Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He is running again.

He is always running, in this dream. Things never change. It is always midnight, though he can never see the moon. It is always a forest that surrounds him, with ashy trees bristling his hair and thorny branches clawing at his arms. It is always too cold. It is always too dark. There is always blood on his hands.

He never knows where he is running to, or with whom he is seeking refuge. It doesn’t occur to him that there could never be an end. But he knows, deep in the carcass of his soul, that he cannot stop.

Things are going to happen to him if he does. Bad things. He isn’t sure what exactly—but he knows, in that gnawing ache of the same carcass he feels festering beneath his gut, he knows, that it will all catch up to him if he has the gall to stop.

And so, he is running again.

⬩

The palace walls of Phthia are vastly different to the ones of Opus. They are adorned with tapestries—vivid retellings of the heroes, of the brave and the blessed—and the occasional plant sitting in rope-weaved baskets, the tall leaves framing archways and looming over him as he passes by them, somehow more regal than him.

Patroclus’ father would sooner succumb to death than decorate his own walls with such sentimental weavings—frivolities, he called them. Like such a thing was scornful.

Though he’s never been one to believe in such heroes, blessed by unknowable gods, Patroclus can appreciate the art itself—the details of the pieces he passes, the intricate threads and the way they wind together to tell stories. He wonders what kind of stories he could weave about his own life. Perhaps he could make one for himself and fool the future about what life he led. The one he’d been living was far from glorious.

“Remember, lad,” Odysseus tells him, a pace ahead. “He is doing you a favour. Be polite, be grateful, and for the love of the gods, wipe that scowl off your face.”

He wasn’t aware he’d been scowling. “Why is he doing this? What does he gain from this—from me?”

“I’m not one to question him, Patroclus. Neither are you. A man need not question another’s word so long as it is honoured.” There he goes, speaking in saccharine.

Patroclus scuffs his feet along the marble flooring as he walks. The sandals he’d been given are too big, and they dig into his toes like a form of torture. Or punishment. “What makes you think Phthia is going to be any different to Opus?”

“Well, they don’t want to kill you here, so I’d say that’s a positive.” Odysseus is quiet for a moment, as they turn into a corridor. There are no tapestries on the walls here, but there is a door made of oak at the end, flanked by two pots of irises. The left pot seems more tired than the right. “They need you, lad. They need you just as much as you need them.”

“I wouldn’t need anyone if you just let my father do what he wanted.”

Odysseus whips around for the first time since they’d entered the palace, a furrow in his silvery brow. “Don’t be stupid. You would’ve done the same in my position.”

“Would you bet on it?”

His features are hard with age, a certain vessel of handsomeness carved from clay embedded with knowledge from the gods.

The charm of Odysseus comes not from his eyes, nor his build, but rather from his mind, from his tongue. Some men have argued he is more dangerous that way.

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t be standing here arguing while the King of the Myrmidons was waiting to meet me just outside this door.”

He pushes the oak with slight heave, the muscles in his arms trained in holding a quill over a sword. It opens to a courtyard filled with yarrows and peonies beneath the shade of great oaks. Patroclus has never seen anything like it. Opus had housed only a surrounding forest of birch—skinny white trees with dry soil.

In his memory, splatters of dark, grimy, greasy red stain the white trees of any of their beauty. He preserves their memory with no memory of them at all.

King Peleus has his back turned as they enter, tending to a vine swaying off a branch like a flag above the water. He is gentle with it, like a girl with a lyre. But Patroclus sees the jagged pink lines across his forearms and the gap between his heels, the stance of a hunter. No longer one, Patroclus assumes, with his hair grown out to the shoulders and held up at the crown by a delicate seashell. No hunter would accessorise; no soldier would be gentle.

The man is not one for pleasantries: “Odysseus tells me you’re in search of a new home.” He does not look at Patroclus as he speaks, preoccupied with the vines. There was a time, once, when Patroclus would walk into a room to people at-attention. He supposes that sort of service has long left him now. “Somewhere safe, to finish your growing up.”

