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Crimson and gold. Crimson and gold were all he could see, all he could taste, all he could feel on his fingertips, jostling in his skull, grinding between his bones. Blood on gold and dying grass and searing sun and those damned gates growing ever closer, the tips of the arrows flying at him that could never touch him, that would find their homes in the dead ground and dying soldiers. Blood on golden armor, stolen from the body of the best of men.
It made sense in the end, really. His mother could not make him a god, though she was a goddess. Chiron could not make him a god, though he had trained them. The love of all of Greece could not make him a god, though they all had wished it. It only made sense that it would be Patroclus in the end, the only one who wished him to be ever mortal, his death that would finish the task his mother had begun with his birth, to fulfill the prophecy every god had feared. He will be greater than his father. Words that held the universe in their possibility, unpredictable and ever changing as war itself in their promise, and their curse.
He had bathed in the blood of foe and lover alike now; been baptized in the agony of loss. Consumed by a blinding, terrible rage that would destroy a mortal man, tear him apart by the atoms and leave him flayed open to the universe, lacking all substance but grief. But it had not attached to the mortality that died with his companion, it had soldered itself to the god within him, birthing anew a god more terrible than any had beheld before. A god of something so wordless, so unutterable that there could be no word for it; no sound for the terrible mix of rage and agony boiling within him, consuming him whole.
His fingers dug into the steel of the gate as if it were the fabric of a tent, gouged stone like soft sponge. The great gates of Troy were ripped from their hinges in a moment, effortlessly. Achilles, a sight of crimson and gold in his newly reclaimed armor, standing before the terrified people of Troy, defenseless before a god. He was terrible to behold, painful to look at. He burned like a violent star plummeting to the Earth, bent on only destruction.
A gods justice; death to all for the loss of one. As Dionysus shattered the house of Thebes for honor, drove their women mad for glory, killed their king for vengeance, cursed their family for slights against heritage, so too would be the wrath of the god child left alone on the Earth without his companion.
He cannot do this, the gods on Olympus whispered among themselves. He is meant to die. Troy is not to fall yet. Any god could have sacked Troy in a moment, had they wished to, and many did. But just as the generals had their constricting politics, so too did the gods. Many had watched their own half-god children die in the war for the sake of proving a point, that they were above the follies of men and did not truly care who lived or died, they simply wished to be betting on the side that won. You must stop this, Achilles. It is not the way of things. This is not how things are meant to go. You must die, let Pyrrhus take your place. He ignored the cool whispers tickling the back of his neck in their urgency, tuned out the heated anger at his actions. What could they do? Could one god stop another? As a mortal he had championed a god, what chance did they have against him now?
The soldiers of Troy ran at him, threw spears, shot arrows, all in vain. He could kill a man, twenty men, a hundred men, without even a touch. He could kill all of Troy if he wished. And perhaps he did. Gods did require sacrifices of blood to appease their anger, did they not? Had he and Patroclus not witnessed this for themselves many times in the last ten years? The unholy wrath of gods willing to kill hundred over their own whims?
Patroclus. The wave of anguish seemed to be close to drowning him. He cried out, flinging his arm against the battlements, feeling them crumble beneath his fists. It should have been him to die, the gods had promised that he would die and Patroclus would live. Then, they had changed their minds. They decided Patroclus should die first. They took the best of men, for no reason at all. If they could decide such things, if they could take away such things, all on a whim, why couldn't he? What was stopping him from tearing every brick of Troy from its mortar? Every man from his post?
Love for one man is not worth this. They continued to whisper, trying to placate his madness, trying to calm the storm that was his existence, but their words only fanned the terrible flames of his rage at them, his need for vengeance against them. What did the gods know of love? Their love was infidelity; their love was claiming passionate, all consuming love for one human, only to forget them as they saw the next, and then the next. None had ever known love, not like he had. None had ever truly cared for anything. Zeus claimed to love many women of Earth, but watched them die dismissively before moving to the next. How many claimed love for their children, only to stand aside and let them die, all for their own pride? None of them knew a love that drove you to madness at the loss of such love, none knew what it meant to beg the heavens to take you instead of he who lay dying in your arms. They knew nothing of his love, and were therefore the most powerless against him.
He continued to decimate the city, clawing brick and stone, tearing down their palaces and their walls, the walls Patroclus had tried to climb, the walls Apollo had pushed him from. The gods were good at intervening when they wished, only to criticize those who did the same. Divine rationality was not as just as human rationality, but it was more powerful therefore it always won.
