The agora was starting to fill now with people who had places to go and things to do and were not terribly happy that in order to do so they had to detour around an oddly dressed man pushing a cart full of fish into the temple of Aphrodite.

This truth stuff was getting out of hand. No wonder the gods kept this kind of thing to themselves. If he had to listen to Gabby and Xena snipe at each other one more minute, he'd scream. Truth was bad. He'd always suspected this, and now it was proven. If everyone kept telling each other the truth, sooner or later someone was going to say something that shouldn't be said, and that would mean the end of the world in a kind of minor way. No, he'd had it. A man can be pushed just so far, he thought, easing the cart over the intricate mosaic floor. It left scuff marks on the tile, which he tried to no avail to rub away with his foot. A man has to stand up for himself sometimes... of course, a real man could take a sword and hit the problem until it went away. All he could do at this point, he thought glumly, was hope it would accept a bribe.

He laid the fish carefully one by one on the altar, lining them up so their heads and tails were all in the same direction, and smoothing back their fins so they looked as neat and pretty as possible. He would have liked if they had looked happy, but they didn't and they were dead so they probably weren't. Poor fish.

"What's that smell?" asked a fairly familiar voice behind him.

Joxer turned around. Aphrodite was standing there, hands on hips and a not entirely welcoming expression on her face. He tried to bow and wound up stumbling, falling forward onto one knee, which was more or less how he had wanted to wind up anyway. "Oh, great and all-powerful goddess of love," he began, bowing his head, "please accept this, this offering so that I may, so that I might ask a favor of thee. As a humble servant, oh great goddess," he improvised and remained kneeling, head bowed, thinking that it had sounded pretty good really.

"You brought me fish."

"An offering, great goddess, because you're so...great. And everything."

"I hate fish."

Joxer forgot he was a humble servant and looked up at her in surprise. "But Xena always brings you fish."

"That's part of the problem."

Feeling that somehow he'd already lost control of the conversation, he clambered to his feet. "Xena, funny you should mention her, 'cause that's where, y'know, the favor part comes in. About the spell you put on her and Gabby yesterday."

"Oh, yeah. That was a cool favor I did you, wasn't it? So you came to thank me, then?"

"Excuse me?"

"I did you a favor. They're standing there and Xena is ragging on me, and I think to myself it's a shame the dork isn't here 'cause then they'd be ragging on him instead, and I get this great idea. One little zap, and hey presto! They're treating each other the way they treat you."

"Come again?"

"I didn't do it for you or anything, so don't get to feeling that I like you. But you were my inspiration."

"I don't understand," said Joxer in a slightly louder tone than was probably prudent, "I mean, I don't see how having them all mad at each other is like the way they treat me."

"It's not the mad part, doofus, it's the truth part." He looked at her with utter incomprehension, and she sighed. "Look, in little bitty words, okay? When they're talking to you, they don't feel like they have to hide anything mean or unpleasant, they just say whatever pops into their head. So they vent all their little irritations on you, and then they go off and be all sweet and lovey-dovey and perfect with each other, and it's sickening. And now they're venting all that trivia on each other instead, and they can't deal. The reason they're mad is because normal people get mad if they hear things like that, but you never get mad. You just lie down and take it. Which is like really sick incidentally. So, do you see now?"

He saw, all right. He saw he'd somehow managed to mess things up without even being at the temple. Xena is gonna kill me, he thought. One way or the other, Xena is gonna kill me. "I thought you were the Goddess of Love or something. That's not love."

"Love is truth, truth hurts, hurting is love." She traced a circle in the air with her finger. "Got it?"

"The truth is that hurting people is not love, now I want you to take the spell off. Please," he added a little too late to maintain the illusion of respect.

Aphrodite's eyes narrowed. "Look, first of all don't tell me what is and isn't love, 'cause it's my job to make the call. Second, you don't get the point, you never did. You think it's all sunshine and flowers and turning the other cheek and stuff. That's not love. Like with you and them, that's not love, it's way too mellow. The cool and studly thing to do would be to walk out on them when they rag on you. Then you'd be miserable, and they'd be miserable, and that'd be a real love thing you'd have going then."

