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Cassandra tends to be calm whenever a battle gets uncomfortably close to the walls of Troy. This inspires derisive comments from her countrymen. She can’t quite recall if she’s actually overheard such things, or if people will start talking like this closer to the end.
‘She screams during so many mealtimes. She even made a scene at one of her brothers' weddings. Why is she so calm when the Achaeans are right there?’
Because the enemy isn’t fated to break through into their city today. The worst of the Trojans’ losses are many years away. Watching battle unfold is almost like hearing the same sad song for the thousandth time. She’s seen all of these deaths before; every king cut down at the height of his glory, every young man who dies with a look of shock on his face. For them death was sudden, surprising, unfair. For Cassandra… There’s a strange sort of relief. When a prophesied death finally comes to pass, she bids a silent farewell to the man and to the prophecy alike.
Even as her terror of the future grows, her head gets a little lighter.
Catching a glimpse of King Agamemnon always disrupts her serenity. He’s still a figure far off in the distance, but seeing him reminds her that she knows his body better than she knows her own. She knows how his hot, wine-soaked breath will feel on her neck when he rapes her the first time. She knows how much it will hurt and how much he’ll like her pain. She knows exactly how to stroke his cock so that he will come quickly and leave her alone. She knows how his fingers and tongue will feel between her legs when he decides he wants to try making love to her. It’ll be a long journey back home, after all, and Agamemnon is the type to prefer amenability to struggle and tears.
Cassandra will still cry the first time he coaxes her to climax. But he’ll say ‘no more of that, sweet girl,’ and make her come a second and third time until her tears mix with her sweat. And when Agamemnon puts his cock in her soon after, she’ll be so wet that it’ll be an easy fit. It’ll be hard to believe this had ever been so painful. His seed will always feel so loathsome inside her, and sometimes he’ll slip his fingers back inside her and start musing on whether he’ll ever get her pregnant.
There’s a lull in today’s battle. Agamemnon turns his head to look up towards the walls of Troy. She can’t see his face, but she can feel his eyes on her. She knows how he’ll be on top of her in a few years, tearing her dress off, greedily staring at every bit of naked skin. He’ll talk and talk about how he’d never gotten a chance to see her properly during all these years of waiting. Old man Priam guarded his daughters too closely. But Agamemnon somehow always knew she’d be the most beautiful of them all.
Cassandra turns and walks back inside.
In her chambers, she curls up on the floor. It’s cool against her cheek and shoulders, but her inner thighs are warm and wet with her own arousal.
She’s never been able to make sense of it. Like all of her visions, her future with Agamemnon is one of degradation and horror. She never experiences any sort of thrill or anticipation over the deaths of her brothers, the walls of her city crumbling. But if she stares too long at Agamemnon, she’s due for a night of lying in bed sick with unfulfilled desire.
“Apollo,” she croaks out quietly. Then she thinks better of it. “Apollo!”
Doubtless some people must have heard her scream, but no one comes to check on her. Cassandra calls on Apollo often enough.
What happens next depends on his mood. Often Apollo answers her with a silence so resounding it feels like a slap. But sometimes he’ll appear immediately.
Today he chooses the latter.
She always struggles to look at him at first. It’s like stepping out into the sun after being in the dark for too long. (This is something else she’ll learn about in the future. Agamemnon will keep her blinded for the first few days of her captivity. This happens after she sees Polyxena’s blood on the ground and she starts screaming about how his throat’s blood will spill before long. It won’t be enough to deter him from using her body that evening.)
“Oh, have the prophecies been especially bad today?”
Cassandra unfurls from the ground, rolls on to her back, and sees Apollo sitting on the edge of her bed. His bored demeanor looks as calculated as ever. He still sounds eager for an answer to his question.
She combs her fingers through her hair as she stands up. Once she wouldn’t have dreamed of fidgeting like this before one of the gods. Nowadays she doesn’t care. He’s seen her in all kinds of states. Cassandra calls on him often, because she stops feeling visions closing in on her when she’s in his presence. It's like he soaks everyone’s future into his body and hoards it for himself.
“You don’t have to interfere with my-” She can’t call them memories because they haven’t happened yet.
