Chapter Text
I am, despite what the world will remember of me, a strong warrior. I know how to stand, shields locked in a line, I know how to break through and cut down my enemies. I am good at it. I would have to be; growing up beside Achilles, I had only him to compare myself to, and so I trained harder, longer, more diligently than anyone else, just so as not to fall too helplessly behind. I had the great Chiron for a teacher, I had the Trojan War as my testing ground. It is only compared to my far more famous companion that I fall short in matters of combat.
Liking the fight— that is a different matter. I have never been at peace with taking a life, with what a man must do for honor, for glory, in this world of ours. I came to Troy for Achilles, I came to Troy because of the promise of my much younger self, I came because it was the only path laid out for me, but every day I joined my fellow Greeks in the siege of this mighty city, I thought about the men I would face, the men who would fall to my spear, to the swords and spears and arrows of my fellows, and how those men had just as little reason to hate us as I did to hate them.
What was Helen to me? What was Menelaus’s grief, his need, his anger, to me?
I resented the circumstances that led me to it, but each and every day, for those first interminable months of war, I donned my armor and hefted a deadly weapon in my hand and I went out to the field of battle alongside the Myrmidons.
I did quite well. I was admired by those who bothered to notice me. And I had the greatest fighter the world had ever known nearby, and extremely motivated to keep me safe.
I never really worried that anything would happen to me. I had far greater reason to worry about Achilles.
***
It is a hot day, and my armor is heavy. My face is drenched in sweat, hair sticking to my forehead under my helm. I am in line with the Myrmidons, shored up by allies on either side, pressing against the attacking forces of the Trojans. We are past those earliest days of skirmishing, of initial raids; we have learned each other, these two armies, we have learned the making of one another, and we know that the only way anything will ever change is if we continue to push, and claw, and earn every inch of ground given. It is exhausting. I wonder how long the war will go, even as I dread what the coming weeks and months will take from me.
As long as I am still here, on this battlefield, fighting against Trojans, it means Achilles is still here, doing the same. This, therefore, as much as I dread the violence of it, is what I must do to endure.
I have killed two men today for certain, and wounded many more. I have saved the lives of my compatriots in doing so, and yet even this justification does not prevent the sour dread pooling in my stomach. I will think of them tonight, when the fog of battle has lifted. I will wonder who they were, and who in this world loved them best.
My melancholy does not distract me— I am focused, I am doing what I came here to do. Something must happen that I can’t see, over on the edge of the Greek line, some skirmish that allows the Trojans to break through, hitting hard at some of our number— I am back far enough to see Odysseus himself forced into a hasty and inelegant retreat with a number of his men, but they seem to make it back fast enough to avoid catastrophe. I think about moving that way, shoring up the line and assisting in our ally’s strategic retreat, but I am also conscious of my own men, Achilles’s men, the Myrmidons, and our own solid position on the battlefield.
There is a single moment, where I hesitate between turning to the right and planting my feet. There is a single moment, and sometimes that is all these things take.
“Patroclus!”
My name rings out unnaturally loud over the chaos of battle, shouted almost as an admonition, furious and hoarse— a voice I know better than my own, distorted by some unrecognizable emotion.
Somehow I know what it means. Somehow I hear it and I feel the wind resistance at my back; somehow I’m quick enough, I guess correctly, ducking and turning so that the Trojan warrior who had managed to break through the line only hits me with the harmless shaft of his spear, clanging against my armor. And then I’m under his guard and my own spear is up and through his stomach, the resistance of flesh giving way under the sharp unforgiving metal tip, a grunt of surprise, and the man, nameless to me, is falling to the ground at my feet.
Achilles is by my side before the body has even finished settling to the ground. His hand grips at my arm, too rough, jostling me so I nearly lose my balance. He raises his helm so I can see his face. “Are you—”
“I am uninjured,” I say, before he can finish asking. It hurts to look at him, his face splattered with the blood of those Trojans foolish enough to get in his way, his hair plastered to his forehead by his own sweat and by the gore of men who never stood a chance. It hurts to look at him but of course I do look at him; I cannot look anywhere else. There, in the midst of continuing battle, we look at one another.
