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It's not so much that Zagreus doesn't want to trust Achilles, as such, it's just that Achilles himself doesn't seem to much want to be trusted.
He remembers vividly the racket that had been caused upon the shade's first arrival in the house. The hall had seemed to fill ceaselessly with whispers for awhile, exalted hero this and to train the prince that. Zagreus, then, had felt equal parts eagerness and apprehension turn his stomach-- on the one hand, an exciting new activity; on the other, a decidedly less-exciting new chance to probably trip something up and disappoint his father. Again.
Hades hadn't said very much about Zagreus's new lessons to him, only times and places and the general don't fail me, boy, and do not come crying back to me if you do , to which Zagreus had given him as respectful of a nod as he could force himself to conjure up and went off to the courtyard.
There he had first seen Achilles, who had all at once seemed to tuck away a great turmoil that had been weighing on his shoulders upon spotting the prince. He wasn't unkind, not by any means, but Zagreus picked up the impression that he wouldn't be forgiving, either.
He never once looked at Zagreus with contempt, but Zagreus had spent more than enough time around his father to sense it there anyway.
Still, their first few lessons had gone fairly well, by his standards, and been fairly interesting in turn. Most of it has just been simple form, Achilles running through basic guards and cuts while Zagreus follows along, parroting his movements accordingly. Only in the past two (three? they sometimes blur together) sessions have they even moved from standing still to opposing each other on the round.
Admittedly, the quick jumps from standing still learning forms, to moving on the round while armed, to now learning to dodge un-armed have thrown off Zagreus a bit, but he knows far better than to ask. He's doing fine, anyway.
Until he's not.
It goes like this:
Zagreus's hands are empty of weapons, and he stands in the middle of the courtyard, tensed in preparation. Achilles stands a distance away, his himation discarded along the far wall, holding his spear soundly.
"Ready?" He calls.
"Ready, sir," Zagreus answers,
And Achilles charges. Zagreus slips deftly to the side to avoid his first, most predictable spear-jab, and rights himself to face him again, before dodging just as quickly to avoid the second strike.
There's a strange kind of sun-sharp focus in his teacher's eyes, some of the raw bitterness Zagreus had seen under the surface leaking up through them. Something about it sets him greatly on edge.
When Achilles strikes at him again, he takes the safer route out, moving backwards across the stone tiles. Achilles, undeterred, simply steps towards him, hefting his spear in a hand poised back to throw. And throw he does, spear whistling through the air to harshly strike against the stone where Zagreus had been moments before, kicking up the sparks left by his red-hot feet upon the ground.
Zagreus skids to a halt across the yard, heart up in his throat, stomach roughly where his heart should be. He obediently waits in place for a moment as Achilles darts forwards and retrieves his spear, before lunging away to avoid his strike once again.
They continue on in this manner for a while, spanning the courtyard, long enough that even Zagreus's immortal lungs begin to ache with the effort of keeping up with his legs. He can feel himself beginning to get sloppy, but doesn't particularly care to mind it, thinking that Achilles will probably call off their lesson soon anyway.
He dodges again, and again once more.
"You're leaving your left open," he hears Achilles call, the first words he's spoken since they began the drill. He nods once, still moving, slows to adjust his stance accordingly--
The swoosh of the spear cutting through the air only registers with Zagreus after it's already pierced his stomach.
He hears nothing more over the awful roaring of his frantic heartbeat in his ears, and the ugly, shallow gasps of his breath, and the burning, overwhelming pain spreading from his gut, red blood splattering to the floor as his hands scrabble uselessly at the far end of the spear-head embedded in him. His mind is a slurry of panic, coherent thoughts refusing to take hold through the desperate haze.
He sees a blurry shape in his peripherals, and feels first a jolt and then an awful wrench as the spear is pulled out of his abdomen. He falls helplessly to his knees, darkness swirling in the corners of his vision, and chokes out a strained noise as the panic in his chest climbs up and up until he's spitting out a mouthful of stomach acid and gore.
The lifeblood puddle that now surrounds him seem to grow, and grow, and grow, dizzying in his vision as it reaches out and pulls him under with smooth, icy hands, and the world flips upside-down for a single excruciating moment before a dark veil is set over his eyes, and he sinks into blissful nothingness.
Sing, goddess, the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus.
Sing the rage that drains itself quite entirely from his body, now, replaced with a cold, hollowing sheen of something akin to regret, akin to grief.
Tremors run through his hands as they grip tight the handle of his spear, the spear still splattered with the blood-- red blood, mortal blood--
Oh, gods. What has he done?
To fell a god-- not to kill one, for such a thing cannot, not possibly--
--but to bleed one, hurt one, turn them back to their roots, to have a fragment of the easy, entitled control they take over the fates of mortals, twisting their bodies and minds this way and that to meet their own fated designs, Achilles had wanted to do that.
Small penance, he thought, for what they had all taken from him;
But the prince had not fallen like a god.
Achilles can see the blood spring forth from where he'd been struck, the blood red as any mortal man he'd faced and killed a hundred, a thousand times over before, can hear how he'd choked out the same panicked gasps of the dying, echoing awfully around the courtyard. He'd sounded scared. Scared. Scared.
