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Achilles derives much from his mother: long, slender features that are almost uncanny in their beauty; hair that flows over his shoulders like liquid gold; eyes the color of the sea in all its forms. And though Patroclus has met her few times, he thinks he recognizes in her all the quirks of Achilles’ mannerisms that had gone unexplained until then. The tilt of Achilles’ head when he is confused is one she shares, though she the sea nymph is far more exaggerated in her movements, turning this way and that like Patroclus imagines dolphins must twist in the sea. While Patroclus had spoken — introducing himself, and paying his utmost respects to her as a young man first saying hello — she had stared at him with her lips drawn tight and her enrapturing eyes wide like an owl’s. This, too, is a staple of Achilles.
And of course, there is her affection. Achilles had always been prone to touch, ever since they were little together. Achilles would bump against him as they walked — a behavior that Patroclus initially found irritating, mocking, but learned to recognize for what it was — and sit close to him at dinnertime. As they became more intimate, so to speak, he would situate himself sometimes in Patroclus’s lap like a woman, or lay in between Patroclus’s legs with his back to Patroclus’s chest so they were touching almost everywhere. When they did get close, it still was not enough; Achilles would hold and touch and nuzzle, one more quirk of his Patroclus found strange and offputting until he had gotten used to it. Patroclus had accepted it all as strangeness Achilles developed as a result of childish whims, that no one would ever tell Achilles no were he to present his affection differently and thus it developed differently. But even this was his mother’s first, Patroclus realized, when he first saw them interact and Achilles’ skin was almost always touching hers somewhere. He laid atop her, and curled up against her, and held onto her arm and touched her palm and her fingers and her hair. Pleased, she returned every little gesture, bumping her nose to Achilles’ cheek and nuzzling their temples together.
It had been awkward years ago, when Patroclus still had not settled into his place at Phthia and feared deeply that Achilles’ strangeness would somehow rub off on him, and that he would not get away with it so freely as Achilles had. But increasingly with time, his identity became tied to Achilles, and Achilles’ opinion of him; if Achilles wished for affection, Patroclus would give it. In whatever facsimile of Achilles’ physicality he could muster, he would return every touch as Achilles had given it, a fact that clearly delighted Achilles to no end even if Achilles never quite seemed to catch onto the fact that Patroclus was doing it. Patroclus thinks Achilles still does not know— one would have to understand what is different, after all, in order to know they are being mimicked. Achilles does not think himself so different as he is, and Patroclus does not tell him. Who will make life harder for him for being different? No one will.
Least of all, their men. The Myrmidons prowl like wolves, wild and vicious along the countryside and coast; this is their given reputation. Their loyalty is not to a crown nor a nation, it is to Achilles alone — had once been to Peleus, and Aeacus before him. Achilles more than any in Peleus’s god-loved bloodline, however, matches their ferocity, exceeds it. It could be said that it is his divine blood, but then the gods themselves would have to answer to this, a burning begged question as to why few other demigods are so close to creatures and, sometimes, so far from man. Achilles’ mannerisms and affection were derived from his mother, his heroic and proper demeanor from his father. But this creature-like ferocity is all his own. It goes beyond either parent and beyond even the influence of Zeus, beyond the weavings of his prophecy. If the Myrmidons are a pack, then Achilles is the beast which leads it.
He is so often wolf-like himself, even, or rather more like a lion pacing in its cage. This of course is his nature, to pace and fret and fidget even with all his ferocity. He is an uncontainable thing in a mortal man’s body, a god in a mortal man’s body. Is this not his curse, Patroclus wonders, as much as it is his blessing? It is perhaps crude to say, but Achilles so often reminds Patroclus of their dogs when they’ve gone neglected from exercise a day or two, when a raid takes longer than expected or their forces are not so safe for a night. They pace as well, and fidget in their own way, claws and teeth and tucked tails and pinned back ears. They have their temper tantrums, their mood swings, their irritations.
