prods.  Go ahead, sue me.  

I'd have more time to write in prison.


NOTES:  Okay y'all.  Now ya done it.  I haven't written fan fic in years, but this is too damn good to pass up.  I 

had been toying with a tale about DeadStrife tm interacting with the surviving denizens of Asgaard for some time, 

and lo, the great Scorpio served an opening up with an irresistible side of whoopass.  Feedback will determine the 

continuation of this saga.  Flames will be cheerfully ignored or used to keep Asgaard burning.


And here it is.  If anybody likes it I'll add chapters to finish the tale.  If not, it'll just die on the vine.





Strife watched through a mirror as Ares held his Consort cradled in his arms.  His poor sibling was shaking with 

sobs. Joxer's grief was strong enough to tear him apart if he'd been mortal.  A ghost of a grin passed over 

Strife's face.  Trust death to show you who really loved you.  While a little saddened that Ares wasn't here for 

him, Strife figured that the living needed his uncle more than he did.  Besides, Joxer would forget all about this 

in a few days.  Maybe Ares would visit then.  There was a scratch at the door and the pale god looked up.



"H'lo, Uncle Hades."  The young god said, wiping away a tear of his own.  He hated it when his tender hearted 

sibling hurt.  "How's Biz?"



Hades smiled, his dour face faintly painted with compassion.



"As well as ever."  The grim king of hell regarded his nephew for a moment.  "I have prepared a place for you."



"Right."  The dead godling smirked without humor.  "Can't spend the rest of my death hangin' out in your study."



Hades reached out his hand, and the two of them flashed to a different realm of Hell.  Strife looked around.  It 

was just like his rooms in the halls of war.  



"What gives?"  He asked.



"'Sephe thought you might be more comfortable in surroundings familiar to you."  The king of hell mumbled, 

blushing.  "She can be very...persuasive."



Strife just shook his head and plopped down in a copy of his favorite chair.  He just didn't have the energy to 

bother with a joke about being "dead sexy"; it just didn't seem worth the effort.  Hades eyes softened as he 

regarded the silent godling.  He waved his hand and the mirror from his study arrived before Strife's chair.  Then 

the King of Hell bowed his head sadly and was gone.



Unlike the real thing, this pseudo hall of war was silent.  Strife saw no reason to disturb that state, so he 

spent his first night in hell curled up and unmoving in a chair that wasn't his, watching his brother cry.



Time passes strangely in the realms between the various Godsheims.  The black bird was returning from a fruitless 

hunting expedition.  She had been gone some time, she could feel, but how much was anyone's guess.  She was 

impatient to resume her hidden vigil over the young god of mischief.



She watched.  It had been her self-imposed penance to watch everything about them.  She bore witness to every pain 

and every pleasure of the lives her family had created and destroyed.  She had watched all three brothers from a 

distance for a very long time, since their conception, in fact.  She had watched in impotent fury as the young 

goddess was violated.  She had watched from her haven, powerless, while the girl was raped and beaten again and 

again.  She'd seen how the unborn children were damaged as surely as their mother, and she'd wept at their 

suffering as she'd wept for their mother, so many ages ago.



Eris had been a very young goddess when she'd been taken in Asgaard.  Her torments had been brutal, and, unable to 

free the tortured goddess, the raven had fled, taking shelter in Alfheim and bearing witness.  When the young 

goddess' brother had come searching for her, the raven's power led him carefully into Asgaard by a hidden route.

When the allfather's pets would have warned of the rescue, raven took their sacred necks in her delicate white 

hands and calmly twisted them until they snapped.  The Greek god took the same route out, his battered, gravid 

sister in his arms.  And the raven danced behind them, covering their scent and tracks until they were out of the 

realms of the Asgaardians.



She had watched the approach of the rampaging Greeks while she brushed her fiery hair, and when they approached 

the bifrost, she reached out with her mind and Loki's dagger and slew faithful Heimdall where he stood.  Ragnarok 

had come, and she could not find it in her to be sorry.



