Work Text:
“You once told me that the human eye is god's loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn't even know there's another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty.”
Shotaro learns about Misato Ryoya before he sees him; learns that he will become a legend for the ages, up there as a constellation in the sky like all those before him.
He learns that Misato Ryoya will be Greece’s most beloved, and when he finally sees him in action, Shotaro believes it.
Misato Ryoya has agile feet and a laugh so bright it could set the world on fire. His skin is alabaster-pale, so sleek the wind whips past him like a spoon through honey, eyebrows thick and shapely as if each hair was carved by a sculptor.
He’s only eight, and it shows in the youthful set of his mouth, in the way his dimple pops out at inopportune moments, in how he springs off the ground like the only thing standing between him and Mount Olympus is his own conviction.
He looks older when an olive laurel is placed on his head of smoky onyx hair, the colours swirling together into a kaleidoscope of victory. He remains poised to strike at any moment. Like he still has something to prove.
He will rescue Greece. He will save them from ruins.
This much Shotaro knows.
━━━━━━
When he is thirteen, Shotaro is sent away to live in another kingdom.
He will not bring glory to his father nor his land, and perhaps by training with the future heroes of Greece he can learn something of value. Perhaps walking among the children of gods will make him seem more like one.
He’s brought to a chamber of silver and gold; paintings and sculptures line the walls, and he clutches tightly to an apple, the last piece of home he still has with him. He knows well that this is a king’s receiving room.
When he is thirteen, Shotaro meets Misato Ryoya. At this point, he has only heard the name in whispers and sidelong glances, in mentions of the boy who may not be a god but was raised in the shadow of Mount Olympus nevertheless, nurtured with the aura of a thousand suns.
Misato Ryoya is a boy destined for glory, the son of a goddess, and a future war hero. He will slay their enemies in battle with nothing more than a spear, and he will conquer.
They say he’s been given the gods’ blessing.
His mother, Thetis, is a sea nymph and a water goddess. They say she looks after him as if desperate to make her mark, as if she wants nothing more than to have him carry her legacy.
They say she would kill for him.
Misato stands at his father’s side in the receiving room, extends a hand for Shotaro to shake.
“I’m Misato Ryoya,” he says. “What’s your name?”
Shotaro isn’t thinking of how many people Misato will kill or how many battles he will win; his mother's protectiveness or his father's fame, but how nice a smile looks when it paints his mouth.
(Later, Misato will become more withdrawn. Later, he will pull into himself and shy away from strangers and spend all his time sharpening the blade of bloodshed, but now they are only thirteen years old, and neither of them knows better of the world than to welcome it with open arms.)
“Futaba Shotaro,” answers Shotaro, because this is what he’s been taught to say when someone introduces themselves. He takes the handshake and all of a sudden he feels awfully bare despite the clothes on his back.
“Shotaro,” the other boy mouths the words, rolling each syllable around on his tongue like a marble.
Shotaro waits. It’s been so long since he heard his own name from someone else’s lips that it sends a shockwave roiling through his gut, like a sickness that will worsen with time, like a magnetic force pulling him out in all directions.
“Call me Ryoya.”
“Ryoya?” Shotaro asks. “Isn’t that a little…”
“I don’t mind,” Ryoya replies. At that moment it’s more obvious than ever that he has been blessed; his eyes dance with quiet joy and his smile bursts across his face like a sunbeam and Shotaro thinks if he was one of the Fates he would have chosen this boy too.
“You don’t?”
Ryoya shrugs. “We’re going to be living together anyway,” he responds. “Might as well get used to it.”
Shotaro’s mouth splits open so wide it threatens to crack his face in two. “Ryoya,” he says quietly. The name presses against his chest like a comfortable weight, like clay burnished smoother than tempered glass. “Ryoya.”
“Shotaro,” Ryoya echoes. They haven’t let go of each other’s hands. “Welcome.”
Right now, Shotaro doesn’t know that this boy will fit into all the spaces he lets him. He doesn’t know that they will grow up and out together, that they will travel across the sea and find each other, in sickness, in war, in sacrifice, in death.
He doesn’t know that Misato Ryoya will be Greece’s most beloved, yes - but Shotaro will be his.
━━━━━━
Shotaro keeps his head down and tries not to bother any of the other boys, and with time he finds out more about Ryoya. He finds out that Ryoya skips his lessons a lot, that he doesn’t talk much to anyone else unless they talk to him first, and that he’s as much a strategist as a fighter. His favourite fruit is figs.
It starts with a glance every few days; they pass each other at lunchtime and sometimes Ryoya will send him a small smile but more often than not his brow is creased in concentration and he’s looking over a roll of papyrus with markings Shotaro could never hope to decipher. He’s handsome when he’s focused, Shotaro notices. Like he still has something to prove.
Eventually, it morphs into more than that. Shotaro taps him on the shoulder as he’s walking out of the lunch hall and asks, “What are you working on?”
Ryoya doesn’t talk half as much as Shotaro expects him to—he points at the symbols, offers a short explanation, and Shotaro worries that he’s being brushed off, turns around to leave.
Ryoya’s hand lands on his shoulder, already more familiar than Shotaro’s father ever was. He turns around.
“I’ll teach you sometime,” Ryoya says. “Pinky swear.” And it’s more than a statement. It’s an invitation.
Shotaro grabs it with both hands.
Afterwards, they begin sitting together at lunch. Ryoya still says his name with the same breathlessness as he did the first time, each syllable stressed evenly, his tongue rolling over them with an ease borne of repetition.
It sets a fire alight in Shotaro’s chest, to know Ryoya has been practicing his name. He lies awake in his cot at night and whispers Ryoya’s name, the family part and the given, the marker of the gods and the marker of humanity.
Misato Ryoya. The consonants whistle through his teeth like blades of lampgrass folded down the middle. It fits into his mouth. It feels right.
Ryoya taps him on the shoulder as they’re leaving lunch. “Meet me by the river,” he says by way of explanation. “Don’t bring anyone else.”
So Shotaro goes alone. He follows a fair few feet behind Ryoya as they pick their way through the underbrush to the riverside. “Ryoya,” he says.