So, too, does Achilles. He is so often like this, and he does not realize this either — that he is bored, that the battlefield does not sate him enough most days and even when it does, he returns to the encampment for his spoils to be part doled out amongst men who did not even half the work yet earn half the reward. Achilles speaks sometimes as if his anger is tied up in knots, inscrutable and indescribable, but it is not. Patroclus understands it, and thank the gods someone does.
There is… a concern. Achilles had been caged before by his adolescence and the absence of freedoms in it, caged by womanhood at Skyros. Achilles is caged now by the likes of Agamemnon’s foolishness, he is caged by an unsatisfactory war, he is caged even by the prophecy which serves to glorify him — the death it calls upon them dictates his life be short, and there is no one who does not grieve save for perhaps Peleus, who does not know that his son will never return home. These are all terrible in their own right, most of all Achilles’ ever-nearer doom —
But Patroclus fears, privately, that Achilles is caged as well by his mortality. Not by his own inevitable end, though he is certain Achilles must think about it, but the experience of life itself. Achilles loves it, this much is evident — song and poetry and exploration, the sea and the mountains both, the worlds in between. Achilles holds so much dear to him that Patroclus is certain he must be full to bursting with love for it all, an intensity of feeling so blinding that it is as if Aphrodite breathes through him at times. But he is the son of a shapeshifter, and ferocious, and heroic, and he is all of these at once and will never have the time to be them to their fullest. Even the natural end of his heroics in this place will guide him to a reward he can enjoy only in death, and though eternity in Elysium must be a prize to end all prizes, it is not life. And Achilles loves life.
He will die here, having won his glory in spirit and nothing but age in body. Patroclus watches him pace, listens to him ramble and rant, holds him close as they together attempt and fail to shed Achilles’ pent-up energy that the battlefield did not — and hopes that death is a freedom to him of its own sort. He will have the opportunity then, Patroclus thinks, to sing for all the rest of time. He will fight until he tires of it, and rest lazily until he tires of that, and shift and flow like water from passion to passion to passion like he cannot in his short, grief-filled cage of a life.
-ˋˏ ༻𖤓༺ ˎˊ-
This war has always been a question of value. It is Helen’s divine beauty, after all, which launched the sailing of all their great ships; this is the value placed upon her by gods and men alike, that she is worth the efforts of every man on every ship. After all, if she is not, would it not make all of Achaea look foolish for coming to her — to Menelaus’s — aid? He must be in possession of some great thing, that this theft would be so offensive to the whole of them. Even with the Oath of Tyndareus the cunning Odysseus had concocted at the inception of Helen’s marriage, it is clear that the Achaeans think themselves correct for all this effort — or at the very least, they did once, and cannot turn back now.
It is counterintuitive to say that Aphrodite-led Helen, having forsaken their marital bed (though many of the men like to imagine she is too dull and childlike to have known the consequences of such a betrayal), would hold a life equal to those of thousands of men on the battlefield: Achaeans and Trojans both, good men, many with wives and children of their own. In the face of Helen, what is their worth? How many men must die before it is too many men, before her value has been reached and exceeded, and the war is taking more than it will ever earn back?
Patroclus knows the answer. Wise as the gods in counsel, he is called, but wisdom does little in the face of action already taken. Perhaps were it a sacrifice — we will kill this many men, and the woman to whom Menelaus is wed will return — they would have spilled less blood and lost fewer Achaeans in the end. If only the kings and gods were so sensible in their cruelty, they would have no war at all, and then what would exist to glorify the heroes of their era? No, things must be done the way they are done instead. It is all too convenient for any other truth to reign.
This is war. And the promise of Helen’s return is supplemented by gold and sunken cost all at once. Any amount of loss can be justified now, Patroclus supposes.
Achilles among them.
What a bitter thought it is, that the alleged greatest of all Achaeans would be among the ranks of the dead, the worth of his life stacked against hers. It is not even her life they fight for— the Trojans will not kill her! It is her return and nothing more, it is Menelaus’s pride. Patroclus can understand his grief, can go so far as to empathize with it (how would he feel, were it Achilles taken from himself?), but it is that very empathy which brings him to loathe it. Achilles has not been taken from him, not by any Trojan man or woman. It was Helen that had been stolen away, and if Achilles is taken from him at all, it is by the hands of the Achaeans themselves for putting his life up as forfeit.