I know we’re thinking the same thing, the thought passing between us like an alternate future, a horror that did not come to pass– if my reflexes had not been quick enough, if my training had not come to my aid, if I had been merely a second slower— Achilles would not have been there fast enough to save me.
***
There is not an opportunity to speak of it until much later that night— the fight rages on, and Achilles is my shadow for the remainder of it, picking off anybody who comes even moderately close to our position, darting back to me after each corpse has slipped off of his spear to become another inanimate part of the landscape on which we fight.
It would be annoying, maybe, were I the type to crave combat myself— another man, another proper Greek with honor to uphold, would accuse the great Aristos Achaion of stealing my chance for glory. As it is, I allow him to guard me without protest, even though I know we are secure, well back from the front of the line.
He is anxious over the near-miss, and in truth so am I. I had never before felt true mortal terror in fighting the Trojans. I am nothing compared to Achilles when it comes to fighting, but thanks to training by his side, I am better than almost any other who might challenge me. But in war, all it takes is a moment, a single mistake, or a bit of luck, to turn the tide against you. Today might have been my time to fall, inglorious and random and without warning. Merely being the beloved of Achilles would not have spared me such a fate.
When we are finally alone together that night, he holds me with a degree of tenderness beyond even the usual, kisses against the back of my neck as he wraps his arms around me. We are clothed, our embrace nearly chaste enough to be that of brothers; sometimes after a day of fighting we come home with the blood rushing through our bodies, everything inside of us aching with need, the sounds of our passion muffled by the press of lips into skin, fingers clawing, pulling each other closer, closer, never close enough— but the fear of the day has cooled our ardor into something shakier, softer, less pleasure and more dread.
“I must ask something of you,” Achilles says into the quiet of the night.
I already know what he will say, and I am not sure how to feel about it. “You don’t want me to fight.”
“I have no right to ask it,” Achilles says, and I almost laugh. Surely he knows he could ask anything of me and I would do it without question.
“You do, really,” I remind him gently. I shift, thinking to turn over so I can see his face, but his arms tighten around me as if he is afraid I’ll leave. “I’m an ex-prince without a people. I am under your command. Your soldier, your man. If you command me not to fight—”
“I do not command it,” Achilles says, and I regret my attempt at levity instantly. His voice is choked with dismay. “You are not— I make no demands on you, surely you know that.”
“I do. I’m sorry, I do.”
“I ask it not as a prince or a commander, I ask it as a man. The man I am only when it is us two, together. I do not think I’ve ever known such fear as I knew today.”
“I was unharmed.”
“You might not have been.”
“That’s been true every day of this war thus far.”
“I—” Achilles pauses, thinks through his words before he speaks them. Some people think him taciturn, even rude, but I know it to be precision, thoughtfulness. He does not speak for no reason, he only speaks what he means. “I believed myself great enough to stop any harm from coming to you. That belief has been shaken today. It is not that I doubt your own ability, Patroclus. You are a worthy companion in battle as you are in all things.”
This compliment only means anything to me because I know he wants it to reassure me, and I know he speaks true. I have no pride when it comes to combat expertise, and I know my skill in these matters is not why he loves me to begin with.
“But I am not the child of a god,” I say gently. “I am as worthy a fighter as any other mortal man, but no mortal man can expect to be lucky forever.”
He doesn’t answer me at once, and I do not need him to. I spoke the words so he wouldn’t have to justify himself to me. To make it easier on him. Sometimes I think that is my real purpose here on this earth. To make things easier for Achilles. It is a duty I cherish, a duty I would take on with or without Achilles’s permission.
“I need you safe,” he says at last. “I need it more than I need anything else.”
This time when I try to turn around in the circle of his arms, he lets me. His eyes are troubled, bright lights in the hushed darkness. “I will stay back. I won’t fight.” He sighs in relief at my words, leaning in to kiss me, but I pull back just slightly, forestalling him. “Achilles. Promise you will not go after Hector. Promise me you will remember that you are not infallible.”