“Shotaro,” responds Ryoya, relief peeking through the stoic look on his face. He’s hung upside down from a tree branch, limbs loose and hands delicate as he plucks a fig off a nearby bough.
The river bubbles with laughter, a songbird chirping somewhere in the woods. The sun claws up to the mountain tops, capped with snow. Mud makes its way into the gaps between Shotaro’s toes, but he doesn’t dare move.
“Look,” Ryoya tells him, picking one, two more figs off the branches and tossing them high into the air. He catches them in one hand and Shotaro’s eyes follow them up, down in a constant circle. “You want me to teach you how?”
Shotaro’s lips tug upwards. “Okay,” he whispers.
Ryoya places the figs carefully in his palms. “You throw one up, then the next. And as you catch the first one in your left hand, you toss the last one.” He demonstrates, and though his gaze is fixed on the spinning figs at first, it comes down to rest on Shotaro. “Give it a try.”
He fails miserably at it, drops them in the dirt several times, but Ryoya doesn’t complain, just comes behind him and helps him with it. His breath is hot on Shotaro’s neck and he coaches Shotaro slowly through the motions, miming them each several times.
After a while, though, his patience wears thin. They are merely thirteen, after all, as carefree and easily distracted as all other boys their age. On the precipice of childhood and adolescence, too old to miss all their classes in favour of eating figs but young enough not to care. “It’s alright. We can try again later.”
Ryoya rinses the figs in the river before taking one and leaving him the other two. “You can eat them, you know,” he says after a moment. “They taste good.”
The figs are thick and sticky on Shotaro’s tongue, and he hums happily. “You’re right,” he answers. “They do.”
A tree bends over the two of them like it’s trying to protect them from the world; the bark is covered with moss and the leaves provide a spot of shade for them to sit.
Ryoya sits up. He tugs a few violets from the ground; they grow in beds of leaves, and the carpet of purple stretches as far as the eye can see.
He runs the stem through his fingers. “Do you know how to make flower crowns?” he asks, leaning back to look at Shotaro. His eyes are scrutinizing.
Shaking his head, Shotaro fiddles with the silky petals of another violet. “No,” he admits, and he almost anticipates the derision that will follow, but—
Ryoya’s palm rests on the back of his hand. It’s lean, callused and rough with the scars of determination. “I’ll make one for you,” he decides.
His fingers are deft as he pierces slits in the violet stems and weaves them together, tying small knots as he goes so they don’t come apart. Every once in a while a stem proves impossible to thread through and Ryoya sticks his tongue out from the corner of his mouth, his dimple jumping out, lips pressed together. His hair is mussed and his mouth is shiny with the pinkish residue of fig flesh.
“There,” he announces. The violets have been strung together in a circlet of vibrant purple. Shotaro swallows as Ryoya places the crown on his head.
Ryoya tilts his head, mouth curved into a half-grin, hair falling all to one side in a dark tumble of tousled locks. “You look like a dryad,” he tells Shotaro, leaning in to adjust the crown. “A wood nymph.”
Shotaro blushes all the way to his neck. “You can’t go around saying things like that,” he protests, and Ryoya lifts his shoulders.
“I can do whatever I want.” It’s puffed up with hubris and assurance, but it’s honest nonetheless.
(He will be their saviour, forever immortalized in scrolls and offerings to the gods and bronze carvings. He can do whatever he wants, and who is Shotaro to deny him?)
They race back to the palace for combat lessons. Shotaro keeps the flower crown next to his cot, carefully arranged so nothing can crush it.
The day it withers, Ryoya walks past his door and says, “I’ll make you a new one.”
That night there’s a new wreath of violets in the same spot. When they brush shoulders at lunch, Shotaro whispers, “Thank you.”
━━━━━━
They progress in spurts and stops, in onward momentum and false starts. After an appeal to the king, they begin to train together. Ryoya carries a spear in his hand like its heft is natural, like he’s had it since birth, like it’s another limb. He pivots and rotates and dodges with the skill of a seasoned fighter.
He learns, and he teaches. Maybe it’s because he’s had so much longer than Shotaro to study, maybe it’s because his focus zeroes in like an arrow hitting its target when he works up interest in something and swerves madly to the side when he doesn’t. Or maybe it’s simply that he is Misato Ryoya, and he was never meant for mundanity. Either way, his mind seems to move quicker than Shotaro can register.
Shotaro goes to every lesson with him, but often he will be left in confusion when Ryoya understands wholly. Instead, he waits for Ryoya to turn to him and explain, hair spilling over his forehead and into his eyes until he brushes it away with a light touch.
They grow older. Shotaro’s feet are too big for the sandals he’s been given.
(Ryoya gets him a new pair and a fresh set of clothes.)
Some more persuasion and they end up sleeping in the same room, their cots turned to each other in the night. By the time Shotaro wakes up Ryoya is usually still lying on his side, just looking at him.
“Hello,” Shotaro tells him, smiling small. The air is mild and quiet and smells like a summer song, corners of the room bathed in slices of sunshine. The morning is reticent with exhaustion; sleep clings to their skin like sweat, and goldenrod daylight clambers up their chests.
Before they leave the room for combat training, Ryoya rests a hand on the slope of Shotaro’s shoulder and says, “Good luck today, Shotaro.” His voice is husky with sleep and his hand is warm. He squeezes twice.
Shotaro hums. “You too.”
Ryoya sleeps soundly, usually, but sits up often to get a drink or open the window. Occasionally, he leaves and returns with the tangy scent of the surf lingering in his hair, smelling like salt and sea spray, his clothes dripping wet.
He looks like a child of the ocean, then; eyes cobalt blue, skin burnished a faint olive glow, hair bleached by the baking sun into lighter strands, and on those days Shotaro relaxes in the gentle palm of the tide, Ryoya’s hand on his arm like the waves curling against the sandy shore.
Together, they visit the riverbed day after day and catch fish glittering like jewels, skimming over the surface of the water as if they’re trying to reach the moon without wings.
After their lessons are finished, Ryoya sits quietly while Shotaro tries and fails to juggle figs, a grin breaking across his face as soon as the fruits drop into the sand.