Even though he knew it was a mistake to take the bait, he said, "I don't want to be cool and studly."

"That's good, 'cause honey, you are nowhere near the ballpark. Do you want to know the truth?"

Joxer closed his eyes for a moment. Did he want to know the truth? And the answer came back instantly: No.

No -- but he knew it anyway.

He opened his eyes and sighed, defeated. "I guess you're right."

"Duh. All-powerful, remember?"

"You're right. The truth is maybe I do have to take it from them, because I love them...but I don't have to take it from you." He started throwing the fish back onto the cart.

"What are you doing with my fish?"

"They're not your fish, they're my fish, and I'm taking them to the Hestian temple on the other side of town."

"Excuse me? You're taking my fish to the Goddess of Uptight? I don't think so."

"Maybe she likes fish. Maybe she'll listen to me."

"Hey, Hestia is not going to undo my spell no matter how many smelly fish you throw at her, you can forget that."

"Then I'll go somewhere else, and I'll take something else, and somehow I'll find some god who will."

"Nobody will undo my spell if I don't want them to." Aphrodite folded her arms and pouted. "It's a professional courtesy thing."

"Then I'll take Xena and Gabby and we'll go see Hercules," Joxer said grimly. "He's got pull." He threw the last of the fish on the cart and started pushing it towards the door.

"Hey. Don't you turn your back on me, mortal."

Joxer wasn't listening. Instead, he was thinking of how it would take almost two weeks to get back to Corinth and start looking for Hercules. Two weeks of Xena and Gabby going at it hammer and tongs, two weeks of people telling him all kinds of things he didn't need to know. Two weeks of Xena and her fingernails.

"Hey!"

He really, really hoped Hestia liked fish.

"Hey! I said STOP!"

Suddenly the air in front of him shimmered and thousands of beautiful glittering pink and purple sparkles wafted delicately to the ground. Joxer was momentarily distracted. "Wow, that was pretty."

"It wasn't pretty, it was a LIGHTNING BOLT."

"Oh. Well, it was pretty anyway."

"You-- I-- ooh!" Aphrodite suddenly materialized in front of the cart. "Stop it, stop it this instant, how dare you ignore me!" She actually stamped her foot, which fascinated Joxer. He thought people only stamped their feet in scrolls. "Blowing me off for Hestia? Taking my very own offerings out of my very own temple? Refusing my wise and all-knowing advice on love, which I am the expert on I may point out? Who do you think you are?"

That sounded like a trick question, and he took a minute to think about it.

"I'll be the laughing-stock of Olympus if this gets out!" Aphrodite was shaking so badly with rage that her hair grew slightly mussed. "Mortals going to Horseface Hestia to get my spells countered... What do you want?"

He thought that had been made clear. "Take the spell off."

"Fine. Done. Put my fish back now."

"And make sure you do that part where you fix it so they don't remember," he added. "'Cause if they do some people might get really embarrassed --" he absently rubbed the scratch on his neck --"or dead."

"Amnesia thing. Got it. Is that it? Are you done making demands? I suppose you want something, too."

He did not. He'd had enough profound humiliations in the last few hours without adding one of Aphrodite's specials on top of them. "No, just get rid of the curse and everything so things can get back to normal."

"'Normal'? With you around? Yeah, right." Aphrodite snorted. She made that gesture again, and vanished.

Oh, nuts, Joxer thought, and ran out of the temple and back through the agora, bumping off several people, and back to the inn where he had to stop in the courtyard and catch his breath, and Gabby and Xena came out the front door. No Aphrodite yet, apparently, because Gabby had her hands over her ears and was shouting, "I can't hear you! I'm not listening!", and Xena was carrying the pack easily on her shoulder and was saying, "EVERYBODY knows except you, Miss Incredible-Spiritual-Insight, my mother, and your sister, and Autolycus, and Meg, and Ares, and Aphrodite, and Cupid, and Hercules, and both Iolauses-- "

Suddenly Xena stopped talking, and Gabby stopped shouting, and they both froze in place for a moment. They looked around, looked at each other, looked at him. Glared at him, in tandem. As if he was to blame for something. He tried smiling. "Good morning," he said as cheerfully as possible.