Again, the thoughtful pause. The outcome of this war, the outcome for Achilles, is already ordained, and we are not foolish enough to think we can prevent it entirely. I came here knowing that, and knowing it would destroy me. “I intend to steal as much time from my fate as is possible,” Achilles says. “And I intend to give every moment of that stolen time to you.”
I kiss him then, and he melts into me, and we are together, safe and whole and young and utterly, worshipfully devoted to one another. It is like flying, to have him touching me. It is an eternity, of sorts.
It is enough.
***
We never could have imagined how far that stolen time would stretch. The life we build with each other over the years is a life not of peace but of surprising joy, proof of the strength of our attachment. How else can I explain that I fall asleep happy every night, even with the carnage and uncertainty that surrounds us?
And it is not only Achilles. It is my work with the wounded, the skills I’d learned from Chiron put to the test, used to save lives, and, when saving them is impossible, used to comfort the dying. It is wrenching work, and exhausting; I often return to our tent more run down and physically worn than the fighting men, but it is a purpose of which I am very proud. The men come to know and trust me, to admire me for who I am and not who I know, and while pride has never been a guiding force in my life the way it is for so many others, I do feel a certain sense of accomplishment for my place in the camp. I am not derided for choosing not to fight. I am needed, and liked.
Then there are the women, Briseis and the others Achilles takes at my request, and they too like me, need me, view me as their protector and their friend. Achilles does not befriend them for the most part, but he does see that they are cared for, and they come to respect him even through their lingering fear. With Briseis, there will always be a discomfort between them I cannot smooth away. Briseis knows that Achilles only saved her for my sake, and Achilles knows I care for her in a way deeper than responsibility. Friendship is difficult for him, he does not know how to care about someone more than he does the men who serve him, but less than he cares for me.
But still, the little inconsistencies, the small moments of tension, are worth it for the joy of our time together. It feels, almost, like an ordinary life– the only life the two of us have known as adult men is here, living out of tents and in the bustle of a full war camp, Achilles going off to fight or raid every day like some men must go out to the fields to farm, or to their workshops to build furniture, or their storefronts to sell goods. He comes home from his days of bloody, exhausting work, and I kiss him as if we’ve been apart for years, and he clutches me to him like what he’d told me that night after our near miss is true— nothing could be more important to him than me.
We are alone together late one evening; I have helped Achilles to undress and I am massaging a poultice into the muscles of his back, something to help him release the tension of a long day. He insists he is not in need of my nursing but every time I bully him into lying still long enough to administer the massage, he melts entirely. Sometimes I put him to sleep with the gentle touch of my hands, and then I curl up beside him, at peace beside the warmth of his slumbering body. But sometimes, more often, he allows me the indulgence of the massage for as long as he can stand it and then flips around, grabs me, rolls until he is on top of me, pushing my clothing out of the way with impatient hands. We press our mouths together to swallow the sound of one another’s groaning passions, and remain tangled up in one another long into the night.
I think, perhaps, this night would have gone much the same as usual, if not for the interruption.
To give Thetis credit, loath as I am to do so, she does not materialize into the tent and pull Achilles out of my arms. In fact, she waits outside quite politely as one of the men on duty to patrol the edges of our campgrounds rustles at the tentflaps, a nervous tremor of a voice calling in to interrupt or solitude. “Prince Achilles, you have— a visitor.”
“Tell him I am unavailable,” Achilles says; his words are slurred from the slow, syrupy pleasure of my hands working down the length of his spine, skin shining from the oils I’ve rubbed into his skin.
“I’m not certain it would be wise to keep her waiting,” the man says.
And that’s when it occurs to me that the nerves in his voice aren’t due to speaking with Achilles the legendary warrior, but rather due to whatever petrifying experience he’s been compelled to endure upon the unannounced arrival of a literal goddess.
“Oh,” I say, and I sit back and move away from Achilles, reaching for a cloth to wipe my oily hands.
“Mmph,” Achilles says in displeasure, but he rolls over as well, reaching for his clothes. He’s hard, and so am I, our bodies warmed and ready for one another, and we look at each other in rueful regret for a moment as we prepare ourselves to receive our visitor.
Achilles’s visitor, really. I’m an interloper as far as Thetis is concerned, and the first thing she does when she enters the tent is suggest none too gently that perhaps I should leave her and her son to speak alone.
