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good time for a change —
see, the luck ive had
can make a good man turn bad
“My heart,” Achilles praises him. He lays open-mouthed kisses on his beloved’s jaw and neck and feels the pulse pound hard against his warm skin, so alive, alive, alive. They are but boys at the moment, even with the war raging right outside. If Achilles tries hard enough for just a few moments the disappointment will disappear from Patroclus’s eyes and he will still fall into Achilles' embrace, shaking with laughter. “Oh, my beloved,” he whispers again and then grins at Patroclus’s reddening face.
“Quiet, you and your words both,” Patroclus says. But he is smiling, almost without realizing it, as he traces his fingers up Achilles' sides.
Achilles has so many things he wishes to say. But it does not matter, really, for the sight of Patroclus’s face always makes him want to sing. He sits back. “Let me play for you.” He fetches his lyre. “I’ve been thinking of a song.” Kicking one leg over the other, Achilles strums the lyre and lets the notes linger in the air.
Patroclus watches, evaluating. He is still worried and afraid for the soldiers outside, but he has been for many days now, and Achilles' words smooth his edges over with their worship. He relaxes. “Is it about me?” he asks, his voice lilting with amusement.
In all his time alone, Achilles’ thoughts have run wild. There are those of Briseis and Agamemnon, of the war, the Trojans, his Myrmidons, the ever-present eyes of the gods. Sometimes he tries to put them into words, but no matter what he does he can’t sing those ideas out. And yet he could write a song or a thousand about the smile on Patroclus’s face, no matter how these nine years have aged them both. He answers accordingly, “Of course it is.”
Patroclus lays by his side as the notes take shape into song. It’s a slow, melodic piece, and his beautiful eyes slip closed as Achilles’ voice rings out. He compares Patroclus’ voice to a river, his skin to gold, his eyes to dusk: how he will be this way for all eternity as beloved as he is. As the notes fade out, Patroclus’s smile turns strange, bitter at the edges. He won’t stir, though, and so they rest in a moment of peace. The air is quiet at the end of Achilles' song, too quiet as it always is. It waits for Achilles' word.
“Patroclus,” he says.
Patroclus turns his face to Achilles' throat. “Yes,” he says as Achilles sets down his lyre.
He wants to say it again and again, Pa-tro-clus, until it doesn’t sound like a word anymore. Achilles has long tired of his own thoughts. He would like to get lost with this man for just a moment or two. “Do you think of Mount Pelion, Patroclus?”
Patroclus pulls back. He is not frowning, but his brows are furrowed. “It’s unlike you to say such a thing,” he replies curiously. “But yes, I do.”
Achilles pauses once more. He has been so caught up in the present lately: the fighting, the anger, the bitterness. It wears one out. “Often, I reminisce. Wouldn’t we be so different?”
The sun isn’t visible through the tent, but Achilles knows it’s sinking.
Patroclus inclines his head, smiling strangely again. “Sometimes, I let my mind wander,” he replies, his eyes far away. “You and I swimming in the lakes up there. Catching fish. Building a home in those forests.” He huffs, a strange look on his face, his curls falling into his eyes. “Wouldn’t that be a life?”
“Not a glorious one,” Achilles answers, but if he closes his eyes he can still picture it. The forests’ winds on his face as he and Patroclus lounged by the riverbanks while the sun began to set. Not much of one for words, Patroclus would stand so they could return before the night came, but Achilles would pull him down and close. “Just a moment longer, stay,” he’d say. “I want to look at you.” And he’d admire the way the low sunlight played over his lover’s brown skin, pink and orange and gold, the most beautiful just as night begins to come. He opens his eyes and looks at Patroclus now, and he smiles. “Yes, not a glorious life,” he repeats with more certainty than he should have, “but a good one.”
In his arms, Patroclus looks perplexed. He has not worn this expression in a long time: the one where he looks at Achilles as though he were a puzzle to piece out. “Indeed.” His owlish eyes are narrowed. After a pause that seems to last an eon, he says, “It has been nine years at this war, Achilles. Do you regret?”
There are many answers he could give. He thinks of men dying, of glory, of gold and bronze. But there is always Patroclus.
He says, “With you by my side? I could never.”
Achilles thinks of that imaginary future and the hues of pink and orange on Patroclus’s skin. He sings a hundred songs of such a vision that night, and even as their struggle grows more desperate and they fight as the Greeks fall, Patroclus catches himself humming the melody as he works.
He smiles.
so please, please, please
let me let me let me
let me get what i want
this time.
Achilles presses his brow to his beloved’s body and thinks, Oh, Gods . He is trembling, and with all the might and splendor he has he suddenly feels so small. He is being watched by all eyes but they feel endlessly far away and the Underworld is untouchable and the stars are so high above him and he is bare, in front of the army and in front of the gods and on his beloved’s cooling, lifeless corpse. He is torn open.
Shining Achilles throws his head to the sky and screams and thrashes and bellows. He touches Patroclus’s cheek, his lips, and his hands, and they are all cool as a statue. He stares into his eyes but they don’t blink, leeched of color and blacker than the darkest sea. The setting sun falls onto his face, but it only casts harsh red light across his cold, hallowed cheekbones.