Yes, this is the agreement the suitors of Helen had made so many years ago; yes, the Trojans wish to make fools of them by stealing a wife and facing no consequence; yes, such deeds cannot go unpunished. Yes, Patroclus understands all of this and more, and that even simplifying it to this does not take into account the material benefit of it all. Not only the wealth, not only the glory, but control over the straits and the trading routes, and a people capable of rivaling them in the future wiped off of the face of Poseidon’s lands.
In spite of all this, Patroclus increasingly believes it is a reckless, ridiculous war. Any benefit is happenstance, the root of it remaining wounded and greedy on the part of the respective Atreides. Achilles laments this at his most miserable, and Patroclus does not disagree. It remains true that they fight for almost nothing Patroclus can bring himself to care about anymore, and that Patroclus will lose all he loves in the process.
And Patroclus watches him pace, watches him sing, watches him live while he can live — and acts as if he is unaffected by it all.
-ˋˏ ༻𖤓༺ ˎˊ-
Achilles weaves somewhat like the women do, though by hand alone. It is not only feminine in a sense but divine again, another borrowed gift from his mother who taught him. She must have seen how restless his hands were, Patroclus muses, and given him something to occupy them. He knows at least that she had never planned on having a husband or a child, and so perhaps it is also that she knew only how to be a daughter and a sister, and had never prepared to have a son. After all, most women would not dare teach their sons such a thing, lest the boys wander off and emasculate themselves before their fathers. But this is another quirk of Achilles' that no one comments on when they see it; he truly is invincible.
Achilles does not weave cloth, no, but he knots together nets and necklaces and bracelets, tossing some into the sea for his mother and her sisters and keeping the rest for himself. Patroclus even has seen Peleus wearing a knotted shell necklace around his neck once or twice, perhaps from Thetis’s days lingering in that palace of his, or perhaps from Achilles himself. Achilles’ passion is infectious in every sense — his music fills the air, his favorite colors decorate their camp, and shells and pearls make their way into the belongings of every loved one he’s collected. A whole jewelry box full of them for his mother, a bracelet for Phoinix, an anklet for Antilochus…
It is a giving nature, a curious and nymph-like nature which allows him to pick such decorations from the floor of the sea or the shore and to fashion them into such gifts. Patroclus has collected many of his own gifts from Achilles, naturally, and finds himself comforted by this rotation of them; it is not quite a mark of ownership, but there is a sense of belonging that comes with them, as symbolic of a tribe of Achilles as the Myrmidons’ stark black ant-like armor is. Achilles leaves his mark on Patroclus in more ways than even this, braiding gold into his hair or adorning his arms and wrist with cuffs, even earning chiton fabrics and belts from shared Achaean spoils solely to bring back to Patroclus and dress him in. It is difficult at times for Patroclus to feel so far away from the prince he once was when Achilles seems so intent on dressing him up like one.
Achilles adorns himself just as well, of course — though he reserves the shiniest of their treasures for Patroclus’s eyes only, when they are alone in Achilles’ tent and the harshness of the world cannot make jagged the softness of his presentation.
I am too easily drawn to the sea, Achilles had said once, when Patroclus had queried why so rarely wore such jewels out into the rest of the camp. He had laughed through his words as if he was saying something obvious, reminiscent in Patroclus’s mind of the carefree Helen whose wandering nature was so taken advantage of by the gods. I’d surely lose everything we’ve earned to the waves.
It is a pity, Patroclus had countered, that for you to be a more beautifully adorned man, you must be a less responsible one.
This is the game they play. Beautiful, Patroclus calls him, and Achilles cannot say it back. Each time they come together, only one of them claims the title of lover or beloved, of beauty or pursuer. And though Achilles has spoken highly, spoken lovingly of Patroclus’s virtues in the past, the impact is understood and immediate. Achilles surrenders his words, hanging them up for the sake of receiving attention in their stead; by the slight squint of his eyes and the smile he barely conceals, he loves to be such a thing as a beloved.