Achilles, my stubborn, honorable man, tells his mother in no uncertain terms that there is nothing she could tell him that he wouldn’t have me know as well. As always, he speaks to his mother with respect, honoring the sacrifice of her pain, the gift of his life. I am the one thing about which they will never agree, and even in my fear of Thetis, I find myself standing a little taller, prideful of my place at his side.
“Very well,” Thetis says, flicking her eyes over me once, where I’m standing a few feet back from Achilles, and then focusing her attention on the only person in this tent that matters to her. “I come with news.”
“News from the gods,” Achilles says, not quite a question. What else could it be? What news would she have concerning Achilles, that we could not have discovered from a more mundane source?
“A prophecy,” she says.
I try not to let my fear show on my face, but neither of them are looking at me anyway.
“Tell me,” Achilles says, in an impressively convincing tone of calm.
“That the best of the Myrmidons will die before two more years have passed.”
I am proud of myself, that I do not cry out in pain to hear it. My body turns to ice, all the lingering warmth of the evening fled from me, and I can sense Achilles wishing to turn to me, to comfort me with his touch, but he does not— he remains facing his mother, expression frozen and serene. “We have known it was coming.”
“No. That is why I came to speak to you.”
“There is no changing what must be—”
“The prophecy says you will still be alive when it happens.”
And now it is as if my limbs have turned to water, the ice melting in a rush of relief. Now Achilles does look over his shoulder at me, his brows furrowed in confusion, and then turns back to his mother. “And what does it mean?”
“That is not for the likes of you or I to know,” Thetis says. I have spent these many years fearing her and hating her and thus learning to read her however I can. It’s subtle, buried under an icy and contained demeanor, but I detect a hint of nervousness in Thetis’s words. She is so far above us in power and knowledge, and yet the ways of this world, the ways of prophecies and gods and all the rest, are beyond her in this instance.
“I suppose,” Achilles says, his words coming slow as he thinks it through, “that this changes nothing, then. I will continue as I have been, and time will tell.”
It is difficult to fully unclench my jaw until Thetis is gone, and when I reach for Achilles, when I pull him into my arms to kiss him, some part of me is doing it to prove to myself that he hasn’t already been stolen by the gods, that his fabled destiny hasn’t snatched him away, just yet.
He knows the mood I am in, senses it instantly, and willingly lets me take the lead, smiling as I push him down and climb atop him, his hands smoothing down my back as I kiss him hard enough to bruise. Some irrational part of me thinks that if I can claim him hard enough, he won’t belong to anybody else, and then he’ll never have to go.
It feels like blasphemy, whenever these possessive desires claim my mind and my body— like I am a mortal attempting to bring a god to his knees. Achilles, part-god that he is, needs no urging whatsoever to go to his knees for me, or be held onto his back; he opens to me easily in all ways, he craves me, draws me into his body with a need that it is impossible to doubt. There is a triumph to it, the taste of his sweat, the sound of his breathing, the knowledge that I hold his pleasure in my hands, that it is within my power to withhold from him that which he seeks. And to know, to share the knowledge between us, that I will never deny him anything.
Still, he asks for it before too long, his body straining up into mine, sweat on his brow, his voice gruff and low with ill-contained desperation— Patroclus, Patroclus, I need you, please, I need you— and I am powerless to deny him. The jolt of pleasure I feel as I slip inside him is as new and overwhelming and wonderful as it was the very first time, and he cries out and clutches me closer to him as if he too is experiencing something novel and incomprehensibly good. We move together, in a long-perfected rhythm. I bend, straining the muscles of my neck and back to hold him impossibly closer, bring our mouths together in a teeth-clacking, ecstatic kiss, and he groans my name again, and I move, move, move; it is the easiest thing in the world to think of nothing but this.