Odysseus’ broad hand rests on his back, a gentle push forward. Patroclus takes a step and nods. “Yes, sir.”

“I heard about your father, boy. That’s some sad business you’ve been through.”

“You have no idea.”

Peleus finally looks at him. Patroclus bites his tongue. The king’s eyes are a dull green, almost grey, with smokey brown around the edges. He is not yet wrinkled, but will be soon. “The other young ones are competing in our games today. Could be the perfect chance for you to get to know them.”

The restraint taken not to scoff could kill him. He settles for a roll of his shoulder, something he can pass off as a shrug. “Stripping off and rolling around in the dust isn’t really my idea of a good time.”

If he didn’t know any better, he’d swear the ghost of a smile fluttered over Peleus’ lips. “I see.”

“To be honest,” Odysseus interjects, “I’m not one for it either.”

Peleus does smile at that, a wonky grin that suits him more than it did half the kings Patroclus had met. “We’re not all smart enough to talk our way out of everything.”

Odysseus shrugs a shoulder. “The world would be a better place if more people tried.”

The east entrance of the courtyard swings open, ricocheting off the stone wall beside it as a boy gallops in.

Patroclus notices his hair before anything else. A luminous blonde shining golden in the sunlight, as if the gods themselves deemed him an altar. He can be no older than Patroclus, but the grace he holds as he walks makes him no younger. This is the prince his father wished for him—Peleus’ son, then. On his heel is another boy, slightly older, with the bulk of a bear that would take multiple spears to defeat.

The burly one acknowledges Patroclus with a nod, while the pretty one simply glances at him like nothing more than the tapestries on his wall. He speaks. “Who’s this now, father?”

“Achilles—”

“No, wait, don’t tell me.” He looks Patroclus up and down with the same indifference he remembers seeing his father give his mother. “It’s another wounded puppy to add to your litter,” he says. It leaves a sour taste in Patroclus’ mouth. “What’s wrong with this one?”

There is a certain curtness in Peleus’ voice that silences the courtyard. “Patroclus has travelled a long way to be with us—you will make him welcome.”

Achilles pulls the corners of his lips together in a pout, and his eyes fall on Patroclus with a scrutinising gaze that makes him squirm. His shame rides up the sides of his neck as he catches his own glimpse of the prince, the youthful green eyes that shimmer beneath long lashes.

His skin is smoother than a girl’s, a lack of scars, and Patroclus would bet a lack of calluses as well. His beauty is almost as intimidating as his eyes.

“No thanks.”

As he skips off through another door, a blissful grace to his step that would be mesmerising if Patroclus weren’t still bitter, Peleus sighs. “You’ll have to excuse him. Achilles hasn’t been the same since Thetis—” He cuts himself off, then shakes his head; as if to say, nevermind. “Show him the ropes, Ajax.”

“Sure thing.” The bear—Ajax—nods again, stepping up to Patroclus’ side. Patroclus flinches when Ajax goes to rest a hand on his shoulder, his palm the size of his face, but no violence comes. Rather, the touch is inviting and warm, like the embrace he’d never received. “Hello.”

Patroclus blinks. “Hello.”

“Welcome to Phthia, Patroclus.” Peleus holds his hand out. Patroclus takes it, and Peleus smiles. “Your home for as long as you’ll have it.”

As Peleus lets go of him, Patroclus casts one last glance at Odysseus, who laughs. “Well, go on then.”

They watch the two boys go, Ajax leading Patroclus by an arm behind his shoulders, ushering him through to the west wing. Peleus stares at the door as it closes, a furrow in his brow. “Doesn’t say much, does he?”

A hearty laugh escapes Odysseus as he watches the sway of a tall yarrow by his shin. “Ah, he won’t stop once you get him started.”

The king crosses his arms, turns to his friend, and frowns. “Does his father know you brought him here?”

He scoffs. “I’m not a kidnapper, Peleus.”

“Well, I heard he put the boy to death.”