He is… womanly, despite being the pinnacle of what any man of Achaea might wish himself to be. The greatest of all Achaeans: it has always been said that he would make a handsome and fine husband, mild-mannered and reasonable as he is, fundamentally good in both body and heart. It is true, this, that Achilles would probably have been a fine husband to Deidamia had he not been taken for war, and it is true as well that he could be a fine husband to any Trojan woman who might strike his fancy.
Shamefully, Patroclus thinks this sometimes: he can also be like a wife. If ever Patroclus’s musings cause him to slide into a role so easy to fill, into that of a husband rather than an attendant - doting and protective - Achilles pretends not to notice.
His Achilles, his most loving Achilles, perhaps the man of the most multitudes any man has ever been: like the Myrmidons in dress at times, covered in dark and flowing fabrics almost as if he is Death itself roaming their encampment; otherwise shining like bronze in the battlefield, a reflection of sun in the darkness of war with the comet-falling tips of his spears arcing through the air; or even something plainer and just as beautiful, draped in virginal white and little else as he wades through the seafoam or cat-naps in green grass fields.
The perfect man, some hidden gem of a woman. A warrior and weaver, boastful yet timid, bursting with life at the perpetual edge of his death. He is a star on the verge of implosion.
If only he could stay like this always, indefinitely falling but never to hit the ground. Living so brightly, as if he might burn out in the very next moment — moment after moment after moment, for all the rest of time. It is not right, the story they will tell of Achilles. This man, who contains more complexity in an inch of golden hair than any other man might hope to achieve in all his life, is truly fated to relegate himself to one corpse amongst many? That is his end?
Patroclus’s thoughts sometimes do a disservice to Achilles. How many warriors, after all, would shave decades off their own lives to earn such glory as that which has been promised to him?
And yet—
-ˋˏ ༻𖤓༺ ˎˊ-
“I do not wish for you to die,” Patroclus tells him one day, sudden-spoken enough in the stillness of their coexistence that half-sleeping Achilles jolts at the sound of his voice. There is a moment of quiet as they lay, and Patroclus briefly wonders if he has spoken at all or merely imagined it. But he feels movement in his arms as Achilles pulls away from him, and watches Achilles’ silhouette sit up, blanketed in the hazy storm-darkness of the tent like a shade roiling in the Styx.
They have done a wonderful job of not speaking of this. How many long years has it been? Seven, nearing eight? To weep now would dishonor Achilles, would devalue all the glory he’s earned and yet to earn. All Achilles’ efforts, reduced to what? Fodder for Patroclus’s misery? Woe, that he would do such a thing to his love, who has shared with him all this glory — but he can do nothing else. The grief of the years weighs on him, has weighed on him for far longer than either of them thought it ever would have to. They did not come here to wage war for a decade strong, they came to win it, and Achilles had wanted to win it so long ago.
Is Patroclus the only one who is grateful that they did not? Between the two of them, is he the only one who almost yearns for ten more years of war, and ten after that, again and again until Achilles is just as likely to be sent softly to the ferryman as he is to be sent plunging violent onto his boat?
He knows now that Achilles has heard him, and sits up himself, though he tries to appear as if Achilles’ silence does not unsettle him; he swings his legs over the edge of the cot, making to light the brazier in the room so they might speak in more proper lighting. Achilles makes noise behind him even as he does not respond: the clink of a water vessel, the dry swallow of his throat. His breaths are slow, Patroclus can hear, and gently cut through with a yawn.
Patroclus is no stranger to shame. He had learned it first in his implication of murder as a child, or worse, as a poor sportsman and volatile man-to-be. He had known it on the trip to Phthia, and had contended with it like a beast weighing on his chest each morning as he woke in a palace he did not recognize amidst a family that was not his.
Warrior that he is, he had wrangled it all more or less into submission. Let his past not define his future, let his actions be his own for all his life. He had reached a point, however long it had taken him, where the fearful child he was could not live the life he was reaching for. He had to grow around the boy, and so he did. He did.
… Though it would be dishonest to say he had come to such a feeling all his own. It was in part a mimicry of Achilles’ own shamelessness that allowed him such a thing as self-forgiveness, and in this way, Achilles had already begun to make his life worth living before it had ever been about Achilles at all.