He crosses his legs and rests his chin on his knees when Shotaro tells him stories of his childhood, of family and friends and everything in between, of recklessness and reluctance and forever moving forward.
Shotaro discovers more about Ryoya in bits and pieces, in words unsaid and involuntary gestures, in the small parts of himself he bares for Shotaro to see.
He discovers that Ryoya is quick to anger but even quicker to laugh. His smile is like daybreak and reminds Shotaro of rain in spring.
He runs half on instinct and half on calculation. Every move is deliberate in an almost spontaneous fashion, like he can’t bother to wait even a split second to strike, like biding time is the same as wasting it and he knows fate will lead him strong and true out the other end nevertheless.
The other boys are all swagger and battle cries torn from throats, but Ryoya’s pride takes a different form—certainty bordering on arrogance in how he holds himself, in the determined set of his chin and the careless ease of his posture.
He is undaunted and almost overly confident. Shotaro thinks he has done well to deserve such self-assurance.
They are sitting on a rock formation in a cave near the undercurrent when Ryoya stands up to gather seashells and a wave crashes at Shotaro’s toes, the murmur of an ocean goddess who also happens to be the mother of a future legend. He has never met her, but still. He would know her voice like his own.
He is not yours to hold.
The water soaks Shotaro’s feet in brine, scattering gritty over his ankles.
He keeps his distance after that.
━━━━━━
Ryoya corners him in the morning before he can leave. “What’s wrong?” he asks. Concern, like dawn, breaks rosy and golden across his face.
“Nothing,” says Shotaro, blinking hard to avoid Ryoya’s stare under the guise of rubbing the fatigue out of his eyes.
For a moment, Ryoya is quiet. They are both verging on fourteen now, and they have spent so long always talking, always moving, always running around that Shotaro almost forgot the taste of silence in his mouth.
“Shotaro,” Ryoya says finally. “Shotaro, is it my mother?”
He seems to like saying Shotaro’s name. He says it the same way each time, syllables clear as a bell, stacked up one by one like ripe figs. Shotaro almost forgets to answer when he hears his name said like that, a well-kept mystery, a secret so wild and wonderful it begs to be released.
Shotaro makes an involuntary sound in his throat. It makes him sound like a wounded animal, tired of yearning and tired of hurting.
The hand slips off his shoulder. Ryoya presses his lips together. “It doesn’t matter,” he announces decisively. “She won’t hurt us here.” He interlaces their fingers. “I’ll speak to her.”
Shotaro’s chest pangs. When he pulls out of the grasp, it feels awfully like twisting off a sparrow’s wings and watching it plummet, motionless, to the damp earth.
━━━━━━
One day, he follows Ryoya to a clearing in the forest where the blanket of violets abates and instead makes way for smaller, purple flowers, early spring blossoms with frail petals and budding yellow centers.
“Do you know the name of this flower?” Shotaro wonders, stroking a leaf.
Ryoya is spread-eagled on the ground in a mess of lax limbs. Afternoon daylight filters through the canopy and illuminates the gentle, earnest curve of his nose. This is the only time he lets down his guard to lie down without doing a sweep of his surroundings first to check, the only time the crease between his brows disappears and his face smooths over.
The lack of tension makes him look so much younger, and it fills Shotaro with a tender sort of pride to know he gets to see Ryoya like this.
Ryoya rolls onto his side and cranes his neck to inspect the flower, so close his breaths puff out hotly against Shotaro’s wrist. “Anemone,” he says, “or windflower.”
“Windflower?” Shotaro echoes.
Ryoya makes a sound of affirmation. “Sometimes called snowdrops.”
The name is an apt one; purple sinks into white at the edges, fine as lace. Or snowflakes.
Gaze sliding over to Shotaro, one corner of Ryoya’s mouth lifts. “They’re good for making flower crowns.”
“You want to teach me, then?” Shotaro asks, catching on.
Ryoya sits up and runs a hand through his hair. The sun infuses his skin with honeysuckle, rose quartz, burnished amber. They’ve both tanned significantly, and Shotaro’s complexion has tilted from fair to golden. Sharp shards of heaven. “If you’ll let me.”
Shotaro nods. “I want you to,” he murmurs.
Ryoya scoots in. They’re so close Shotaro can see the planets are reflected in the inky, hyacinth-coloured pools of his eyes. The touch of his fingers is soft on Shotaro’s palm. While he explains, he looks straight at Shotaro, making sure he’s paying attention, daring him to forget.
This, as his nail slices down the stem’s center (make sure it’s only a small cut); this, as he picks up another windflower and draws the stalk through the opening (if it’s too big you might rip it); and this, as he pulls them together, using the flower head as a stopper (just like that); and this, as he plaits them meticulously into a more complicated braid, pauses, places the unfinished crown in Shotaro’s lap (you want to try the rest?).
It takes a long time. By the end, more than a few flower petals have been crushed. Still, Shotaro manages to weave together the stems into an approximation of a crown.
He means merely to pass it to Ryoya, to let him put it on himself, but Ryoya dips his chin down, and a giggle bursts out of Shotaro’s mouth as he arranges the flowers in Ryoya’s mane of unruly hair.
“Thank you,” Ryoya tells him seriously, grazing the trim of a petal between his fingers.
“I should be the one thanking you,” says Shotaro. “I have nothing to teach you except what you already know.”
Ryoya picks at a blade of grass. Colour settles high in the apples of his cheeks. “You have taught me friendship. Is that not enough?”
Shotaro’s mouth is dry. “I suppose it is,” he answers.
Glancing at him seriously, Ryoya begins weaving another crown of snowdrops. “You should not underestimate yourself, Shotaro,” he responds. “You have more to teach me than I have you.”
A moment of stillness.
(The solemnity ends.)
They go back to draping themselves across the clearing, and Ryoya catches Shotaro’s hand as he splays it out.
Ryoya’s eyes are so, so blue, the reflection of the waves at midday and butterfly wings in flight. Shotaro wants to laugh, so he does. He shades his eyes with a hand and points out shapes in the clouds until his cheeks begin to ache from smiling too hard.
They stay holding hands even as the sun sinks below the mountainside, even as the purple windflowers are steeped in shadow, limbs spread out so wide they could touch all four corners of the sky.
