Work Text:
Leaving the desert is difficult.
Physically, the sand is difficult to walk through. The terrain is hard to navigate, and the hot sun is dizzying.
But mentally, it’s even worse.
Something catches in its chest, tugging at its ribs, drawing it back. Sometimes it pushes through, trying to get as far as the third village, but it rarely gets that far.
Achilles has known little of life outside of the desert. It’s been to the mesa, of course, the mesa is wonderful, but even harder to navigate.
It remembers, distantly, walking to the horizon and finding lush flower forests and mountains and snow, cold, cold snow.
But it found itself returning home, returning to the desert. It had projects to work on, things to build. There’s a tiny voice in the back of its mind, whispering to it, calling out.
Home.
Come home, Achilles.
---
Achilles is dusty.
It's a persistent grit that gathers beneath its fingernails, hiding away under its tongue. It clings to its skin, making it feels constantly grimy.
It's unpleasant and uncomfortable and impossible to remove.
The dust from the crypt is pale and grey. It carries a lingering scent of death with it that Achilles wonders if the others can smell. Maybe they assume it just smells like that from being in the crypt. It's not technically false, but the dust is something more than that.
Underneath that is the dust from the desert.
Achilles hasn’t seen a desert at all in the entire time it's been in this strange place with these strange people.
But it can never truly leave the desert.
The sand is grittier than the crypt dust. The sand is what gathers beneath its fingernails. Whenever it sleeps it finds sand in the creases of its pillow, whenever it gets something out of its pocket it finds sand at the bottom. The desert follows its every move. Even in the cold depths of the crypts, where others complain of the chill, Achilles feels nothing but the sun beating down on the back of its neck.
It wonders if the others notice. if it is something that can be perceived by those outside of its body. Sometimes it wonders if the dust is really there, but it's seen others brush the dust off of tables or seats.
It wonders what they think of it.
Achilles is dusty.
---
Flesh that is not flesh.
Bones that are not bones.
Muscles and tendons and organs, everything that makes up a player.
Achilles is hollow.
Well.
Not hollow.
In fact, the opposite of hollow.
But it is still empty inside.
All that makes it human has been torn out and replaced.
Achilles is made of clay.
Achilles does not know how it is made of clay.
Achilles does not even know how it got here.
Well, it knows that DAME put it here. But it does not now how, or why.
Maybe it isn’t the same Achilles as the one who makes its home in the desert and the crypt.
Maybe invisible, powerful hands sculpted it from the very terracotta that it stands on, giving it fake memories of death and life and death again.
Because Achilles died and woke up here.
Verdigris
This place is home to others. But it is not home to Achilles.
Achilles doesn’t know how it got here but it wants to go home.
Not to the desert, not to the mesa, not to its solitary confinement.
To the crypt.
To its silly, dangerous home beneath Persi’s house.
To its friends.
But there are people in this world, this in-between place where it has been sent.
Maybe they know how it got there.
Maybe they know how it can get home.