If it came down to it, if he had to lose one of them, because he could only worry about balancing two… He knew what the decision would be, and that was awful, but if there was one thing that Ares thought that he valued it was family. And he was going to make that choice. He knew that he would make that choice, because to him there was no other choice. Ares knew that if he had to do that, if he had to make that call, he would. Because it would be what was best. But they weren’t there yet. He was still juggling, he just knew that he wasn’t going to survive juggling forever. And he didn’t want to give Anicka the satisfaction of being right. That was what annoyed him the most. That she had been right, and that he was going to have to deal with the smug, ‘I told you so’ look on her face when he finally decided what it was that he wanted to do about that particular little detail. He knew that she was a liability. He knew that he had to think things through better when he was dealing with her, because she was annoyingly sensitive about things. More so than she had been before, and she had been nearly impossible to deal with then. If he hadn’t have wanted things to be a certain way, he wouldn’t have made himself the Minister for Magic. But he did want things a certain way, and she wasn’t going to continue to get away with fighting him on it. Ares knew that she wasn’t what he needed right now, but he also knew that he was going to be there for his sons, and for his step daughter. Because LJ was his now. Ares had adopted him, but he hadn’t adopted Besiana. She hadn’t wanted him to, and he hadn’t pushed.

What he had done was take her brother though, and so all of the boys were his. Nick and Orion were biologically his, and LJ was legally his. They were his kids. This was his family, and right now, he didn’t know if he was going to be able to keep that family all together when their mother was driving him insane. But that was a lesser detail to the fact that there were other things that he was supposed to do. Other things that he wanted to do. Wanted to focus on, right now, and those things didn’t involve trying to make sure that his wife was appeased. He didn’t want to be around her when she was in a terrible mood, and him inviting his sister over here was sure to put her in a terrible mood. It didn’t matter though, she could go back to her castle, and she could mope there, or she could get over it. Ares thought that it wouldn’t be quite that simple, and that he was going to have a fight waiting for him when they were finished, especially since he had asked Attie to close the door, but what he wanted to talk to his sister about was nothing that concerned his wife. He knew that she was the one that he needed to talk to about this, because no one else was going to get what he wanted to do. Anicka was going to tell him that it wasn’t legal, and she would be right, but he was the law, and he got to make the laws, so it was going to be legal now. And his wife was just going to not approve completely. So he was going to have to deal with that.

He thought that he was learning to balance all three of them well enough, though he did want Attie to feel like she was a part of this family. Or at least a part of the family that included Nika and the girls, and the rest of the pureblood family. That was the part of the family that she could fit into. But that would involve she and Anicka not ripping each other’s throats out if they were left in a room together for too long. Something that they could work on sooner or later, but he thought that that would perhaps have to be later. There were other things to worry about right now. Things that involved getting rid of the mudbloods that were littering their world. “It’s time. They bother me. They are everywhere, and they need to be no where. In the school, in the streets… I’m sick of seeing them. I’m sick of thinking about the fact that they are the reason our people were impoverished and imprisoned for so long. I’m sick of remembering that they are the reason I was in prison.” That was it, really, he was sick of thinking about Azkaban, and the fact that he had been there, and it had kept cropping up in his thoughts. Losing Nick because of Azkaban, the closer and closer that Orion got to being here. But Attie didn’t care about the sentimental part, and so he had refrained from letting that part even so much as show in his eyes. “Ah…” he nodded when she said voiced what she thought the problem would be, “See, that, my dear sister, is where you come in. I, for one, believe the wrath of Athena Finley is probably worse than the wrath of God.”

Ares was one of the few people that Athena would have hesitated before dissecting- except for maybe her father. But even with that thought she often tried to meticulously predict his patterns, she tried to see what he might be up to and debated different possibilities of his actions and reactions. There were often times where she was wrong; Ares tended to do whatever he wished, and his actions were often far more rash than she really would have preferred for them to be. But she knew that there were things that she had to simply deal with, and oftentimes that was it. Despite that vague flaw, Athena did tend to believe that her brother was nearing close to perfect. He had a plan, he generally did, and he knew what he was doing. She could disagree with his relationship courses as much as she wanted but she had to believe that he had an alternative motive. That didn't mean that he did, though. It was always possible that he was acting somewhat irrationally... But he couldn't have chosen Aurora because of some silly reason. She kept that idea close to her chest. It was clear that she disliked the witch. No, it was worse than that. She detested her, she hated everything that the halfblood stood for. But she had to trust Ares, at least a little bit. He was her blood, he was her brother. She knew more about him than his wife did.