“All this time I told myself we were born from war—but I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty. Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence—but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.”
Mornings in Phthia are for bird calls and rallying cries, ocean breakers and dew-laden tree branches. Dawn stitches the clouds in shades of tangerine. Shotaro finds himself scuffing his toe through the dirt when the sun hasn’t emerged yet, the air cool and hung with moisture.
Leaves crinkle behind him, and ordinarily, he would flinch—but now he knows how Ryoya’s feet strike the earth, the cadence of his steps, the way his breath speeds up when he tries to be surreptitious. He knows Ryoya would never hurt him.
“Shotaro,” the other boy, the stuff of legends, the demigod, the best of the Greeks, Ryoya—says, as if on cue.
Shotaro offers him a wan smile. “Good morning. Why aren’t you sleeping?”
Ryoya hesitates. “I was looking for you,” he replies. “You’re not usually up this early.”
Picking at his nail, Shotaro stares straight ahead. “I did not realize I needed your permission to leave.” It comes out sharper than intended. He winces.
A moment later, Ryoya opens his mouth, but just as quickly all the fight drains out of his body and he sits down on the bed of moss. “Are you okay?” he asks. He picks up three pieces of long grass and begins braiding them absent-mindedly.
And because Shotaro’s self-preservation instincts outweigh any abandon Ryoya’s presence might bring, he doesn’t answer.
The sun is beginning to creep over the clouds, setting them awash in pink and orange. Their faces turned to the mountaintops, their backs to the sunrise. Daylight splashes over the ridge of Ryoya’s cheekbone and pools in the curve of his clavicle like nectar.
Shotaro draws his knees up to his chest and spreads out his fingers in the grass to steady himself.
A flock of birds takes flight, feathered wings shot through with white veins, glowing in the early morning lustre.
“Tell me,” Ryoya begins, then pauses. “Tell me,” he repeats, “is there something you wish for?”
His elbows are stained green with grass and his hair is ruffled with sleep, eyes heavy-lidded. The bow of his lips is firm; a beacon in the darkness, an unwavering source of joy, a castle in the sky.
There are many things Shotaro could say at this moment—health, a long life, a good family, a perfect partner. There are many things he could say; that he has learned to separate the wish from the want, that what he wishes for matters insofar as it could be real. He could say that wishes do not matter regardless; it is only how far one is willing to go, how much they are willing to sacrifice.
There are many things he could say, and yet he finds himself unable to speak a word.
He could leave and forget this happened, forget the raindrops suffusing the river in mist, forget the fig trees and the flower crowns, forget how Ryoya looks at him, with one corner of his mouth turned up and his expression amused, forget how it feels to have the eyes of Greece’s future saviour on him.
Shotaro does not do any of this.
He sits forward on his knees and presses his lips to Ryoya’s in a soft, gentle act of defiance.
Ryoya is frozen beneath him.
Shotaro pulls back, ready to apologize, practically poised to pack his bags and leave the kingdom, because he has known since he arrived in Phthia that befriending, let alone pursuing a boy like Misato Ryoya would end in nothing but tragedy.
A gentle hand on his shoulder stops him in his tracks.
“Shotaro,” Ryoya whispers, his lips hardly moving. Nothing more comes out of his mouth, but his eyes are all Shotaro needs. A request and a reminder, the past and the future all wrapped up in one.
(To gaze at someone is akin to making them the center of your universe, if only for a second.)
For all the time Shotaro has spent dreaming about it, they are only young boys. Their next kiss is nothing like his fantasies. Their hands bump, their teeth knock, dirt sticks to their arms, and finally Ryoya cups his jaw and gains purchase of Shotaro’s mouth.
He tastes like the ocean, and sunlight - and how breathtaking is it, that two such diametrically opposed miracles could come together just for this moment? That both the sea and the sky have chosen this irrepressible, wondrous boy to place their faith in? How impossibly striking, the way Ryoya’s eyes shine in the dusk, the softness and vivacity of his laughter, the lock of his hair that never quite lies flat.
That he is Shotaro’s, to have and to hold, maybe not forever, but for now.
Their fingers interlock. Ryoya presses a dry kiss into his hair, and Shotaro thinks he may become accustomed to the weight of Ryoya’s palm in his, to the soaring feeling in his heart, to braving the wrath of the gods and weathering the storm, if he can at least have this.
━━━━━━
Ryoya draws tiny circles on the skin of Shotaro’s wrist. “I’m supposed to leave soon,” he blurts. “My mother wants me to train with an expert.”
Shotaro’s gut tightens. “When?” he manages to get out.
“A year, maybe? She hasn’t…said when. Just soon.”
He tips his chin up and stares at the carpet of grass reaching far ahead of them. “Are you going far?”
Ryoya intertwines their fingers. “No,” he mumbles. “Only a mountain away. Or two.” He hesitates. “I will ask if you can come with me.”
“You don’t have to.”
Ryoya catches his gaze, a sober shade of deep blue. “I want to.”
━━━━━━
Thetis meets Shotaro outside the palace grounds on a morning walk. She looks at him, ice in her glare and sea breeze in the set of her mouth, tells him Ryoya will soon outpace him, tells him Ryoya’s future is already ordained, that he will be a god for better or for worse, and that Shotaro should not waste his time pursuing someone so out of reach.
She will send her son away, as punishment, and reparation.
(Perhaps she already has.)
Shotaro turns tail and heads back home.
Their room is empty. Ryoya is gone.
Shotaro peers out the window; there are so many places he could have disappeared to, but only one that comes to mind, like a honing device, like a wayfinder, like the North Star, something he can’t remember learning or being told but that he knows instinctively.
Ryoya has never gone to a place he couldn’t find himself. Shotaro does not remember a time before he knew Ryoya. It must not have been him inhabiting his body, back then.
He steps out of the palace with only the clothes on his back and a pair of sandals, and he runs. The wind rushes past his ears in a pulp of euphoria, the earth is steady beneath his feet, and he runs as fast as he can.
(It still may not be enough.)
He runs anyway, and for a split second he understands how Icarus must have felt, the sun’s warmth on his back, the morning current curling around his hair like it’s saying, hurry. You can catch up if you run faster. If it was like this, Shotaro understands why Icarus risked losing his wings.