He knows what she means, though. “You know I wouldn’t.”
Cassandra wants to argue with that, but when the gods spoke they could make falsehoods into a fact through words alone.
“Nothing more to say? What visions have I altered?”
She clenches her hands. “The ones of king Agamemnon,” she finally says through gritted teeth.
“Those aren’t a lie. He will claim your body the way I never did.”
He’s jealous. He’s actually jealous of something so depraved. Cassandra wants to cover her face in her hands and laugh. She gives into the impulse, even though it sounds more like a shriek.
“I fail to see the humor,” Apollo says. “I also don’t understand your surprise. That man likes to get his hands on my things. Have you seen the visions of what he’ll do to the daughter of one of my most devoted priests?”
Cassandra straightens her back and tries to look Apollo dead on. Her eyes have adjusted and, yes, he’s beautiful. He’s all golden hair, lithe muscles, and eyes the color of the rainclouds. Whenever her father’s musicians execute a particular beautiful melody, the sound seems to travel through her body and make her shiver. Apollo always makes her feel like that, even though she should know better by now.
She takes a step closer. “I don’t speak of the visions of Agamemnon. I speak of… my behavior in them.”
“My prophecies don’t lie,” Apollo repeats. “If they did, people would catch on and stop doing homage to me. Why would I tarnish my own glory with cheap tricks? Whatever you see yourself doing in those visions… that’s what you’ll end up doing.”
It sounds like the truth because this is precisely the sort of thing gods care about. Worship, awe, glory.
He takes her by the hands and reels her in closer. “What will you do that troubles you so?”
“Nothing. I won’t be able to do anything. You know I won’t have a choice.” Not the way Apollo had once offered her a choice.
“You’ll have some choices. You can cry or fight or lie there and accept it. You might even… Oh. That’s the problem. You’ll enjoy what he does to you.”
His voice had gotten very low. He’s holding onto her wrist with both hands the way someone might with a sacrificial bird.
Cassandra nods, trying to keep her face still. “You see? It’s proof that you’re interfering. No one would find pleasure in those circumstances.”
“You’d be surprised. It’s easy enough to give a human body pleasure.” He starts to turn one of her bracelets around her wrist slowly. “You don’t even need to touch a human. Look at you… You want to be bedded so badly right now, even though you’re horrified. All because of your own thoughts.”
“Not my thoughts,” she whispers. “Remember, these are your visions, and your visions don’t lie.”
“They don’t.” Apollo’s lips thin out. He hadn’t much liked that response, and Cassandra is furious enough to know why. And wrathful enough to act on it.
“Have you looked into those prophecies, or have you kept them private for me alone? You’re right, I don’t think this king Agamemnon will be very skillful with me. Most of the time he’ll treat me like property. I’ll still get wet for him, and he’ll even manage to make me enjoy it.”
Apollo grabs her upper arm and makes her bend down so that he can whisper viciously in her ear. “Sounds like you’re destined to become quite the tawdry little plaything.”
“Of course. I won’t be able to say no to him. No matter how many promises and gifts he gives me.” And Agamemnon will gift her so many things. He’ll drape her in dresses stolen from her elder sisters and bury her in her mother’s jewelry and promise to make her a queen. And that’s how Cassandra will look when she finally meets Clytemnestra.
Apollo won’t interfere with this future. The Fates have already etched out Cassandra’s death in stone. She doesn’t run the risk of being strangled or burned and then turned into a constellation after Apollo feels remorse for his actions.
Or maybe Apollo would be sacrilegious, after all. Just this once. Maybe he really will kill her just so Agamemnon can’t possess her. That certainly feels like that’s the end result when Apollo yanks her down into the bed. She flails and thrashes out and it almost feels good to fight him physically instead of mentally. But then he gets his hand in her tangled curls and pulls viciously hard and it makes her limbs go slack. There’s murderous intent in every muscle when he gets her under him. He hitches one of her legs up with one of his hands, and presses down on her throat with the other. If she dies this soon, that would certainly make the Fates’ threads unfurl wildly. Maybe, somehow, her death might set in motion a chain of events that saves her city after all.