"It is morning," Xena said after a pause.

Gabby looked around, frowning. "No, it's not. It was just almost noon. And weren't we just at the temple of-- "

"Aphrodite," Xena finished in chorus with her. "She's probably put some kind of spell on us again." She dropped the pack to the ground with a disgusted snort. "Admittedly, this is a long shot, but -- Joxer, do you know what's going on?"

"No."

Which was not true. He knew perfectly well what was going on. Aphrodite had lied to him. She'd said she would do the forgetting thing, but she hadn't, and now...

"I did exactly what you asked," said Aphrodite from behind him. He turned around once more and there she was, looking furious.

This is not working out the way I wanted it to, thought Joxer. "Liar," he accused.

"No way. I told you the truth. I promised they wouldn't remember -- I never promised you wouldn't. You don't care if they vent on you? Fine."

"But..."

"And that's just for starters." She shook a finger at him. "I am so going to mess you up for this, klutz-boy. Count on it. You are never gonna get the happy ending, capisce? Consider yourself to have blown it."

Blown it? How so? Xena and Gabby were done being mad at each other and were back to being mad at him. Everything was perfect. He'd done it! He felt a certain wild exultation, the kind of wild exultation he previously only thought available to heroes who had slain really big monsters with really big teeth. "Do you want to know the truth?" he asked.

"No!"

"The truth is, you're too late," he told her almost happily. "I've already blown it." She glared daggers. "Multiple times!"

Aphrodite looked as if she would say something, looked as if she had changed her mind and would say something else instead, looked as if she had changed her mind about that too, said "Oooh!", stamped her foot yet again, and disappeared.

Joxer looked at the empty space bemusedly for a few seconds before there was a sharp pain in his ear and Xena was dragging him back around to face her and Gabrielle. "Joxer, why aren't you sitting at the table like I told you, what have you been doing, and who were you just talking to?"

"Aphrodite."

"What did she say?"

"Nothing. Ow!" He winced. "She said she took the curse off you, if that's what you mean."

"What kind of curse was it?"

"I don't know."

"How long have we been under it?"

"I'm not sure."

"What happened between then and now?"

"I forget."

"Where did you get that scratch on your neck?"

"What neck?"

He tried smiling some more. This was a very bad idea. Xena glared at him for a long moment.

Finally she snorted and released him. "Try to stay out of trouble, okay? We're going to have enough problems on this quest without having to bail you out."

He shook himself for a moment, like a dog -- no, scratch that, he thought -- shook himself for a moment like something that shakes itself, and said, "Do you want me to stay behind?"

It was almost worth the possibility of their saying "yes" to see the expression on their faces. Xena looked at Gabby, Gabby looked at Xena, they looked at him, and they looked at each other again. Something funny happened at the corner of Xena's mouth, and she said, "Do you want to know the truth?"

He took a very deep breath. "Yes."

"No."

"No?" He felt faint.

"No, we don't want you to stay here," said Xena. She looked at Gabrielle and sighed theatrically.

Gabby rolled her eyes in an exaggerated loop towards the heavens. "We want you to come with us. Gods know why."

He still felt faint. No, giddy. "Because you can tell me anything? Because I can keep secrets? Because I'm such a wonderful person?"

"Because we need someone to carry the pack," Xena said with impeccable timing and strode off.

"Yeah. I can do that. No problem." He hoisted the bundle off the ground and almost went over backwards. "I can," he insisted to Gabby, who was doing that thing she did with her forehead whenever he was about to be in a whole lot of trouble. It was terribly cute and always worth the subsequent pain. "I'm very useful. I can carry the pack. I can sing. I learned this new song. Hercules taught it to me. It's from Eire and it has a hundred verses except I'm always forgetting how the forty-eighth one goes, and it starts out, 'One hundred amphorae of wine in the vault...'"

"Joxer, you sing, you're dead. You talk, you're dead. You breathe, you're dead. And what are you smiling about?"

"Do you want to know the truth?"

"No," said Gabrielle hotly.

"That's okay." Joxer grinned. "You can't handle the truth."