Only a little further. He is waiting for you.
And he is, by a miracle or a revelation, he is. His face melts into poorly hidden relief at the sight of Shotaro in front of him, panting and sweaty. “Shotaro,” he breathes, extending a hand. His smile is like the atmosphere cracking open. “You came.”
Shotaro pitches forward into his arms. Ryoya runs his hand up and down the length of Shotaro’s back, mumbles into the juncture of his shoulder and neck: “It’s alright. It’s alright.”
Shotaro feels a little foolish, being held by a boy whose name is known across Greece, but Ryoya is more than that. His skin is sun-warmed and he smells like lavender.
Pulling back, Ryoya looks him dead in the eye and says, “Come with me. Please,” he adds, stroking the wrinkle at the corner of Shotaro’s mouth with a soft thumb. “She cannot reach us up there.” And he points at the mountain tearing a faint stitch in the heavens, greater than a god, so high the peak disappears into filmy clouds. “Promise.”
Shotaro goes with him.
━━━━━━
They arrive on Mount Pelion with lethargy hollowed deep in their muscles and perspiration painting their foreheads.
The two of them receive training from perhaps the only person alive who is not scared of the gods’ wrath; Chiron sizes them up with a critical eye and the next few days are spent in near paradise, waking up before the sun and flopping down bone-tired only to rise again the next morning.
Eventually, Chiron tells them they must first learn to fight if they want any chance at victory in the war they know is coming, but are clueless as to how, and when, and where.
Chiron realizes early on that Ryoya has nothing more to learn, so he turns his analytical gaze on Shotaro, and asks, “And you? Do you want to learn to fight?”
He should say yes. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, to learn the art of war from someone so acclaimed that even his name sends a shiver of admiration down the spines of almost everyone in Greece.
Shotaro locks eyes with Ryoya.
Is there something you wish for?
The boy stares back at him, sincerity clear as glass in his deep blue irises, fondness playing at the edges of his sharp demeanour.
Shotaro’s voice rings out, cleaving through the air like an axe. “No,” he answers, “I do not wish to become a soldier. But I—” he hesitates, “I have always wanted to help in times of war. To heal, not to hurt. I was not…meant to draw blood.” His voice drops to a mumble. “I was not destined for glory.”
Chiron fixes him with a sharp, penetrating look. “Healers have their place on the battlefield,” he says by way of response, and the conversation ends.
After that, the tiny grin that blooms on Ryoya’s face sinks into Shotaro’s exit wounds like a curing balm.
They sit cross-legged in a clearing in the woods. Ryoya fiddles with a windflower stem. “Glory is not always the best option,” he states, matter-of-factly. His brow knits and his lashes fan out over his arched cheekbones. “It is far better to be a good man than a glorious one.”
Shotaro nods without truly listening. He watches Ryoya’s slender, lithe fingers move so fast they look like they might tangle together if he doesn’t pay proper attention.
“Shotaro?” Ryoya says. He tugs out a small flower and tucks it in Shotaro’s hair.
“Yes?”
“Don’t forget,” he tells Shotaro, “being good is more important than being glorious.”
Shotaro nods and adjusts the violet behind his ear. “Ryoya,” he returns. Even after all this time, it makes electricity zip up his spine, being able to say Ryoya’s name with so much ease and familiarity and have Ryoya do the same for him.
Ryoya hums. His resting face is serene and the corners of his lips turn down ever so slightly in an imitation of a pout.
He is young, too young to bear the weight of Greece. Shotaro’s heart gives a small, pathetic twinge.
Instead of voicing his concern, he shuffles closer to rest his head on Ryoya’s shoulder. His pulse thrums loud in his ears. “You should not worry,” he answers eventually. Goodness and glory. “I think you will be both.”
Ryoya looks at him. He doesn’t smile, but his dimple pops out.
He leans in and kisses Shotaro, simple as anything, like this is the only place he wants to be, like Shotaro is the only person he wants to hold, now and forever.
━━━━━━
They have begun to share a bed. It is as comfortable as it is exhilarating; the weight of Ryoya’s arm slung across his shoulder, his breaths coming even and hushed in sleep; the number of nights Shotaro has spent just like this, lying awake and loving Ryoya in silence; how every day, they somehow manage to wake holding hands.
They take up new interests for lack of anything else to do; Ryoya with music and Shotaro with medicine, Apollo’s two greatest disciplines—harmony and healing. During the daytime they lie in grassy fields for hours, Ryoya lazily picking out melodies on his lyre, Shotaro crushing and mixing herbs to create cures for maladies. Ryoya’s fingers are just as at home plucking the strings of a lyre as they are weaving flower crowns. Shotaro hunts for saplings in forest thickets to the sound of gentle harp music floating through the crisp mountain air.
At night time they sprawl on their backs in the middle of the meadow, pointing out constellations. Shotaro talks about all the legends he remembers hearing as a child, about Prometheus and Cassiopeia and Orion, the legends from which he first learned never to cross a god.
Chiron fills in some of the gaps, and Ryoya merely rolls on his side, his eyes skimming over Shotaro like the moon gliding on the glittering waves.
One night after Chiron has turned in already, Shotaro’s hand finds Ryoya’s, dry and roughened with the weight of a spear.
“Why me?” Shotaro wonders suddenly.
Ryoya’s grip tightens in his. “What do you mean?”
Shotaro inhales, fills his lungs with the bracing midnight air. “Why did you choose me?” he clarifies. “You could…you could have anyone,” he admits, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “I cannot fight. I can barely wrap a bandage.” He pauses. “There are better uses of your time than spending it with me.”
Ryoya pushes himself off the ground and sits up. “You want to know why I chose you?” Quiet, like if he speaks any louder the two of them might shatter under the weight of the sky. The slant of his mouth is soft, flawless and distant in the moonlight.
“If you would like to tell me,” replies Shotaro, rubbing his arms before goosebumps threaten to prickle skin.
Ryoya is silent. “When you laugh, I think I could eat the world raw.”
Shotaro blinks. “What?”