Why she was allowed to live, she never knew.  She was pinned to the great meadtable by two of Nemesis arrows, and 

the third was headed for her breast, but the golden goddess had stopped, and left her there.  It was then that she 

had first taken on the aspect of one of the allfather's slaughtered birds.  She would be Munin from now on.  Her 

entire purpose to watch and remember.



Cawing, she flew out over the void, heading for the Grekkenheim, and thinking about Jopanis as a child, and how 

she had watched him because no one else seemed to.



Jetticles was as happy as he could be.   Both of his aspects seemed to enjoy the lives they pursued, and they were 

discreetly monitored by two of Eris' pantheon.  Joxxious had been well cared for, first by the wispy blond excuse 

for a goddess of love, and then by the Greek war god.  The redemption godling couldn't have been made safer.



It was Jopanis; the one called Strife that she had watched most carefully.  He alone, of his brothers, was able to 

function as a god.  He alone had been left to flourish or fail in the more subtle, but just as cruel world of the 

Grekkenheim, this Olympus.  Though more refined than the court of her youth, the raven could tell that these 

deities were every bit as capable of cruelty as her brothers and sisters had been.



When he was young and feeling lonely she would often come to the child god in her disguise as one of the 

allfather's birds.  And she had been his friend, until Eris had sensed her presence and flown into a rage.  Then 

Munin had fled, and in time, Strife came to believe that his birdie friend had been a dream.   But she still 

watched him.



She had hoped that after that, Eris would become a real mother for this one, and heal her own pain by coming to 

love the child of her agony.  But Loki had done his work well and the poor tormented goddess was every bit as 

damaged as her offspring.  She couldn't be relied upon for long.



So, Munin watched little Jopanis herself from the shadows.  After all, she had been unable to help his mother.  

She hid in the realms between heaven and earth; watching Jopanis grow into Ares first Lieutenant and helping him 

whenever she could from the one hidden pocket in Alfheim that had escaped the destruction that consumed Asgaard.



She watched and she guarded, fulfilling her blood vow with silent vigil. Then her hearth flames had told her the 

worst of Eris' tormentors, Loki, damn him, had supposedly been seen alive in the ruin of Asgaard.  It was 

whispered in the wind that he'd survived; though the raven couldn't see how given the almost total destruction of 

their godsheim at the hands of the enraged Greeks.



She beat her glossy black wings in frustration.  Trust the Greeks to get all concerned once the damage was already 

done.  They would rain down vengeance on the wind, but god forbid they safeguard their young in the first place.



Unfortunately even a rumor of Loki couldn't be ignored.  After all, her entire family had died for his sins, and 

she had a few things to say to him.  So she'd left off watching Jopanis.  He would be safe enough with Ares while 

she winged away to what was left of Asgaard, searching for some scent of her rabid relative.  She found nothing but 

ruins that still smoldered in the sky after all the eons.  If Loki Godkiller had been there, he was long gone.  



Now she was almost home.



"Strife."  She whispered to herself, savoring the sound of her long disused voice.  She couldn't have been gone 

more than a few months, though one could never tell with the void.  But she missed her home and her vigil.



Munin slipped through the fabric of the void and tumbled awkwardly into the air of Olympus.  She would catch a 

quick glimpse of young Strife before heading to Alfheim for a nice rest.  She checked his favorite places first.



His winged lover's temple was deserted.  There were only the remains of what in the warhiem would be a fight, but 

in this temple of love was probably just an intense orgy.  Moving on, she flew over the grove of the Bachae.  



Strife liked to drink and play tricks on those drunk, but there was nobody there either.



The Halls of War were grim and silent and there was a strange smell there.  The scent teased her mind with cold 

fingers.  There was something horrible and vaguely familiar about it.  Uneasy, Munin peeked down to earth, 

searching for the divine trickster among the mortals he so loved to tease.  Nothing.  No trace of him anywhere.