Yet it is about Achilles, now. Patroclus could devote less of himself to Achilles and Achilles would be no less happy for it, but he cannot keep from devoting all himself; it is like being in worship to a god and in service to a king all at once, though Achilles is the most benevolent of either category, living in the skin of something so simple and loving as a good man. Achilles lives in the moment, and Patroclus had to learn to do the same, desperate as he was to join Achilles in a shared life, however brief.
What becomes of him when Achilles’ life ends, and his does not? He had thought of it when they were young, and thought of it more when they went to war. It is never far from his thoughts now, when he is certain — he is certain! — that he will have Achilles to hold for only so much longer.
He was only ever going to be able to shoulder so much of it. He can only hold so much grief in his heart before it spills out of him, barely restrained. He supposes that is what this is: a lack of restraint, a lack of virtue. Dishonor. But it is truth, and Patroclus holds tight to that virtue alone even as the tears that Achilles loves to poke fun at threaten to spill from his eyes.
A volatile man, he thinks again. He has fought against his fate all this time, and for what? He is the man his child self had made of him.
He sucks in a miserable breath as he turns to face Achilles again, and finds that Achilles is not even looking at him. His eyes are trained to the wrinkles in the bedsheets as he sets his water vessel — a cute thing, goblet-like with the face and ears of a dog on one side — back onto the short tripod next to their cot. He stays like that, blinking sleep away from himself, for long enough that Patroclus thinks they may never get around to having this conversation at all. And perhaps it is for the best that Achilles does not reward his impulsivity.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Achilles asks softly, breaking the silence of Patroclus’s anticipation. And what is he meant to say in response to that? He could never deny Achilles a thing, was never anything but weak to his requests.
“Anything,” Patroclus answers.
“I do not wish to die, either.”
I do not wish to die.
It harkens back to Achilles when Patroclus had first laid eyes on him, a mere boy hanging off Phoinix’s chiton, or at the very least, never more than a room away from him, and still with wild eyes searching to find him. Patroclus had been a more seasoned killer as a child — how laughable a thought now, when both of them are so stained with blood — and more serious, more jaded and irritable in the aftermath of his great dishonor. Achilles had seemed so simple to him then. Patroclus, a prince, was meant to play attendant to this mere boy?
Now he understands. Now he finds it worth Clysonymus’s valiant sacrifice, and would sacrifice his own royal blood a thousand times over in return for Achilles’ company. He had taken it upon himself to care for Achilles, to shield all his innocence and happiness. But he could not manage it. Who could? Achilles has earned a jadedness himself, a wisdom of his own, in the way only a dying man could. Patroclus could not, cannot, keep him from this. And if Achilles did not have to die for it, then killing would be enough to bring it to his heart anyway.
This, though… This is not Achilles’ old, wounded heart. No, it is that boy that Patroclus had fought for when he was young — Achilles like this is not layered, not mature, not in valiant pursuit of honoring their cause. He is childish! He is childish this way, as Patroclus had been childish for speaking at all. Because only children rebel so fiercely in the name of what must be. Grown men would accept it, as they have been quietly accepting it for so long now; isn't that right? Yet here they are, heartbroken and wounded and hungry for life as children are.
Poor questions have been asked from the moment this war started: what is one man’s value? What is he in Helen’s shadow, whose beauty stretches across lands? But there is one question no one has answered, a question that will not be answered until Achilles is gone as he was prophesied to go. What is Patroclus in the shadow of Achilles?
He weeps. The feeling scrapes through him like hot coals in a flame, wracking his body with tremors — he feels the sobs rise in his throat and tear through as if a spearhead of feeling. He cannot help it, and there again is the volatility, and there again is the shame, and the grief above all else.
Achilles’ touch cuts through the feeling, gentle hands on shaking arms. Achilles tries desperately to meet his eyes, but Patroclus hangs his head woefully through his hot tears. The silhouette of Achilles’ body moves ever-nearer, and Patroclus can see in his periphery that it has lost all its nymph-like fluidity, instead embodying a painfully human sort of jerkiness in its motion. Still, his touch is feather-light on Patroclus’s skin, palms of his hands soothing the sides of Patroclus’s face and neck, lips pressing the lightest of kisses to his temple.