“The best of the Myrmidons,” Achilles muses much later, sweat cooling on our skin. He’d cried out loudly enough towards the end, as I’d sped up our pace, pinning him down and moving inside of him, chasing release, that I wonder if we were heard by anybody else in the camp. It’s something I care about that he never really has— his reputation can withstand what anybody might dare whisper about the nature of our relationship, and most people outside of our private little world would never believe it if they knew the way we shared our bodies with one another. The thought of Achilles on his back, Achilles open and malleable under my hands, Achilles baring his neck for my lips, my teeth, whining and asking me— well. That we are lovers is an open secret throughout the entire Greek camp, and probably among the Trojans as well. That I am not merely his bedwarmer, but treated as an equal in such things, would be a scandal of a whole different order.
Achilles does not think of these things. Achilles shrugs it off easily if I ever bring it up. Right now, he is boneless and pleased, his body a long line above the blanket, an easy smile on his face as he looks up at me, head pillowed on my thigh. “It’s odd, maybe I should be insulted, not to be the best of the Myrmidons, even though they call me the best of the Greeks.”
“It unnerves me,” I admit, keeping my hands gentle as they brush through his hair. He hums, his eyes fluttering closed in simple pleasure at my touch; nothing in the world could ever make me feel more powerful than this. “I know your mother said it was not you, but the idea of yet another prophecy circling around this war is not a pleasant one.”
“Hector has done nothing to me,” he says, his familiar mantra. “But I still wonder how much longer— he does not court direct combat with me but nor will he run from it if the situation arises. I cannot exactly flee from him either, when the moment—”
“Achilles,” I say, my voice nearly scolding as I tighten my fingers in his hair. “Please.”
“Two years,” he says gently. “We know we have that, at least. I will still be living when the best of the Myrmidons dies, whoever he may be.”
I find my throat suddenly tight, and I lean down to press my lips to his brow. Two years.
At least two years in this place, the men injured and dying by degrees, the righteous purpose of our enmity with the Trojans becoming flimsier and more weary with every passing day. Two years is an interminable eternity, a dreadful slough.
Perhaps only two years left of Achilles, two years to touch him and talk with him of everything and nothing, to watch him wiggle his toes in the sand down by the water, to feel the pads of his fingers trace slow lines of pleasure down my arms, the worshipful feeling of his body pressing into mine, the sound of my name spoken in his perfect voice, cracked open and loving— two years is a fleeting moment, a sliver of the eternity I wish for us.
Would that this war will never end, if it means I get to keep him just one day longer.
***
I know, I’ve always known, that Briseis is not truly Achilles’s friend, but only my own. I’ve always known he does not care for the women of our camp beyond fleeting politeness, does not bother to know them. He is considerate and respectful and will make sure they are protected and have what they need, but he does those things because being a good leader matters to him, not because he feels a personal connection to any of them.
I know this. I’ve always known it about him, and I never blamed him for it— his inability to connect deeply with most of the people under his command is the result of being held apart, told from infancy that he was meant for greater things. He believes this because it is true, and as such it is difficult for him to connect on a human level with most of the people he encounters. I am an obvious and nearly unique exception to this rule. I do not mind being his link to the rest of the men, to the women, to the world beyond us. I do not mind being his tether to the mundane world of mortals, as he hovers up nearer to the gods.
And yet I’d never believed him capable of something as callous as this.
In order to save Briseis, I must push down my heartbreak, my anger. I must ignore every instinct that screams at me, telling me not to act, not to go to Agamemnon, because to do so is to betray that which I hold most dear.
But Achilles has crossed a line, Achilles will allow something unforgivable for the sake of his reputation, and even as I know how angry he will be, even as my stomach twists at how he will look at me when he learns I’ve gone behind his back, I still feel as if I am doing this for him, as much as for Briseis. He betrays his best self, and I am there to watch out for him. For the man I know he is, the man he is in danger of losing.
There would be no point in hiding my betrayal from Achilles, and to be honest the thought does not even occur to me. I don’t lie to Achilles. I don’t keep things from him. He is as open and honest with me in return. It has been this way between us always, since that first time in the mountains, the cave, the final barrier between us falling away under trembling touches and gasped breaths. He is the best part of me; I could never deceive him.
So upon my turn from Agamemnon’s camp, from my mission to protect the dearest friend I have here besides Achilles himself, I go straight to him, straight to the only home I have.