Achilles thinks again, Oh Gods, and something in him is dying slowly and crying out.
haven’t had a dream in a long time.
see, the life ive had
can make a good man bad
Achilles carves his way through the Trojan army as the Achaeans watch. He tears them apart like they’re paper, with only one putting up any semblance of a fight. He fights Scamander. He chases Hector.
“Let us make a pact,” says Hector. Achilles wants to laugh in his face. He wants to scream.
His mouth does a mixture of the sort, and so he chokes on air and out of him comes the words, “There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”
It is the truth, although he’s not sure how he managed to say it, and he kills Hector. He does not remember how he does it. He does it in seconds.
There were moments in between, before, and after that seemed to last forever, but he can’t remember anything about them either. Achilles' heart thumps hard against his cold skin, an uncomfortable reminder that he is alive, alive, alive.
The lyre stays in its corner, untouched. Achilles looks at it and feels terrible, burning pain that begins in his stomach and fights its way up into his chest and throat, tearing him to pieces. He turns away to not look at it, feeling sharp shame coiling tight inside. He closes his eyes and tries to fall asleep, but with his red vision beginning to fade, he can only feel the cold of the body in his arms. He knows there are hundreds of concubines and men in the Achaean camp, but none is beloved like Patroclus was to him—none know where the freckles on his back lay, nor do they lie with him or sharply object to his confident way, and none have owlish brown eyes and defined muscles and clever tongues and kind hearts like Patroclus. He could kill a thousand of those Achaeans if they even looked at him. None of them have heard him sing.
The tent feels far too empty.
It is just them. Achilles, shining and godlike, and the silent corpse next to him, going rotten.
Once Achilles presses a kiss to his cold lips. It feels like ice shooting through his veins, and he does it again. It is not enough. It is too much.
He keeps the flaps closed and he lets no light in. The gold and bronze treasures that are scattered across the floors and edges of the tent are gathering old dirt, and the bed is far too big for one person who lays on the left side. Brilliant Achilles, for once in his life, feels absolutely small. Something terrible has been torn out and all that is left is the body by his side and the gorgeous lyre that mocks him.
It feels cursed. He rolls over and squeezes his eyes shut tight.
“Achilles?”
He opens his eyes to Patroclus’s beautiful visage.
“Patroclus,” he breathes, and he beams.
The sun is high in the blue sky, burning bright. Patroclus is watching him with sparkling, lively brown eyes. Achilles’s golden hair is fanned out on long blades of soft green grass, tangled when he sits up. They’re sitting in a field that seems to stretch on forever, kept in the shade by the tree they sit under, its many leaves a rich and deep green. A breeze that smells of the sea brushes by, even though there’s no sea nearby. Achilles can hear people talking and laughing in the distance but he can’t see anyone. It feels like it’s just him and Patroclus.
“Is this Elysium?” he asks. But he knows it can’t be: he hasn’t given Patroclus a proper funeral. As the thought hits him he feels guilt hit him for the first time. He stares into Patroclus’s bright brown eyes, lively as he’s ever seen them.
“Almost,” Patroclus murmurs.
Achilles nods and he can’t look away. The field is endless, but he feels more trapped than ever in his beloved’s arms, seeing him living and breathing when he knows that it can’t be it’s not true and he’s making all this up in a dream. It feels like a spear to the chest again and again and again.
“ Achilles ,” Patroclus says. It’s not urgent but it’s not soothing, either. He cups Achilles’s face in his hand. “Let it go.”
The trapping feeling squeezes and tightens and he can’t move; the guilt is thrumming but all he can see is Patroclus’s beautiful eyes and his familiar face and he cannot live without this. “I cannot,” he chokes out. “You know I cannot.”
He wakes alone.
The body next to him is still freezing. Achilles can’t even think of pretending that he’s asleep.
He has not dreamed like this in what feels like an eternity. He slaughters more Trojans at the battlefield that day, cutting them down again and again, but it is not enough. It is never really enough.
He settles down in his bed and falls asleep again. For a moment, he thinks he will not dream, and the world is quiet except for the rigorous pounding of his heart that never seems to slow down.
He opens his eyes to his tent, almost just as he left it, but there’s no body by his side. The covers are messy as though someone has just been sleeping there and ran away in a hurry. Achilles frowns. The pieces are not quite falling into place. He jumps to his feet and pushes his way out of the tent. Something is out there that he needs...
He hears Patroclus scream, sharp and painful. He goes cold.
Achilles sprints faster than the Winds themselves but still, Patroclus is speared through his stomach, spilling deep red gore across the plains. He does not thrash, and he keeps his jaw clenched to keep his pain in. When his eyes meet Achilles’s he begins talking but Achilles can’t understand what he’s saying: his lovely voice is distorted and muffled as though he is pleading to Achilles from a world away. In a moment he could let go, the thread could snap, and then--
“Patroclus--” he gasps. “Wait, I am here!”