This is a gentleness he has not seen Achilles reserve for anyone else in the world, and Patroclus — shamefully still, the inescapable feeling that it is! — forsakes it. Patroclus must be the only man alive who has ever watched how Achilles’ brows knit together in worry, how his eyes widen and soften both. No one else has felt Achilles’ hands on their skin like this, not like this, and it unleashes something fierce in Patroclus. Protective and mournful.
Achilles will die here. Achilles will die here — and distantly, as he weeps in Achilles’ gentle arms, he wonders why the gods had to craft such a man as this to be their sacrifical lamb. But no, he knows. He understands. Were Achilles any less capable of such virtues, he would be no man worthy of the honor promised to him. His love surpasses what is mortal, just as his violence does; this is his balance, his curse, that he is everything. To Patroclus, he is everything.
A faint smile lives on Achilles’ lips, hollow and resigned. He strokes the nape of Patroclus’s neck, and the shame only worsens as Patroclus reckons with the fact that he had already spoken his grief, and now he takes comfort for it. From the very man who is dying, Patroclus steals all this comfort and cannot find it in himself to give it back. He is weakened under such a hold, and shaken by Achilles’ admission, and desperate to claw and hack at the woven tapestry of the Fates — but Achilles’ thread of life cannot be lengthened.
Achilles, for all he had admitted, seems so distant from it all. Patroclus is practically enveloped in him, and still it feels as if not a drop of the remorse Patroclus drowns in has so much as wet Achilles’ skin.
“I’m sorry,” Patroclus chokes out, because it is all he can say. He cannot beg for them to go. Achilles will not go. He cannot curse the gods, for it is the gods who bestow upon Achilles this hollow glory. He cannot say anything but this, that he is sorry, that he wishes he were stronger than this, that he is acting the part of a child like this. He looks weak, and worse than weakness is weakness before Achilles, who — for all his humored chiding — always accepts it gracefully, and with a kindness that at times embarrasses Patroclus for needing it. “I am sorry, Achilles, forgive me.”
Achilles merely shushes him, soothing him like a panicked animal. There are no jokes now, there is no light chiding. He does not query what makes tears fall from Patroclus’s eyes like a girl’s, or poke fun at Patroclus for how small his gasps for breath make him look. There is only the residual kindness, for Patroclus has berated himself enough, and Achilles never makes a target of men already so weak — not his own men, at least, and certainly not Patroclus.
“There is nothing to forgive,” Achilles promises him. His shining Achilles, most beloved above all. No one has ever seen him so kind, but conversely, who has been so kind to Patroclus? He will never have this again. Achilles is unmatched in all things, and he will be unmatched for all eternity as a dear friend, as a partner, as family.
Patroclus will simply never be whole again. He will die with Achilles, and every moment of his half-life thereafter will be spent yearning to return to him. There is no other way it could go for them, is there? This is their life, this is their fate. And Patroclus, lovesick fool that he is, he is grateful for it all.
“Love,” he speaks through a shuddering gasp. “Love, my love—“
“I’m here,” Achilles assures.
“For how much longer? For how much longer are you—?”
“For long enough.” Achilles strokes a knuckle along the side of his jaw, tucking his knuckle into the soft flesh underneath Patroclus’s chin to tilt his head back up. Patroclus feels disgusting like this, tear-stained and swollen and visibly miserable, but he moves willingly to Achilles’ whims.
Achilles catches his lips in a kiss, quick and chaste, before enveloping him completely in his arms. How sweet an embrace, how loving, and still Patroclus fights to think of anything save for many more embraces like these he will get to savor. He wraps his arms around Achilles’ middle, pulling Achilles heavily into his own lap and tucking his face pathetically against the crook of Achilles’ neck. His sobs only worsen, but Achilles shows no signs that he minds, carding fingers through Patroclus’s hair as he settles into their hold.
“We have all the time in the world,” Achilles whispers, though Patroclus — through his cries — almost does not hear it.