He insists on tending to the cut on my hand, his eyes cast down as he ushers me to sit near the communal fire of our camp, pushes me to sit. He rushes to our tent and returns with medical supplies, bandages and honey to prevent rot from growing. It is such a small cut, it is nothing compared to what I see the men go through day after day in the medical tent.
But it does hurt.
And it is nice, his hand so gentle as it cradles my own, the carefulness of his ministrations. He doesn’t have the affinity for this art of healing that I do, but he is incapable of treating me, my body and my pains, with anything other than tenderness.
“You need your hands to heal other men,” Achilles says, the tone almost conversational, with a hint of scolding in it. As if he thinks we can skip over the fight we need to have. As if he thinks reminding me that he loves me and wants me safe and whole could be enough for none of the rest of it to matter.
I am ashamed of myself, because it nearly works. I wish so badly to lean into him, press my lips to his skin, let him pull me close so we can forget about the rest of it.
“I am not sorry for what I’ve done,” I say to him, simply and slowly. I pull my hand away from his touch once the bandage is in place, and stand, a soldier facing his commander to await discipline.
“You’d have me made a fool of,” Achilles says, quiet. “You’d choose Briseis over me.”
“I’d choose protecting an innocent woman over throwing her to the wolves for your pride.”
“My pride is not what is at stake here,” Achilles says. He’s still trying for calm, but the anger is there, pouring through the cracks. “My reputation—”
“Pride, reputation,” I say. “I’m not sure there’s much of a difference.”
There. Now I’ve done it.
“You surprise me,” he snaps. He stands as well, but he does not take a step towards me. I think he senses that any approach right now would read as a threat, done in anger. The very idea that he would touch me in violence is laughable; I’ve never feared such a thing, and the fact that the thought has even briefly entered my mind horrifies me. “What I’m doing here, Patroclus, it matters beyond the lifetimes of any one single man or woman, it matters because my honor, my legacy—”
“If that is true, you are not the man I thought you were.” I say it to wound him, unsure even as the words leave my lips if I believe it. He has disappointed me, shocked me, but I wonder if I should be shocked, truly— perhaps I’ve been in denial about what matters most to him. He is capable of many things I do not like to dwell on.
“I am as I always was,” Achilles says, his voice raised just slightly. “You have always known me. If this is enough to kill your loyalty towards me then perhaps I’ve never really known you.”
“That is a cruel thing to say. Cruel and ridiculous.”
“You said it first!”
We pause, staring at each other. Both of us sound so childish, so petty and simple and stupid.
“I said no such thing,” I say at last. “You know what I feel for you.”
“You’ve never given me cause to doubt it,” Achilles says, but his voice has gone cold as ice. “Before today, that is.”
“She’s my friend. And even if she weren’t, she’s your responsibility, under your charge, and you were willing to toss her aside, allow her to be brutalized, for the sake of— of what, of a contest with an arrogant man who you’ve never much respected to begin with?”
Achilles’s face darkens a bit, and I can see that he is ashamed, even if he won’t admit it. “The Trojan captives are usually bed slaves. If it weren’t for—” he waves a hand between us, encompassing something words could never describe, “I might have taken her to bed. Or any one of the other men of the camp. You know some of them do, don’t you? With the others you’ve had me claim as my share? The girls, they go with our men, they sneak off in the middle of the day to take them in the woods, or in their tents, right in front of their fellows. Agamemnon would not have killed her, he would merely have—”
“Exacted his vengeance on her body,” I say, as sharp and precise as I can manage. “Raped her. Are you saying that if not for me, you’d be in the habit of raping women whenever it suited you?”
Achilles looks shocked and vaguely nauseated by the idea. “Of course not.”
“I’m not sure I believe you.” I’m horrified to find that this is true. Achilles instrumentalizes the bodies around him all the time, throwing lives at the Trojan line for the sake of strategy. He does not pause to think, he does not see the men as he should see them. He has no interest in any of the women, he has no interest in anybody’s body in such a way, save my own— that’s been settled between us for many years. But if he had such interests, such urges, would he not command it as his due, as easily as he commands everything else?
“If you believe such things of me,” Achilles says, “then I cannot understand how you claim to love me.”