He blinks. When he opens his eyes, he’s upright in bed and Patroclus’s body lies next to him. His skin looks even colder than before, and Achilles’s eyes linger on the bloodstains that blemish the cloth tied around his fatal wounds. Tears come to his eyes and he weeps, and he welcomes it: with the tears the world becomes blurred, and he does not have to look upon the broken body of his philatos.
He wants to fear sleep and the dreams that come with it, but then there is the thought of Patroclus’s eyes bright and sparkling with life and he cannot help but lean in to Hypnos. Just this once.
Eventually, he dreams again of his own tent, but by this time Patroclus is by his side. He tells him, “You have treated me so beautifully in life. Why must you not do the same in death?” He tells him, “There is nothing in any world that I have loved more than you.” He tells him, “Mix our ashes together after you fall so that we may always be together, as we were when you and I grew in your father’s house.”
Achilles wakes with tears on his cheeks, but his heart beats slow and almost unnoticeably. Briseis has justifiably scorned him, and as he recalls it, he thinks that Hector’s death by his hands means his own death cannot be far away, and then it will not be long until they are together.
He lights the funeral pyre and collects the ashes, empty eyes staring out. It is a woman’s job, or the job of a man who was conquered, but the Greeks have seen his unstoppable rage and know better than to gossip while he’s still in hearing range. They throw funeral games, and Achilles swallows down his pain for this.
He slaughters more Trojans. Apollo cuts him down, and in his last moments Achilles wonders, Is this your mercy?
Now, he smiles.
so for once in my life
let me get what i want
His son comes in like a crashing wave. He has a sharp face, just like Achilles’ own with Deidameia’s harsh cheekbones, eyebrows, and youthful glow but none of Achilles’ golden shine. He has bright red hair that sweeps like a flame and ice-blue eyes, sharp as knives. In life, Achilles has never met him and he has never had the desire — but looking upon Pyrrhus face, robbed of its youth, he wishes that he had said something. Achilles had the palace and Mt. Pelion and Patroclus, but Pyrrhus is thirteen at most and the most inhuman boy he’s ever seen. Achilles wishes (really, he does!) to say he feels sick to his stomach, but he is just a little bit proud of how the boy takes charge so effortlessly.
Then they do his funeral rights. Pyrrhus evaluates the Greeks with his keen eyes of ice. They tell him his final wish and, to Achilles’ horror, his son’s face twists in disgust.
“A slave has no place in his master’s tomb. If the ashes are together, it cannot be undone, but I will not allow my father’s fame to be diminished,” he says, every word a blow. “The monument is for him alone.”
Alone. Achilles feels himself going very, very cold.
He thinks of his dream of Elysium (Patroclus’s warm eyes, shining, alive) and he screams, wanting to writhe and tear his hair but only passing through his own spiritual body like the shade he is as his screams ring out. Nobody hears him. Eternal glory—
That’s the price, isn’t it?
He screams and he screams and he screams, and when he can’t scream anymore he feels completely drained. He closes his eyes for some time, and when he opens them again...
Ah. Seabreeze.
Yes, it smells like the sea when the breeze hits his face. The isle of Elysium is full of heroes laughing, jeering and cheering together. The grass is the brightest green he’s ever seen and the sky is almost blinding in its jewel-like shimmer. It’s as though he is watching through someone else’s eyes. He can’t even remember the boatride or the judgement. The rapid Styx, those shining heroes, the glorious sky: it’s all an eternity without Patroclus laughing in his face. His vision is going dark around the edges.
He speaks to some of the other heroes. Heracles, radiant with godly power and grinning all the while. Jason, scarred and honest-faced but uncertain. Bellepheron and this that and the other. Each is grinning in Elysium, fighting and laughing in the way that only heroes can. Achilles looks upon them through the dark haze that seems to be swallowing them up. Joy radiates from their faces. And Achilles — who had sworn it, who had made Patroclus swear it — still stands, empty.
The other heroes watch him curiously. They watch golden and shining Achilles, who’s been so hailed, wound tight with pain and displeasure like a child whose toy was stolen.
They don’t understand, thinks Achilles, strumming a lyre without thought. They could never understand.
lord knows, it would be the first time...
But then he feels it.
lord knows, it would be the first time
Achilles would know that man anywhere: he’d know him by touch alone, by smell; he would know him blind, by the way his breaths came or the way his feet struck the earth.
He’d know him in death or at the end of the world: and here they are, at death and at the end of the world. Even in Elysium, Achilles is surrounded by darkness. He is but a shadow of himself. But then, so is he...
Achilles rises to meet him. Their hands meet, and suddenly they are whole. Light spills and floods and above them the sky is bright beaming blue and the grass is emerald green and there he is in terrifying, wonderful definition for the first time in decades or centuries or millennia or however long it has been without his beloved.
“There,” breathes Patroclus. His soft lips turn up in a grin. They fall into the grass together, in the midst of pink and orange and gold flowers. They reflect their light onto Patroclus’s scarred and lovely brown skin, and his earth-colored eyes are wet with unshed tears.
“It has been so long. So many years,” Achilles sighs.
He reaches out, touching Patroclus’s face. They are both battered and full of wounds and marks. Patroclus’s eyes slip shut, and he leans into his palm.
“It was enough,” Patroclus replies.