Frowning under her feathers, she glided silently towards the Greek's Meadhouse.  There were angry voices raised 

inside.  She fluttered to a perch in the joint of two arches and a column.  It was a divine argument, and sounded 

more serious than the usual bickering.  The Greek allfather, Zeus, appeared to be asserting his dominance over 

several of his unruly children who were resisting vehemently.


"No I will not."  The raven heard him say.  "I am king, and I keep my own counsel."



"Please, father."  Ares usual growl was not as intense as usual.  He sounded wrung out, and his voice was gruff.



"Silence!"  The father god thundered.  "Strife died as a result of your plotting with that Callisto abomination.  

He stays in Hades realm."



An ugly sound broke from the ravens throat, shock and anguish piercing her breast as Nemesis arrows had pinned her 

hands on the night of fire.  The little godling she had promised to shield was dead.  She gagged, once more 

tasting the strange scent from the War Hall.  It was the death of a god; a familiar scent in her nightmares since 

Ragnarok.  Below her, the assembled gods all spoke at once, mercifully masking the sounds she couldn't silence.  

The jumble of noise finally resolved itself into one voice as Munin gripped her beak in her claw.



"That's not fair, Dad."  It was the voice of the wispy love goddess.  The raven could only listen, eyes wide, 

mouth open in a silent scream.  "Ares was keeping that bitch on the line for all of us.  Dahok would have been the 

end of us.  Ares and Athena's plan defeated him, now he just wants you to allow the return his lieutenant.  Plus, 

Cupid's beside himself.  Do you really want a broken love god?  Asclepius had to sedate him.  I don't think..."



"I said no, Dite."  The king god snapped.  "I was against the return of the hind's blood dagger from the first, 

but I gave you children your way and Strife died of it.  You are all going to have to learn to live with the 

consequences of your actions.  And it might as well be now when none of the major gods have been lost to the 

lesson."


 
The raven heard the whooshing sound made by a departing god. 



"What about the consequences of your actions, father?  Who lives with them?"  The soft voice cut through the 

listening bird with the force of a blast to the breast.  It was Eris, the wronged one, and her heart still bled.  

With a croak and a flutter the raven fled the hall.  She could not aid the living, but the dead had once been hers 

to collect.  Perhaps that would still count for something.



Munin couldn't seem to stop her own thoughts as she searched for him.  They whirled in her mind like the vortex to 

Hel.  What if she'd been there when this Callisto had attacked him?  Could she have affected the outcome of this 

situation?  Could she have saved the mad god of mischief?



It galled her that Strife's potential as a deity had been negated by the rabid machinations of one hate-filled 

devotee of Jetticles.  It pained her how much of the Godkiller she could see in the twisted personality of Strife's 

split-headed brother.  You could never predict with Jetticles whether he would heal or harm.  He certainly came by 

it honestly.



If only she had been there, it would have been Callisto's blood on the ground.  Mad warrior goddess, perhaps, but 

in her time Munin had forgotten more about warfare than the little blonde bitch would ever learn.  She would have 

defended the young god by whatever means necessary, had she only been there.



She should never have left her post.  She had sworn to watch over Eris' children.  But she had also sworn the 

destruction of any Asgaardian torturer who had escaped punishment by the Greeks.



She slipped into Asphodel as silently as a prayer.  Charon waved from his ferry, but they knew each other well 

enough these days that he raised no alarm.  She soared out over the kingdom of the dead, searching for the shade 

of one dead god.



The raven couldn't be quite sure how long she'd looked for him, but at long last, she found him.  He was curled 

into a chair in a copy of the hall of war.



The raven fluttered to a perch on the window nearest the distracted god and thought hard.  It would do no good to 

flutter in a flurry.  She knew he wouldn't respond to anything direct.  She had watched him long enough to know 

that his pride and his curiosity were the paths to motivating him.  Strife could be counted on to hop to when 

there was something tricky to do.  All she had to do was find a prank worthy of a god and he would do the rest.