“There is nothing you could do, nothing you could become, that would make me stop loving you, Achilles. Just because I am disappointed doesn’t stop that from being true.”
“You’ve hurt me,” Achille says, as if that on its own should be enough to cut through the rest of it. It should be, it always would have been, before. To cause him pain is anathema, and yet… maybe it is petty, but it’s the truth: he hurt me first. I have my own sense of honor, my own pride, for all that it weighs less than his in the eyes of gods and men.
“I’m sorry for that,” I tell him, truthfully. “That I’ve caused you pain. But I could not leave her in danger. You must understand that.”
“I understand that you are soft-hearted, that you care for her, but this is a war—”
“This isn’t the war we’re meant to be fighting,” I interrupt. “Briseis is already a casualty. She is already a slave of her enemies. You’d have her twice victimized?”
“You speak as if this was my choice.”
“No, but you decided to use Agamemnon’s dishonorable act to your own advantage. A strategic move, and a heartless one.”
“You say you love me, and call me heartless, in the same breath.”
“I want you to be the man I know you are, I want you to be the man who wouldn’t do something like this.”
“I am the man that stands in front of you. I have always been this man. If I am not good enough—”
“That’s impossible,” I bite out, impatient. We are turning in circles. This isn’t about him, about us, it’s about Briseis. But he doesn’t care about her. He never has. That’s the part of this that’s wormed its way under my skin, that’s the part I cannot see past. If it weren’t for my reaction, he wouldn’t care.
“What’s done is done,” Achilles says, still that bite of anger and hurt in his words. But he steps towards me as if to put a hand on my arm, guide me towards him until we are embracing. It occurs to me that neither of us really knows how to be angry with the other. We aren’t the types to quarrel, and every conflict we’ve faced to this point in our lives has been us united against an external threat.
I let him put his hand on my arm, but I don’t move forward the way I know he’s expecting. I don’t fold myself into him, wrap my arms around him and let the smell and warmth of him appease my frayed and scattered nerves.
“Achilles, you know I love you entirely,” I say. “You know nothing could ever, in all the world, change the depth of my feelings for you.”
I hear the huff of his breath, the beginnings of relief. Something in his face cracks, goes soft, and I know in a moment he will step forward and kiss me, and it will be so much harder to say the next thing once that has happened.
And so I shift back, take a step away from him, and force the next words out, even though to shatter his hopeful expectations will bring me more pain than even the thought of Briseis in Agamemnon’s hands— “but I cannot stay while you persist in this.”
He stares at me blankly. “You cannot stay.” It seems to take a moment for the full meaning of my words to penetrate, and then the expression on his face shifts yet again. “Patroclus,” he says, suddenly urgent. My words have stolen all the anger from him, leaving the raw pain beneath. “You will not—”
“I cannot stay with someone who does not honor his responsibility. I cannot stay with you. I break my own heart to say it, but I cannot stand by your side and watch as you allow this pettiness to ruin you.”
“You cannot leave,” he says, the words wavering and frightened. “You cannot abandon your oath, you will be a deserter.”
I shake my head. I wish he understood, because I am unsure if I have the strength to say it. “I will not leave this place. I will not leave this camp. I will continue under your command and will not protest your decisions in public. But I will have my own tent set up near where the camp followers and the wounded sleep.”
He looks, if possible, even more alarmed than before. “Patroclus, you cannot…”
But he trails off. He is stymied, out of ways to argue.
“I cannot?” I say, lowering my voice. “You would order me to stay? You would order me to share your bed? Perhaps it is not only the war prizes who have reason to fear.”
It’s the cruelest thing I could have said, and I will hate myself for it later. His face blanches, his jaw clenches and his eyes go wide. He looks at me as if he’s never seen me before.
“I’d sooner die by my own hand,” he says at last, quite matter-of-fact.
And then he turns and he walks away, his posture hunched and his footsteps somehow unsure, right at the edge of being unsteady— defeat does not come naturally to him. He does not wear his losses well.
I wish to call out to him, to take it back. I bite the inside of my mouth hard enough to taste blood, and watch as he disappears into his tent, where tonight he will sleep without me for the first time since we were hardly more than children.