“Yes,” he nods, the firm line of his lips solemn. “Did I ever mention,” he continues, “how your eyes crinkle when you smile? Or the colour in your cheeks?”
Shotaro’s mouth opens and closes. Nothing comes out. “No,” he responds, “you didn’t.”
Ryoya’s fingers dance across the slope of his shoulder. “I should have,” he says. “I should have told you everything. I am sure I must have spoken of this, at least.” His hand brushes over the freckle on Shotaro’s neck.
“You haven’t.”
“And this? Did I tell you about this?” Ryoya’s fingers, swift and certain and rhythmic as a bird in flight, land on the sweeping angle of Shotaro’s chin.
Shotaro swallows. “You may have to remind me,” he counters. “I have forgotten.” Or perhaps I never knew, he adds in his head.
Ryoya’s throat bobs. “I will always remind you,” he promises. He smooths over Shotaro’s jaw with his thumb and kisses the corner of his mouth, natural and light and mellow as grass waving in the breeze.
“Would you like me to tell you, now?” Shotaro asks absently, glancing at Ryoya.
“Tell me what?” Ryoya replies, gaze locked on some faraway thing, a blinking star in the sky or the crest of another mountain. Maybe he is dreaming of glory. Maybe the heavens are opening wide, for him.
“Why I chose you.”
There’s a lull before Ryoya starts to talk. He does not answer, only side-steps. “My mother wants to make me a god.”
“So?”
Ryoya stares at him. “I may die in the war,” he says instead, changing the topic. “No. I will.”
Shotaro swallows. “I know.”
“And you would still come with me?” Ryoya poses the question as if it is something that was ever in doubt. “You would accompany me, knowing one of us would never walk out?”
“I would not want to live after you were gone,” Shotaro answers. This is how it is: his sole purpose, always, has been to love Misato Ryoya, to share in his joy and to shoulder his sorrow unhesitatingly, to stand beside him in the memory of the gods, to stay together even as death threatens to tear them apart.
Shotaro was meant to love him; to love not only the beauty of him, but also the burden of him. To see in full the burden of his reputation, his glory, his perfection and his pride. To love him anyway.
“I hope you don’t think that way,” Ryoya responds. His eyelashes cast shadows over his face, backlit by the stars. “I hope you don’t say that again.” He falters. “I do not like to think about your death.”
“Why not? It is the truth.”
“It is an ugly one,” says Ryoya sharply, “and I prefer not to deal in ugly truths.”
“You would rather a beautiful lie than a faithful truth, however ugly it might be?” Shotaro asks, adrenaline racing in his veins and pounding through his ears.
“Shotaro,” Ryoya snaps. “Stop.” He pauses. “It’s not that I would rather face lies than truth,” he supplies, halting. “But you are—you make everything difficult. And easy.”
“You think I’m difficult?” Shotaro asks, mostly teasing.
Ryoya shakes his head. “I think you are difficult to leave, but easy to love.”
“What of the war? Surely you will have to leave me then, if not earlier.”
Ryoya drops his head in the junction of Shotaro’s collarbone. “You can come with me,” he says decisively.
The wind lifts the hair at the back of Shotaro’s neck. Ryoya’s breath is heavy on his neck, half asleep and dappled with goosebumps.
“Shotaro?” Ryoya murmurs sleepily.
“Hmm?”
“When the war arrives,” he begins, “I’ll only agree to go if you accompany me,” he decides, his smile boyish and voice scratchy. A scar runs up the length of his leg from combat training, and calluses have formed on the tips of his fingers, the mark of hours spent plucking lyre strings.
“Okay.”
The night sky is quiet. A bird chirps. “I am scared,” Ryoya admits. “Scared of what will happen.”
Shotaro nods. “I know,” he whispers. “But we have to go on.”
A human life is so short, fleeting as a sunset. A blink of an eye, a barely visible phenomenon. Human lives are measured only in how long they exist before being threatened, in wars or fights or weathered storms. Ryoya will be kept alive in the stars, but for both of them, it feels not nearly enough.
A life is not nearly enough time together.
“Good night, Shotaro,” Ryoya says. His lips tickle the sharp crook of Shotaro’s shoulder.
“Good night, Ryoya,” he says, and like the sunset, they slip into slumber.
"The truth is we can survive our lives, but not our skin. But you know this already."
The war arrives on their front stoop, two years after they first set foot on Mount Pelion. There are detours to islands and fate-foretold prophecies. Odysseus sails to Scyros and tells them of the two futures laid out for Ryoya—fame or forsaking.
He will be forgotten if he stays. The boy who was supposed to be a god, the boy with his name in the stars and his name a war cry in itself, forgotten. Aristos Achaion—the best of the Greeks, his fortune never fulfilled.
If he goes to Troy, though—he will die there. This is the final part of the prophecy, and the most important.
Shotaro feels like he’s been tossed in the freezing ocean before dawn.
They lie on the sandy shore of Scyros two days before Ryoya has to make his decision. There are grains of sand stuck in Ryoya’s wind-splashed hair, and Shotaro combs them out with two fingers.
“I thought I would have longer to live,” Ryoya says. He sounds calmer than anyone has the right to while speaking about their own death. “But maybe I should not have been so foolhardy.”
Shotaro stares hard at a crab scuttling by. “You are still too young to die.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ryoya brushes it aside. “You can do everything I could not. And don’t say you would follow me into the dark,” he adds. “I do not want to hear it.”
Shotaro closes his mouth. “We could stay here together.” He hates the note of desperation in his voice. Holding onto Misato Ryoya is like trying to bottle the wind.
“We could never,” Ryoya answers. He does not say why.
Shotaro understands anyway; there is a hunger, a leaping flame that licks at the burnished blue pupils of Ryoya’s eyes, an incurable thirst for more, more, more that cannot be stamped out with mundanity. He needs renown like a fish needs water. He was raised this way from birth, and it is too late to change.
“Shotaro?”
“Yes?”
“Can you name one hero that was happy?”
Shotaro racks his brain, sifts through his slushy memories of Mount Pelion and the stories Chiron spun. “No.”
“See? Heroes are never happy.” He traces small circles on Shotaro’s wrist. He seems to like doing this. “The rule is that you can’t be famous and happy at the same time.”