He turned, flinging men from him with an errant flick of his wrist, annoyed at having to acknowledge them as he vented his fury on their fortress, and found himself looking into the eyes of Zeus himself, standing in the wreckage before him. He had never seen the god, nor heard his mother describe his likeness, but he knew it was him the moment he saw him. His mother was behind him, eyes beseeching.
Stop this and you may keep your honor. Repent, give up your godhood before it is too late, and you may yet be forgiven. She had wanted nothing more than for him to be a god before this moment, but she would not let herself be tied to who he had become, would not allow this to be her legacy. But Zeus made no such promises to back up her words, just stared at the young god in front of him. Perhaps he did see him as Dionysus, his own son who had destroyed a city for the honor of his dead mother, once loved by Zeus. Perhaps he did, somewhere within himself, understand the pain he felt, as he had lost lover after lover to time and the wrath of his wife. Or perhaps a different kind of sense of kindred spirit in that they had both been born under similar prophecies, both had powers beyond them work to control their potential, and both had broken free of those bonds in ways no one had ever imagined. He shall be far greater than his father and He shall defeat his father were equally damning statements to gods, might as well be the same for beings who lived off honor alone. He made no move to signal forgiveness, but he made no move to attempt any restraint against the young grieving god either. Simply regarded him as he stood, chest heaving, eyes wild. Crimson and gold before him, finally worthy of the divine recognition his mother had always wanted now that he had killed so many. Now that he was a threat.
They stared at one another for what could have been an eternity, or perhaps only a moment. Thetis watched them, hair slick from an invisible spray, no longer flowing in the wind as it often did. She watched her sons face, waited for him to answer, to do as she said as he so often did. He had not obeyed when she begged him to stay away from war, but perhaps, she hoped, he had learned his lesson and would listen, just listen, from now on.
He carefully lifted a spear from the blood soaked floor beneath his feet, balancing its weight in his hand before looking back to Zeus, his answer plain. He waited for divine judgement and retribution, punishment for defying fate and collapsing the walls of Troy before their time, unraveling a carefully woven tapestry that had taken eons to construct. But nothing came. Only the whisper of wind, the sound of crumbling stone, and then both god and goddess vanished, giving up or giving in.
The royal family of Troy bowed before him as he entered the dungeons where they hid, surrendering all to him in exchange for their lives. They would fight an army, but they would not fight a god. The Greeks cried and rejoiced in their winnings, the generals dividing all treasure between themselves and then their men, loading their bulging ships with all they could carry. He was treated as he never had been before within the camp, bowed to by even Agamemnon when he passed. More treasure than Achilles had ever seen was offered to him in tribute, but he would have none of it. He ignored their words and returned to the so small tent that he had somehow lived in for ten years, his heart still lying on the bed where he had left him the morning he went to Troy. His skin was still cool to the touch, his eyes still would not open, his lungs still would not breathe no matter how many times Achilles had fused their mouths together, forcing air into his body, forcing his heart to beat beneath his hands to no avail. What good was being a god if it could not do this? Could he not take half his immortality and give it to his beloved? As a mortal, Patroclus had always been greater than any god could ever hope to be, and perhaps that was why they had taken him. They were jealous of his perfection, of their love. They would not let something so beautiful exist that they themselves could not possess, so they had taken him away as punishment for existing apart from them.
He gently pulled the fragile body into his arms, inhaling the still lingering scent of olive soap that clung to his skin, not yet stolen by time. Soon all of him would be, and death would possess what he had so inattentively taken care of and ultimately broken with his own carelessness.
I killed them, Patroclus. I killed them all for you. Troy is in ruins and Hector lies dead beneath a grove of trees. It was all for you, and none of it was as you would have wanted. I should have left us in our home, let us grow to be old mortal men together. Now I have killed you, and I cannot bring you back. Please, find it within yourself to forgive me one last time...
When Patroclus' body had first been presented to him, he had wanted nothing but death, to release himself from such a world that would dare to continue to go on turning without Patroclus within it. And now...
And now, he was immortal. In choosing vengeance, he had lost his chance to be reunited with Patroclus in the land of Hades as a shade, to accept a final resting place in the arms that now lay so still before him. But he had rewritten fate, redrawn the lines of time, all for Patroclus. He had defied the gods and the very universe itself as it stood before him, all for the love of his Patroclus. Walls had crumpled and an empire had fallen beneath his hands against the wishes of every power at be, all for the love of Patroclus. He could do this as well, he could find a way to reunite them again, somewhere. He would not rest until he did. One day he would find him again, and the dark of the crimson blood eternally staining his hands would be finally washed away, and the dull burnished gold of his armor would be lovingly lifted as it once had been every day before, and all would be replaced with the light of a thousand suns that was the love of Patroclus, the very best of men.