“He changed his mind.”

Peleus’ eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “You convinced the brute to show mercy?”

“Not quite.” Broad shoulders pull back at Odysseus’ neck and square off, his hands clasped together behind his back. “I sold him on exile as a longer punishment.”

A vine drapes across a branch by Peleus’ head, falling just past his eyeline. A dark green colour, almost brown, and on the verge of death. The king reaches up to its leaves, the slow wither of their stem. “You really think the boy being here will help?”

“They’ve been through the depths of Hades, my friend—he and Achilles both.” Odysseus watches Peleus pull a dagger out of his tunic. “They’ll find their way back easier with another by their side.”

“That’s if they don’t kill each other first.”

“Give them time.”

“Time, Odysseus?” He pulls the vine down by his chest, eyeing the spot where green turns dead and cold. “That is the one thing that is always running thin.”

⬩

The boys in Phthia smile a lot. Patroclus finds this strange.  Opus was no place for a young boy to smile—or perhaps it simply hadn’t been one for him. Either way, to come across a grin in the hallways of Opus was a rare and unbecoming spectacle.

Ajax’s hand completely engulfs Patroclus’ as he tugs the boy across the land, though Patroclus can’t figure out whether that’s due to Ajax’s monstrous size or his own puny one. His father had always called him quite fragile. Ajax doesn’t treat him like it—the noon hours have Patroclus dragged around Phthia like a cloth, soaking up everything Ajax spouts.

Despite his intimidating frame, Patroclus learns that Ajax means no harm—at least, not to his companions. He’s rather gentle with the flowerbeds, and glimmer shines in his eyes whilst plucking the lyre. If it were under different circumstances, Patroclus thinks they’d be rather good friends.

He learns of the Myrmidons, the people of the land. And he learns of the other boys, orphans just like himself, that Peleus’ son had identified him by earlier: the other ‘wounded puppies’.

“Does King Peleus not treat him well?” Mercifully, Ajax allows him a rest between rounds of the land. They sit atop a hill just a pathway from the palace, the training grounds behind them and the ocean to their left. The wind is nice in Phthia—somewhat crisper, lighter, a lack of seedy weight on Patroclus’ shoulders.

Ajax shrugs his broad shoulders. “I think he treats Achilles more than well. He’s a generous man.”

“Yes, I can tell.”

“Achilles is…” Ajax can’t be anything other than around Patroclus’ age, but his jaw sets in with the bristles of hair; Patroclus hears the rustle as Ajax scratches the underside of his chin. “We’re all a bit lost, but he’s taken the brunt of it. Honestly, I can’t blame him.”

It must have something to do with that name he’d heard Peleus say earlier. Thetis, it’d been. Said with a curl of the lip, a sorrow in the eyes.

“He means no harm,” Ajax says. He scratches again. “Ah, well, not deep down. Deep… deep down.”

“I’m afraid I’m not a very thorough person.”

“As long as you’re not a vulnerable one too, you should be okay. Don’t take the things he says to heart.”

If Patroclus can help it, nothing of the golden son of Phthia would never come close to his mind, much less his heart.

At a distant chime coming from the east, Ajax stands up to his full height and pulls Patroclus up with him. There is a strange glimmer in his green eyes that Patroclus tells himself he shouldn’t be afraid of, even as he’s dragged along the decline of the grassy hill toward the training grounds.

The stone walls open up into a large arena made of packed soil and sand, a chalky residue left on the bottom of Patroclus’ sandals as he shuffles into the space on Ajax’ heel. Half a dozen boys already fill out the arena, all with blunt spears in their grasps as they weave through each other’s paths on the soil. In the midst of the boys stands none other than Achilles, his hair tied back to his nape with leather. It whips around him as he leaps across the arena, from one opponent to the other with a flurry beneath his feet.

The spear he holds seems like more than a weapon in his hand, an extension of his limbs with a graceful arc to match the smooth lines of his body. It moves more than just on his command; it dances alongside him, with him, to a beat shared between them that no one else may hear.