Lord Hades had said to Achilles, when he was first assigned the task of training the wayward prince, that he should take no hesitation in killing him if deemed necessary for his continuing training, that his yet-unworldly son would need to learn well the pain of death one way or another. Achilles had nodded readily, not thinking, for even had his head forgotten the rage which had branded his fate so cruelly to him in life, his hands were still itching with the pervasive desire to take whatever petty revenge he could.
Achilles, now, lets the spear drop from his hand. He rushes across the courtyard to clasp his cloak around his shoulders, the sturdy weight of the fabric doing all but nothing to combat the chill that winds itself around him. Swift-footed he certainly is, as he rushes through the candle-lit halls of the House, ignoring the myriad of curious glances thrown his way, and comes to a stop before the pooled blood of the Styx such that he himself had first stepped out from upon pledging himself to immortal service.
It's an almost-perfect mirror of the room above, surface marred only by the gentle ripples from where the blood spills down into the pool out of a stone-carved urn.
Achilles looks out upon it, and feels a terrible dread grow over him at the creeping, irrational thought that nothing will happen at all, that the prince is simply gone, fated to drift through the Styx evermore in return for his all-too-mortal death.
That fear, at least, is soon quelled, as a few stray bubbles pop up, shortly followed by the gasping, disoriented form of Prince Zagreus bursting out to the surface. He looks wildly around him, and when he lays eyes upon Achilles he draws in a shuddering breath, fear still splayed plainly across his face. Achilles, for his part, finds himself drawn forward a few steps into the pool, and reaches out an offering hand, which the shaky prince gladly takes. He steps back onto dry ground, pulling Zagreus with him.
Zagreus starts to collapse again to his knees just as soon as he moves his hand free from Achilles's, and on some instinct foreign to him Achilles catches the godling's shoulders to keep him from falling, instead sinking slowly to the ground with him. "You're alright, lad," he hears himself say.
Zagreus nods then, eyes shut tightly, and Achilles gently lets him go again. The prince steadies himself, and takes in a breath, and another. "I'm sorry, sir," he says quietly, inclining his head in shame.
Achilles blinks, a sudden surprise piercing him. "What do you have to be sorry for?"
Zagreus shakes his head slightly, eyes still obscured. "I-- failed in my training. I.. apologize for causing you disappointment." His words sound automatic, rehearsed. Achilles wonders how many times he's spoken them before.
"Oh," Achilles says, and before he can even consider it, "Nonsense, lad. Failure is a part of learning, and you did more than alright, considering the circumstances. I only wish I'd given you more time to prepare."
The prince lifts his head up a bit at that. "Thank you, sir," He says in return, words colored with enough surprise that it makes Achilles's heart pang. "I've-- I've never died before."
Achilles, for all the prideful remarks he's ever made, is lost for a response to that. "No?"
"No." Zagreus seems all at once very small against the marble flooring, a tremor running through his shoulders. "I didn't-- I've seen deaths, of course I have, but I... no one told me how much it would--" he cuts himself off abruptly, voice bitten like it's some forbidden confession.
At that, the booming voice of Hades carries down the hall, from where he sits at his great desk. "If you're quite done idling there and feeling sorry for yourself, boy, I'm sure there's plenty of work for you to do. It was high time you grow accustomed to the pull of the Styx, and it will be far from the last. You've already proven that much."
Zagreus doesn't flinch, but it's a close thing.
"Sorry," he says quietly again into the air, and climbs to his feet, shaking the last dregs of Styx off of himself. Achilles follows him up in suit.
Achilles is far from a stranger to aches of the heart, but the particular one that spikes between his ribs now is wholly and completely unfamiliar to him. He thinks of Hades's words to him all those weeks ago, his utter disregard for his son's life. He thinks yet further back, to a life before this one, another time he had killed a man's son; far angrier then, still ragged from fresh wounds now fettered under layers of time and cloth. How Priam had thrown himself at his feet, weeping bitterly, offering him as high a ransom as he could procure; all to bring home the cold, unmoving corpse of his child.
Achilles does not think himself a close man to Priam, nor does he dare begrudge himself the thought of drawing similarity between himself and one of the gods; but he stands there in the house of Hades and thinks that for all the world and all his hubris he'd far more gladly cast himself sobbing at some indestructible enemy's feet, begging for the body of his own child, than speak with half as much cold indifference as Hades had towards his son.
That thought, at least, jars him greatly, and he pulls himself back to the present with no small difficulty. He turns to Zagreus, who looks grateful for the short rest he'd been allowed while Achilles had been lost in thought.
"Let's go back to the courtyard then, lad. I think we've fit in enough dodging practice for one day, but there's still much to be taught," Achilles tells him kindly as he can, watching him carefully.
"Okay," Zagreus responds, and Achilles can see some of the tension leak from his shoulders. Not all, but some. "Okay," he says again, and begins to follow Achilles down the hall.
There is much to be taught, Achilles thinks to himself, and much yet to be learned.