-ˋˏ ༻𖤓༺ ˎˊ-
Patroclus’s weeping slows to a defeated end, and after a handful of hushed words and exchanged kisses, Achilles falls asleep in his arms. He does not mind it, cannot bring himself to; he will miss this just as much as anything else, being the one above all to hold Achilles through his most tender moments. But he cannot rest himself.
He is heavy with grief still, but somehow, there is a levity to it now. He has aired this grief, and his most loving Achilles has met him in the darkness of it. He is no selfish fool for wishing Achilles to a long life, he is simply a lover of Achilles. They are sometimes victims of the tapestry of the Fates and the plans of the gods, but other times, they are simply men at war, and they grieve almost as any other man at war might grieve for a comrade. Their love may be the strongest, and Achilles’ death may be the most set of all, but their uniqueness is built on familiar feelings. It is not bearable, and Patroclus would be kidding himself to think it… but in moments like these, it is not so all-encompassing.
Achilles breathes soft in his arms, and Patroclus swears he can hear Helios’s chariot stutter to a stop in the morning so that they may have their own small eternity here. Achilles always was loved by the gods in that way, and Patroclus supposes he is sometimes loved alongside him. Their fates may be cruel, but their days here have been comfortable, and this morning feels especially gentle. A breeze slips through the structure of their tent, and when the sun finally does rise, the light shines golden through the fabric in a way that makes Achilles’ features shine.
At some point, Achilles wakes, though he makes no efforts to pull himself free from Patroclus’s grasp. His breathing shifts, and he moves to burrow himself closer — and that is all for a long, peaceful time.
“I think,” he starts quietly, cutting through the silence with a sleep-hoarse voice. There is a strange levity to it. At first, Patroclus thinks this all feels dream-like, but then he catches it: the way Achilles’ gaze is not so focused, and the lightness of his words is spoken, not merely heard. Patroclus himself is painfully lucid, and Achilles is the one who dreams, as if he is speaking and seeing through a fog. He is like this sometimes after they’ve overexerted themselves, or when his mind is particularly exhausted. It has always been something enough rest could remedy, but he is rested now. Patroclus realizes he does not know what Achilles had thought last night, or what burdens aside from Patroclus himself he’d had to shoulder — and he fears asking, lest he worsen Achilles’ overtired state. “I think, save for the kings and watchmen, no one is so attentive this early in the morning.”
Patroclus’s mind struggles to fit this piece into the chaotic puzzle of their night, but Achilles, for all that he claims he does not care to be understood by the men around him, has always wanted Patroclus to see him. To hear his words for what they mean, and not simply for what they sound like — it is an attention he wants from Patroclus only, Patroclus has found, and he can do nothing but comply to the best of his ability. This is greater than him, though — whatever is going on in Achilles’ mind — and so he pulls away ever so slightly to try and gleam meaning from Achilles’ expression. He keeps quiet as well, knowing that Achilles will speak to fill the silence as his hawk-sharp eyes watch Patroclus for signs of understanding.
Achilles’ head tilts down and ever so slightly to the side, that sharp gaze of his watching Patroclus indirectly.
“We could go for a walk,” he says. He shifts in Patroclus’s hold to dote on him with sweet touches to the side of his face, gently touching his forehead to Patroclus’s as if he is a cat butting heads with another. Still, his voice is distant, almost hesitant. “You can feel the air, can’t you? It is warmer than it has been in so many months.”
It is funny, sometimes, that Achilles is capable of treating him like this; amusing twofold, in the sense that Achilles of all people could be so cautious at all. Patroclus is gentle, yes, but not so easily frightened away or made unsettled. This much, everyone knows, and Achilles knows it best of all — so his trepidation must be for a different reason than to preserve Patroclus’s comfort, and Patroclus thinks he understands it. He is not the only one wounded by their reality.
I do not wish to die. Achilles, too, must feel small in the face of their fate today.
“The other kings will be calling for you soon,” Patroclus argues, though it is barely an argument.