“Rules were made to be broken,” Shotaro says back, blushing all the way from his neck to where Ryoya’s fingers touch his skin.
“Exactly.” He stops. “I will be the exception.”
Shotaro understands when it’s his turn to take up the mantle of conversation by how Ryoya’s gaze flicks to him, deliberate and lingering. “Why?”
“Because of you.”
“Alright,” he agrees. It’s the easiest way to take the attention off him.
“Will you follow me to Troy?” Ryoya asks. He hesitates. “I think—it will be easier if you’re there.”
Shotaro licks his lips. “On one condition.”
“Name it,” responds Ryoya immediately.
“Wait as long as possible before you slay Hector,” he appeals. Thetis has predicted that Ryoya will die after Hector does, a harbinger of demise. “Stay alive.” By lengthening Hector’s lifespan, he can do the same to his.
Nodding, Ryoya stares out at the horizon, where now the sun is coming low over the rip currents, everything suffused in golden light. “I will,” he says, and his mouth twists into a grin. “What has Hector ever done to me?”
━━━━━━
No one told Shotaro that war was boring, and long. They sailed from sea to sea in negotiations and altercations. Now that they have disembarked in Troy, Shotaro is constantly on his feet, patching up warriors and delivering babies and tending to wounds of all kinds.
Days pass in a constant state of exhaustion. They say it has been nearly six months since they came. It feels more like a lifetime.
He is in over his head. The first time he walked onto the battlefield, before he took to the medical tent instead, he nearly threw up. These days, he climbs up to the ridge of a nearby hill and, like always, Thetis is watching Ryoya. She guards him as not only a goddess but also a mother. Shotaro begins to understand where Ryoya’s determination stems from.
Even in moments of reprieve, worry plagues him. He knows Thetis will ensure no harm comes to Ryoya, but her protection only extends so far. If someone were to kill Hector, Ryoya’s fate would be up to the stars.
It turns out Shotaro need not trouble himself over this, at least for the moment, because no one has seen Hector—but they know he is alive.
“Be careful,” he tells Ryoya at the end of another day in battle. “Someone might slay Hector without your knowledge. You shouldn’t be so bold.”
“Hector has not fought since the first day,” Ryoya responds offhandedly. Shotaro almost drops the gauze in surprise.
“Why not?”
Ryoya shrugs. “Cowardice,” he suggests. He flashes Shotaro a faint grin. “It makes my job easier, at least.”
Shotaro smiles back, unsettled but willing to go along.
━━━━━━
Shotaro observes from the sidelines of every battle, Ryoya flickering in and out of the camp, onto the frontlines like a candle flame.
The days on Mount Pelion, when Ryoya was always next to him, feel like an eon ago.
Another prophecy: the best of the Myrmidons, the soldiers Ryoya commands, will fall within two years. He will still live.
Efforts to end the war begin in earnest, and yet they make no ground.
The army is restless. From their thrones in the sky, the gods watch overhead on either side of the battleground, waiting to see who will emerge as the victor.
Many of them already know. The only question is how.
━━━━━━
Agamemnon claims a priest’s daughter as a spoil of war, out of his own hubris and greed for bodies unused. He refuses ransom.
The gods punish all the Greeks for Agamemnon’s pride; a plague descends upon the soldiers and everyone seems to fall sick except Ryoya.
Shotaro sleeps in the medical tent when they’re at full capacity, waking up in the middle of the night to refill water or apply ointments.
Ryoya storms out of Agamemnon’s tent and a whisper carries over the troops. He will no longer fight for them unless Agamemnon accepts the ransom and hands the girl back to her father.
From there the problems stack up, less like ripe figs and more like stripped skulls. Shotaro feels the hopelessness eating away at his heart, and sometimes he spots Ryoya staring out from the flap of their tent, the slope of his nose delicate and bold, deep in thought.
Shotaro guesses he wishes he were in combat, too.
He refuses to back down.
Thetis has asked the gods to guarantee the Greeks will fail, at least until Agamemnon apologizes to her son. Perhaps longer. No one knows, least of all Shotaro.
━━━━━━
They are losing. Odysseus comes to them several times to negotiate with Ryoya (and still, he is simply a boy, maybe more than that but never older). It proves unsuccessful.
He wants a true apology, and over the days Shotaro gets used to hearing Ryoya ask, “What has Hector ever done to me?”
“War has made you stubborn,” Shotaro says.
He sees it more every day, even though Ryoya is not in combat himself: the slow hardening of his demeanour, the shadows pooling in his chiselled jawline, how violence has scooped all the kindness out of him and scraped the edges raw, like a spoon over a melon’s golden flesh, emptying out the black seeds in the center.
Heroes are not borne of compassion, but ferocity. Not beauty, but bloodshed. This is who Misato Ryoya was always meant to be, relentless and vicious and laser-focused. It leaves a ringing hollowness in Shotaro’s chest, a sour taste on the roof of his mouth.
Before they turn in for bed, Ryoya acts more like the boy Shotaro fell in love with, shy and affectionate as soon as he steps off the battlefield. Too gentle for his own good, but even that erodes with time into reclusiveness and bad moods.
Shotaro gives him space. This is something he knows how to do.
Ryoya looks up at him. “How so?” He’s cross-legged on the ground, tracing shapes in the dirt.
Shotaro swallows. His mouth tastes like blood, but whether it is because he has bitten his lip or spent so much time with soldiers bleeding out that the aftershock never really leaves, he isn’t sure. “You used to be so kind,” he manages to get out. “Something changed.” He knows exactly what, but he does not say it aloud.
Ryoya’s shoulders slump. “I’m sorry.”
“Please join the fight,” Shotaro blurts. “Everyone is tired. They need you to help them. Aristos achaion,” he supplies. “Remember?”
Jaw tensing, Ryoya shakes his head. “I cannot.” Even like this, he is beautiful. It seems beautiful, for him, is less a state of being and more a fundamental.
“Then let me,” Shotaro presses, uncaring of the way Ryoya’s fist clenches by his side. “I can wear your armour, pretend to be you, just something,” he says, a helpless sound escaping him.
