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He was leaving.
He came out of nowhere, uprooted her whole life, changed her fate forever, and now he was leaving. That woman who appeared as radiant as a goddess. That man with the strength of a god. Maybe she should have expected it. Gods always leave the moment you need them most.
Phyrrus’ tiny hands grabbed for the ends of her hair and he let out some adorable gurgling noises that remained completely unheard by the men discussing banalities across from her. Something about war. Death. Women. Prizes. Glory. Gold. It all blurred together.
She hated them. Hated how they supplicated the prince of Phthia, played on his ego, threatened his reputation. He could wash away all the embarrassment, the dresses, the make up, the dancing…Deidamia.
“Your son ought to have a father whose glory is everlasting,” the man with the ugly hat said.
“Your son ought to have a father,” Deidamia wanted to say. But she did not. She remained silent, only pressed Phyrrus closer to her chest and gave the prince a long, pleading look. There were no tears welling up in her eyes to sway him, not anymore, not since this morning.
She begged him wordlessly, pleaded, prayed. Give up your pride. Give up your ego. Give up your godhood.
But it was useless. Gods always leave.
Achilles' uncannily ocean green eyes flickered over her grief stricken face, down to the child in her arms and finally back to the two men before him. If he felt any pity for her he did not show it.
He nodded.
“We’ll leave at dawn.”
He was gentle.
The man that would take her life. Iphigenia supposed her father had not lied after all, when he had told her mother that their daughter was to be married. Because what was marriage if not to give oneself entirely to another.
She let herself sink into the arms that held her still as if sinking into a lover’s embrace, imagining for just a moment that it really was her husband cradling her at the altar of marriage. The prince of Phthia was strong, a warrior, an honourable match for a daughter of Mycene.
“I tried,” Achilles had whispered, on his knees before her mother, begging for forgiveness. Even the son of a goddess could not change the inevitable.
Her father was there too – to hand over his daughter to her groom. There were tears welling up in his eyes. Iphigenia couldn’t help but wonder if he would have cried at her real wedding too.
A rough hand came up to cup her face. Her father, so proud of her on her big day. The cold metal brushing her skin was not the gold of jewelry but the dark iron of a knife.
“I love you,” Iphigenia breathed, staring into the eyes that mirrored her own almost perfectly.
“You will always be in my heart, dear child.”
Then the blade broke skin.
He was everything.
His everything – always would be. His phíltatos, his heart after his own heart, his soul, his other half.
Patroclus did – and always would – love him more than anything on earth, at his best and at his worst. He felt his heart skip with affection when he watched his lover teach the younger soldiers how to best handle a spear. And it hammered with excitement when he watched him draw his own spear out of the dead body of his enemy, blood decorating his face like the paint on the cheeks of a woman.
Maybe it made him a bad person, that he enjoyed washing the blood of Achilles’ naked flesh in the salty water of the ocean, far away from the rest of the Greek camp, just the two of them for a few hours, free to indulge in each other's bodies.
Perhaps he was immoral for watching Achilles butcher men in front of their wives and take aim at innocent children. But at the end of the day, it didn’t matter. Every fight against Achilles was an unfair fight; there was no fairness to be found between a lion and a man.
Patroclus was only glad that this particular lion was content to rest its head in his lap.
There was something so dangerously powerful about having a demigod look at him with such soft eyes, to see him tremble and come undone beneath him. Patroclus had no doubt it made him awfully prone to falling into hubris one day, but he had even less doubt that it was worth it.
This love was worth giving up his life for.
He was a monster.
It could not be a man that was hunting him. Men did not run that fast. Their eyes did not burn like the eyes of a rabid animal
His knees still hurt from the fall off his horse. It had run off towards the city. It was a smart horse, surely it would alert the guards and someone would come save him. Someone had to come save him. Any moment now his brothers would appear and cut down the bloodthirsty beast that was after him.
“Come out of the temple, child!” the warrior growled and Troilus pressed himself closer against the cold marble behind him. “Or would you rather have me defile your father’s altar?”
The image of Apollo stared him down. Huge and uncaring, so different from the man that visited the queen in her private quarters and embraced her like a gift. Who so gently cupped his son’s face and told him everything would be alright.
When he heard heavy steps approaching, he closed his eyes and cowered further into the corner, mumbling a prayer under his breath.
“Save me papa, save me, save me, don’t leave me alone, please, don’t leave me to him, papa, please, please hear me, please don’t let me die, I’m scared, please…”
The whole temple darkened when Achilles stepped into the door, blocking out the sunlight. He spotted Troilus within a second, his burning, furious eyes locking onto him.
“Your father won’t save you, boy. Your king chose the wrong god to worship.”
Tears rolled down his cheeks, his whole body trembled, pathetic sobs shook him. A dark figure hovered above him and a rough hand grabbed his jaw.
No one was coming to save him.
He was a dead man walking.
The light in his eyes had gone out. The soul had abandoned its host to journey to Hades already. Anyone that saw him knew it. It was glaringly obvious by the way he stared into the flames of the funerary pyre. Conceded, hopeless, resigned, as if he was already longing for the day he could join his ashes with his beloved’s.
It hurt. Antilochus knew it was foolish to mourn a man who was not yet dead but it still hurt. The man he knew was gone. The tender moments, the warm smiles, the genuine affection, it was all gone. It burned with the corpse on the fire, emanating the same painfully rotten smell.