Then he pulls the strangling hand away. He uses it to get his cock out, and thrusts it inside her, and she cries out at the shock of the intrusion. Wet as she is, her current body has had no experience with men.
But being fucked by Apollo is also something new. She’s never had a vision of this. Yes, he’d put his hands on her before, the day he’d come to collect on their transaction. When she denied him, he’d spoken to her sweetly at first. He’d embraced her and made additional promises. The relatively chaste touching had felt so good, but she’d stood her ground. She'd been young and afraid of an illegitimate pregnancy and thought he liked her enough to understand why she would say no to him. Then his eyes had grown cold and he’d spat prophecy into her. For all the horrible intimacy of that, she’s never had a chance to find out how her naked skin might feel against his, let alone how he’d feel inside her. Cassandra has been given every reason to believe this wouldn’t happen.
Her mind wars with itself, as it so often does. She wants this to stop, she wants Apollo gone. But she also savors being fucked by someone who isn’t Agamemnon or Ajax. She’s still a princess, and the palace is relatively quiescent all around the two of them. She isn’t gagging on the smoke of her burning city.
She wraps her legs around Apollo and pulls him in harder still. His eyes widen, and slowly, slowly the murderous rage seems to leave him. They move together slowly, until he pauses to kiss her deeply. Cassandra tries to avoid thinking about how this is the way he’d gifted her prophecy in the first place.
But he seems to recall it. All at once he snarls and pulls out. He maneuvers her on to her stomach and shoves his cock back into her. He isn’t particularly brutal when he thrusts in and out of her, but there’s something savage in the way he presses his fingers between her legs. He finds the same area that Agamemnon will exploit one day, and there’s no self-indulgent gentleness to be found here. Apollo builds her up and up, then retreats before she climaxes. He does it over and over until her chapped lips move in a constant prayer. Then she realizes muscle memory has her praying to him, and she wants to shrink in on herself.
“I could probably lock you in to this feeling forever, you know.” Apollo’s voice is hoarse against her ear, and his fingers are playing her as skillfully as a lyre. “I’ve never done it, but it would be worth a try. Do you think it would help distract from the visions?”
No. No it wouldn’t. She doesn’t want sex and death to weave together more than they already do in her mind. She bends her head low and begs him to show mercy. The words are familiar enough. She says them most days.
And Apollo is as silent as he usually is in response to her entreaties. He shows mercy today though, not making good on his threat. Instead he touches her until she comes. She clenches down tight on him and it hurts wonderfully and part of her does wish she could be lost in this forever.
After Apollo finishes inside her, Cassandra wonders if he’s managed to get her with child. Now wouldn’t that be another wrinkle in the plans for Troy’s fate. She should worry about this (and she does, at a very great distance) but soreness and tiredness crowd out most unwelcome thoughts.
Apollo sprawls out on top of her. For a long while he breathes heavily and combs his fingers through her hair. Eventually he kisses the tip of one of her ears.
“Now, was that terrible to have to do?”
She grasps his meaning. “Would you have treated my younger self so roughly?”
“Of course not. I intended to treat you kindly and make sure you enjoyed yourself.”
“Eventually king Agamemnon will conclude he wants to treat me like that, too.”
Cassandra doesn’t know where her own daring comes from these days. Maybe it’s just that she’s so incredibly tired. Maybe it’s because she knows this won’t change anything at all. She would have to fuck some other god if she wanted to turn the tides in favor of her home. Apollo hates her, but not as much as he loves Troy. If he could save this city against the wrath of his family, he would do it gladly.
Regardless, some of Apollo’s violence seems to have gone dormant. Could gods also experience fatigue? He just strokes her back and kisses her shoulders, acting for all the world like a besotted human man.
“I like controlling your visions of the future. I can’t control your memories, but I think I’ll feature in them just as prominently. Whenever that king touches you, I know you’ll remember me.” He bites down on her shoulder then, right where he’d been lazily kissing it.
Then Apollo leaves her, just as suddenly as he had arrived. Cassandra collects herself very slowly, then calls for a tub of water to bathe in. After she finishes that task, she’ll return to standing atop the walls of Troy.
If her family would allow for it she’d stay up there until those walls finally come crashing down.