Ryoya’s posture loosens. He stands up and hands Shotaro his helmet from its spot in the corner of the tent.
“Don’t get hurt,” he whispers, beseeching. “I am not sure what I would do if you were to die.”
He is so young.
Shotaro’s heart pangs. “I won’t.”
━━━━━━
A roar surges up from the army when Shotaro appears in Ryoya’s armour—some of relief, others of courage.
He rides into battle with a spear in his hand.
He slips, and he falls.
“When does a war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?”
Death is less painful than he thought it would be. The most difficult part is hearing the sob Ryoya lets out when he learns of Shotaro’s death; it’s a monstrous, agonized sound that tears from his throat, and a heartbreaking fury that surrounds him in the aftermath.
Shotaro’s body occupies the bed in the tent that used to be theirs. Ryoya grips it as if he’s trying to join Shotaro, whispers pleas and regrets against cold, lifeless skin, of treasured memories, compliments he should have told Shotaro earlier, half-baked descriptions of the brutality he swears to exact on Hector in revenge.
Tears soak strands of waxy, matted hair, and blood from Shotaro’s wound seeps out onto the cot but Ryoya doesn’t seem to care. He cries like he did not know what mourning meant until this moment. Come back, he mumbles, like a trance. You promised.
Shotaro aches to reach out to him, to say, I am still here. He can only watch from a distance. He is nothing but smoke, now.
The next day Ryoya sinks into a sort of mindless rampage, running on grief alone. His eyes blaze with anger and he cuts through rows of Trojan warriors without even looking behind to see the bodies fall to the ground.
Hector is on the brink of death when he pleads to Ryoya to bring his body back to his father.
Ryoya is still grief-stricken. He tugs Hector’s body around the camp every day, practically waiting for his own death, eyes welling up and lips trembling. The Greeks tire of it quickly enough, but he rises every morning and continues.
Shotaro does not remember ever seeing him so weak.
Thetis visits him. “Living with humans made you too soft,” she snaps. “I did not raise you like this.”
Ryoya turns his tear-streaked face to her. “You did not raise me at all,” he grits out. “Leave.”
She disappears in a swirl of ocean breeze.
Hector’s father visits their tent. King Priam is a frail man, hands shaky and knees on the verge of buckling. If Ryoya thinks him weak, he does not show it. Instead, he invites him to sit down and says, “If you think I will return Hector, you are mistaken.”
Priam is unfazed. “I am sorry about your companion,” he replies, nodding towards Shotaro’s corpse where it rots in the corner.
“Philtatos,” Ryoya answers sharply.
Most beloved.
Priam steeples his fingers together. “He lived a noble life.”
Ryoya slumps. “He did,” he murmurs. “It should have been longer.”
“We always think so, when someone we love dies. It is a greater grief,” Priam starts, “to be left here while another is gone, is it not?”
Ryoya swallows. “Yes.”
“Please bring my son back to me,” Priam begs. “That is all I ask for. Nothing more.” He raises his hands.
Ryoya’s eyes flicker. Shotaro recognizes the myriad of emotions that pass across his face, confusion and shock and sadness and finally resignation. He has seen them all too many times to count. “Take him with you,” Ryoya decides. He closes his eyes. “I have no use for him.”
Shotaro’s body is burned in the fire that night. Ryoya collects the ashes himself and stands in front of all the Greeks.
He charges them to mix their remains when he dies. This is his only request.
━━━━━━
Ryoya is killed in battle by Paris, and the expression on his face as he falls is not of surprise but relief, relief at finally getting to leave, relief that at long last, they will be reunited.
Still, they are not buried together. Ryoya’s grave is marked only with his name, not Shotaro’s. Ryoya will go to the Underworld, and Shotaro will float forever among humans, a nameless spirit with a wandering heart.
The Greeks leave Troy after winning the war. Shotaro visits Ryoya’s grave on a night when the wind lashes around the beach and the waves lap against the shore, dark and thundering.
It’s engraved with moments of harshness rather than happiness; killing Hector, wrestling the river god, leading the Myrmidons into battle.
Thetis appears next to him. “This was not the son I knew,” she admits quietly. “He was just a boy.” Her voice is wrought heavy with emotion, grief-sick and heart-sick.
Shotaro nods. “He was more than a warrior,” he replies.
“What did you know of him?” Thetis asks, all the hostility absent from her voice.
His chest expands and releases. “So much,” he answers faintly.
“Speak.”
He begins to talk, slowly at first, then all in a rush. This, he says.
Thetis stares at him, tenderness poking through her razor-sharp exterior.
This and this and this. The grace of his body cutting through the air. The evenness in his voice, never daunted. How earnest he sounded whenever he spoke about music, trying to hide his excitement. His eyes in the starlight, his nimble fingers weaving flower crowns, misty smiles cupped in dusk-polished palms, olive laurels and figs and constellation-spotting contests.
Perhaps this is what beauty is. Perhaps this is what grief is, and war, and the static dust that collects between—to feel so much, to think the emotions wrapping our bodies in golden strands of light belong to us when instead, all along it has been someone else who found us in the darkness and offered their hurt in the shape of desire.
Someone else, who discovered brief moments of blessing among the ruins, a beam of light shining through like a beacon. Someone else, who gave us what we couldn't give ourselves: the chance to be human, and the chance to know we are still here. The chance to search through the endless sorrow for each other, for happiness. The chance to live, to live for and to live by and to be alive, no matter when the weight of fate threatens to snip our lifespans in half.
The chance to love.
They stand there. The wind howls; a plaintive cry for the boy who was mortal and god both.
Thetis places her hand on Shotaro's shoulder, the same way Ryoya so often did. “He will meet you there,” she says as if it’s obvious, and he looks up to see his name carved next to Ryoya’s, so close they might seem like one word if you weren’t paying attention.
Shotaro steps forward.
Ryoya is waiting for him. They have always done this: they have always found each other—in sickness, in war, in sacrifice, in death.
Hand in hand, they go forth.
Finally, they are at peace.
“Maybe in the next life we'll meet each other for the first time—believing in everything but the harm we're capable of. Maybe we'll be the opposite of buffaloes. We'll grow wings and spill over the cliff as a generation of monarchs, heading home."