His useless, ridiculous wife. She knew more about Ares than Aurora did, and she trusted him more than she could anyone else. He knew who to put first, and he had come to her with this new idea, this plan. He hadn't gone to anyone else, he had gone to her, he had thought that she might be the person to rely on. He was right, of course. She was the person that he needed to rely on, she was the only one who knew exactly what was good for him. Anicka couldn't quite handle something like this, not at all. The Ministry wasn't her area of expertise, it wasn't likely that she knew specifics of what on inside the place. Athena knew everything about the inner workings of the Ministry, she knew everything that was supposed to happen on a daily basis. At one point she had just studied everything out of boredom, but it had slowly turned into a game. A lot of the workers there were mindless little drones, doing whatever they wished. She remembered the day that it had all changed, the day that had surprised and shocked so many of the workers there. She had smiled, then, a wicked grin that had been taken out twice daily since. He had needed her help since then, Ares had needed someone on his side who understood what to do, who to charm... She was important, she had always been important...

Flattery shouldn't have worked so well on her, she knew that. Flattery shouldn't have made her bow to anyone's whims, she knew better than that. But half of the time that he spoke, there was truth there. Everyone should have been scared of her, she was a frightening beast of a woman. There was no reason for them to not be scared. And the mudbloods? They should be even more frightened of what she would do to them. Athena very rarely showed mercy and she certainly wasn't going to display any if they were under consideration. "And where do you suggest we put them? In the work camp? That would be a fitting source of revenge, would it not?" She smiled slowly, relishing in the thought so deeply that she looked upwards, briefly missing the end trail of her brother's thoughts. How lovely that would be, to see everyone shoved into that place, to see them suffer in the way that so many had. She wanted it to be personal, violent... "Most certainly worse. And I would be eager to show how volatile I can be."

He thought that he probably had the answer right in front of him. He was just not seeing it. There was no way to do this that wasn't going to make someone mad. There was no way to get around all of this without losing one of them. And he thought that he knew which one it was going to be. Losing any of them wasn't something that he wanted to do. Two sisters that had been there his entire life. And a wife that he had already lost too many times to count. He wasn't prepared to lose any of them. But that didn't mean that he wasn't going to. That didn't mean that he wasn't going to have to sacrifice something to make it work. and right now Ares didn't know what that was. He thought that there were any number of things that he was going to have to give up, and he wasn't prepared for an answer that meant that he was going to have to give up a part of himself. That wasn't something that he was going to ever be okay with. He had known that they had needed to be on top. That something had needed to change, but now that it had, he wasn't entirely sure which direction to go with it. There were any number of things that had to be adjusted before they came to any notable conclusions.

Ares was sure that there were going to be bumps in the road, and they had come across a few of them. He knew that his choice of wife had caused some problems in more than one way, and he didn't want to deal with that either. He knew that marrying her had been the right choice. She was the mother of his children after all. But that didn't mean that it had been the wisest decision politically. He could have been forgiven halfblood children if he wasn't the Minister. He could have been forgiven halfblood children if he hadn't have tried to take over a country that wasn't really his anyway. He had been raised here since he was two years old, but just like Anicka, he wasn't really English. His mother was English, but so was hers. They were Czech. They identified with that nationality, and her even more than he did. She was their princess. Ares figured that that was part of the reason that the thought that he had to prove himself here. He thought that they were going to have to deal with the purebloods that didn't think that he was good enough because his name wasn't English. He knew that they were dealing with challenges just from not being one of them. They were a body in and of itself, and Ares figured that getting through all of that was something that was going to take some figuring.

He didn't have the time to deal with it now though. He was the one that was in power right now, and if he was going to do something with it, that meant that he was going to have to do something productive. Something that they approved of. He thought that the angle to go with that was to focus on the mudbloods, and taking care of that problem. They didn't want him in their actual politics. They weren't going to let him into their politics. Because their politics were... Confusing, and complicated, and they were all related in ways that he didn't understand. They moved as a force. And if you messed with one of them there was always the possibility that another was going to get offended by what had happened, and you could start an internal war by sneezing if you weren't one of them. He didn't know how to handle that. He didn't know what he thought of joining them either. It would have been easier if he would have married one of them. If he would have married into one of those families then it would have been easier, but he hadn't, and now they were here. He shook his head at his sister's question, "Not exactly..." He handed her some of the paperwork that he had been working on. "More like slums... I want them in their own sector. No more infecting everyone else. They live in squalor like the trash they are."