He reached out a hand in a gesture of comfort but Achilles slapped it away without hesitation.
“Achilles…”
“No.”
“Please just talk to me.”
“Leave me, Nestorides. Leave and don’t return. I can’t stand to hear your grating voice. Not when I am mourning a man far better than you.”
His father had warned him. ‘Don’t give your love to a man such as Achilles. Nothing but hurt and heartbreak will come off your childish admiration.’ And Antilochus hadn’t listened, because what young man listens to his father when he warns him of the dangers of love?
And after all, Antilochus was doomed to death himself, so what harm did it do to love a dead man.
He was a mad man.
Helmet knocked off his head, blood dripping from his temple. His breaths came ragged and panting, seething with rage. Penthesilea was almost surprised he wasn’t literally foaming at the mouth.
A hand reached up to touch the bloody wound in disbelief. The battle around them had seized its roar to collectively marvel at the woman that had wounded the untouchable Achilles. The Amazonian queen herself almost couldn’t believe it.
Was this it? Was this the undefeatable warrior the bards sang of? Nothing more than a panicked doe at the end of her sword? So sure of himself that he almost choked on his own saliva when someone eye to eye with him dared to rise to the challenge?
Crazy eyes flickered to Penthesilea's sword, as if it was somehow the metal’s fault he was in such a state. As if he planned to pick every piece of bronze out of the earth just to punish it.
Then, in a slow, elaborate motion, Achilles raised his spear, aiming right for the queen of Amazons. It was too slow, Penthesilea could duck, raise her shield, step back, but it was all for naught. The spear seemed to change course halfway, follow her, not guided by Achilles hand but a god’s. It dug into her shield with overwhelming speed, forcing her to fall back. The spear went further still, right through the shield, and pierced into her neck.
The shield fell from her grasp, taking the spear and a good chunk of her neck with it. Her thoughts clouded with pain and bloodloss, her helmet had cracked open on the stony ground.
Through the rushing of blood in her ears she could hear steps coming her way, someone crouching down at her fading body. Achilles had come to gloat at her in her last moments, she thought.
But when the blood-stained face with the mad eyes and fiery hair appeared in her blurry vision it was filled with nothing but regret.
He was gone.
Finally. Or at last. Or…
Oh by the gods, he was gone!
Her ‘husband’, captor, slayer of her love and family, and most importantly the last person in this camp who cared whether Briseis lived or died.
There had been no love between them. It was impossible. Especially after the death of his real love, when Achilles had not stopped lamenting about how he wished she were dead. Sometimes Briseis had feared he might strike her dead just out of spite.
And yet she mourned for Achilles like she had mourned for her own husband. Because just like him, Achilles had left behind a woman who was lost without him – doomed, once again nothing more than spoils of war.
She did not want to think about her future, mostly because it left her contemplating if it would be the wisest decision to fall into a blade. But Briseis had to live – for all those she had lost.
So she simply stared at the funeral pyre with bloodshot eyes, wondering how long it would take for Troy to reflect the exact same image.
He was without mercy.
Even after death. The man that had claimed to love her. Who had almost betrayed his army for her.
She would have done it. Married the enemy. For her family. For her people. For Troy.
Regardless of how much blood stained his hands, even if it was the blood of her brothers – it was a small price to pay. If Cepheus could sacrifice Andromeda to the monster of Poseidon, then Priam could sacrifice Polyxena to the monster of Achea.
Still, she would be lying had she claimed not to have felt the slightest bit of relief when the man laid dead at her feet. It meant her city was doomed, of course. She was selfish for it, no less monstrous than the warrior himself.
But of course his death would not rid her of him. Ever. Nothing would ever have rid Troy of the wrath of Achilles, not even the archer god himself. So here she was, at the grave of the once feared warrior, tied at the wrist, in the firm grasp of a man who looked oh so much like him.
“I’m sorry,” the youth at her back hiccupped. Polyxena knew he was tormented by the ghost of his father. She could hear him mumble under his breath and talk in his sleep, cry out and beg. This was the sacrifice Achilles demanded – the woman he was deprived of in life.
Her mother sobbed in the distance. Polyxena took a deep breath, mentally apologizing to her for making her bear the sight.
“You will be happier in the underworld,” the son of Achilles half stated half sobbed, clearly trying to convince himself more than her. “He really did love you.”
Polyxena turned her head until she could meet the kid’s poison green eyes.
“Your father was not capable of such a thing.”
He was perfect.
Proud, relentless, drenched in the blood of innocents.
If anyone could love her, if Medea could ever love anyone – if she was even still capable of such a thing – then it was him.
A man just as wretched and wronged as her, who understood her like no one else. They were destined, they were fated, they were the inevitable end.
Even in death Achilles was a handsome man, the greatest of the Greeks indeed, tall, handsome, glittering in his lavish armour like a god. He was everything she could ask for, the absolute minimum of what she was owed, an opportunity to rub it into Jason's face.
He took her hand with uncharacteristic tenderness for a warrior and cupped her face like a precious gem. Manners. Good. Achilles had died young; a shame, she supposed, but it also meant she could teach him a thing of two.
“If we are to be united in this life, then I must confess to you, great witch of Colchis, that I have done things that I will never be able to forgive myself for.”
Medea pressed a kiss to his lips and thanked Aphrodite for gifting her such a perfect man.
“Haven’t we all?”