“So?” Achilles retorts, and this is what Patroclus had expected of him: always disarming his words with no effort at all. So what? So nothing. So Achilles wishes to walk anyway, far from the prying eyes of Agamemnon or the honeyed words of Odysseus. They will make themselves scarce from Menelaus’s woundedness and Ajax’s overbearing morning energy, they will be absent from Diomedes’ strategic chatter, they will find another time for Teucer’s quiet agreeableness. They have a place among these men, yes, but they will not be taking this place today.
Patroclus nods in response, and though it takes considerable effort, he peels himself from Achilles for the purpose of dressing and rising. They quietly go through some facsimile of a morning routine, speaking quietly of weather and livestock and crops, until Achilles has deemed them ready and takes the lead out of their tent.
It is a short walk to make it to shores far enough from the Achaean encampment that the noise is muffled by distance, and though Achilles is so prone to such nymph-like pastimes as play when they are alone together like this, he is pensive this morning. He bumps Patroclus’s shoulder as they stroll along quietly, reaches out to twine their pinkies together like they are boys again. Patroclus, numbed somewhat by all the effort he’d spent feeling the night prior, follows along — helpless to Achilles’ whims as always.
Achilles takes him to the sea’s edge, drags him in until they are at their knees and then pulls away from him, wading out into the ocean and calling for Patroclus to throw this and that his way, that he might retrieve it like a dog. Then he dips below the surface to search for shells, and returns to Patroclus holding his favorites in his splayed palms… then pulls Patroclus along again, still so close to the sea but dragged onto the shore now, and sits down with him in the golden light of Helios’s still-mercifully-slow ascent into the sky. Patroclus finds himself smiling as Achilles pushes him down to lay, arranging his body parts this way and that as if he is some kind of pile of cushions before laying comfortably beside him.
Achilles’ hair spills out onto the sand, and he speaks but Patroclus does not hear words. It is some story, or some drawn-out joke, and Patroclus feels tears burning at the backs of his eyes again as Achilles draws smiles and laughter from him anew. He is shining, brighter than the sun itself. Of course it would be him to pull Patroclus from his darkness.
Patroclus watches as Achilles rolls onto his back, staring up into the sky like he can still see the stars through the veil of light.
“I will live forever,” he says suddenly, startling Patroclus to attention. “In a manner of speaking, I will do it. You know this. But when my body dies, and my shade goes to rest in the halls of Hades… they will deliver you to me in Elysium like they do with men’s wives.”
The thought grips Patroclus’s heart. They will not, will they? It is as Achilles said, that this is a kindness reserved for wives, for family. But Achilles makes the impossible seem possible, and the gods so cherish him…
“Not that they will need to,” Achilles continues. “You will be honored for your own deeds, if the gods know anything at all. And we will be together there, where there is no death save for that which brings men to that place.”
Patroclus takes in a slow breath, watching the rise and fall of Achilles’ chest as Achilles’ perfect lips curve around his words in profile. He is taken by it, by this divine-given beauty; he feels less judgmental of Menelaus than he sometimes can be, in moments such as this one. He understands what it feels like to hold such a beauty that you would make yourself a passive, following fool for it. He is this passive, following fool as Achilles ties neatly all his concerns, or at least makes an attempt to. They are Achilles’ worries as well, they must be, for Achilles to have such weighted thoughts to share.
“We will be together.” Achilles repeats it, more firmly this time, as he reaches to take Patroclus’s hand in his own. “Won’t we?”
Patroclus stares dumbly, wondering now who it is Achilles is trying to reassure with the words. But he squeezes Achilles’ hand, and he nods though he knows Achilles will not see it.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes.”
Achilles’ answering smile is bright as anything. Something like giddiness blossoms across Achilles’ features as a tremor wracks through his body, like he is shaking off all the woes that had led him to such a query. Then he closes his eyes, lets his smile fall away to something more easy, something softer.
“Good,” he says with a finality, and Patroclus clings to it. Clings to him. So trusting of Achilles, Patroclus is, he does not care to pick apart all the maybes and the what-ifs. Not now. He will do it another day, a worse day.
But this morning will last forever, and Achilles will live through it all as they barrel toward an end that will never come.