Celibacy? Guilt twisted in his gut when she said that. Logically he knew it wasn't entirely his fault--he had tried, tried until the need imposed on him had forced his hand, until he feared he might go mad if he didn't satisfy the sensation that burned through him like a white hot poker. He was not sure Hera would see it that way. He was still trying to decide how to bring it up when she mentioned Ares, and a small bark of laughter escaped him before he could help it.<br/><br/>"Ares... it always did seem appropriate for him to have been born after the Titanomachy. All that energy, all that anger, distilled and given the form of one man. I must admit, it came as a shock when Prometheus told us he was to be the god of war. I thought for certain you would have that mantle for your own, after the beating you handed Hyperion and Crius. But those days were still full of surprises, weren't they? Some good, some bad." He looked back down at her hand, though he had released it from his own. He spared another moment of thought for Ares, his son, his firstborn son. An angry man, one who had come to be reviled as much as he was revered. Zeus had tried in his own way to temper the boy, the man, the god, but it had been met with resistance--as, in retrospect, it must have. Ares was the chaos of war, the conflict, the butting of heads and the pounding of blood. A forced correction, even by his own father and king, could only result in the obvious. War.<br/><br/>Athena had always handled her brother deftly--but then the two were the same<i>drachma</i>, two faces on one coin, and her side always seemed to land upward of his. He felt another pang as his thoughts strayed to his daughter, so clever, so potent. The words she had spoken the day before pained him still, an ache in his heart he couldn't simply let go of. He would return to her eventually, he promised himself. He would go back and show her how he had changed. He would let his daughter watch him mend the bridges he had burnt, then come to her with a literal physical olive branch if he had to.<br/><br/>But first...<br/><br/>"My wife, my love... I have a confession. One I am not happy to give, but one I cannot sit quietly on and pretend is not there." The honesty, he hoped, would make all the difference this time. He had never told her before--not with Leto, Maia, Alcmene, or any of the other dozen of his conquests. He had kept silent until the evidence emerged, until the mother herself came storming to Olympus to demand recognition or reparation. And by then it was often much too late to beg Hera's forgiveness. The cruel things she had done, she had done because of her even more cruel husband.<br/><br/>"In all these years since our parting, I... I have not been true." The words came stiff and soft, and he kept his eyes on her hand as he withdrew his own. "There were only two. Neither bore any children of mine. Understand, Hera, I wanted neither of them--I did not love either of them. But the need... it grew like a fire within me, like flaming wasps stinging at my mind until I could either act or risk madness." It went unspoken; a god who went mad was soon bound to fade, their already tenuous ties to stability severed entirely as they forgot their purpose and their meaning in the world. He shook his head. "If I had been able to help it, been able to deny it, know I would never have touched another in your place. I regret it as much as I regret losing you to begin with."