He defeats the other boys with ease. A flick of his hair, and the fight is over—he stands tall in the centre of the arena, his chest rising and falling in steady, deep waves, as the boys left scattered across the dirt find their bearings. When his gaze catches Patroclus’ at the entrance, he marches forward with squared shoulders, across the arena until Patroclus is at his feet. At such a proximity, Patroclus can only now notice how his own stature is but the tiniest bit taller than the prince’s—not larger by any means, made of more bones than meat, but lankier by a shell’s worth.

Achilles has to lift his chin slightly to keep their gaze intact, his status radiating off him in waves. “My father doesn’t need another son.”

He looks perfectly bored. Patroclus doesn’t mean to scowl. “No one said he did.”

“You have no place in Phthia.”

That almost makes him laugh. “I have no place in all the world.” He certainly has no means to change that.

“Don’t be smart with me.”

“It’s not that hard though, is it?”

Achilles’ foot presses deep into the ground as he leans in, much closer than he needs to be, right until their noses tickle with the threat of contact. Then he sneers, and spits onto Patroclus’ cheek. He watches it trickle down tanned skin and onto a soft jaw before he turns on his heel and stalks away.

Ajax’s stunned expression is enough for Patroclus to wipe away the spit on his face with a flush on his ears. A week ago, he held the same title Achilles did. The mere thought of his own appearance now was shameful.

 “I’m sorry about him,” Ajax hurries, his eyes flitting between Patroclus and his cousin’s back. “He just—”

“Ajax!” Achilles’ call makes the other boys jump where they stand, but Ajax simply sighs and lays a hand on Patroclus’ shoulder.

“You’ll be okay. Sorry about this.”

Staring down at the wetness left in his palm, Patroclus feels the well of his stomach gurgle with unbound irritation, a bubbling hate for his saviour’s son rising to the surface. Too busy watching his palm dry, he doesn’t notice Odysseus beside him until he speaks. “Good to see you fitting in.”

He scoffs. “The prince is a nightmare.”

“He’s hurting.”

“How is that my problem?” Odysseus grants him a look. He hates when Odysseus grants him looks. He resists the urge to sigh and turns so his back faces the arena, muttering into Odysseus’ chest. “I can’t stay here, Odysseus, please—take me with you.”

A melancholic smile tugs at Odysseus’ lips. “Maybe one day, lad, but not now. It’s best we let the world forget about you for a time.” A sturdy arm wraps around Patroclus’ shoulders and pulls him in, a chin resting atop his head. “Remember what I told you, the day we met?”

“And every day after.”

“Good. Don’t forget.”

Odysseus has always smelled distinctly of cedarwood and clary sage, a subtle enough combination that not many notice it as he walks into rooms. Patroclus wonders how he always smells like his home; what strength the land of Ithaca brings with it. “Do you ever think that, maybe, there are some people who aren’t meant to have a future?”

Strangely enough, Odysseus laughs as he pulls back. He smiles down at Patroclus with rounded cheeks. “Well, now that you’re going to have one, we might just find out.”

He’d never asked for one. “What do I do until then?”

“Live, Patroclus. Breathe. And for the love of the gods,” he releases Patroclus with a flourish, stretching his arms out with a hearty chuckle, “try to have some fun. ”

⬩

Patroclus is not made for fun. Nor is he made for fighting. Truthfully, what Patroclus was made for was taking the Opus throne following his father’s passing—and has long since been deemed a complete failure on his part.

He has picked up a spear thrice in his life—twice in his own training drills and once as of the moment. The other two times had been brief and uneventful, a walk through its uses, purposes, and the understanding that it would be by his side during his rule. He’s not sure if it still applies.

This time is even less kind to him, an unforgiving pace that leaves him breathless and ashamed as the other boys stand by and wait for him to clear the hurdles, to sprint across the arena, to leap and capture the white cloth hanging from Rastus’ staff, four heads above his own. They barely wait for him to catch his breath, rather using the time to frown at him for wasting precious time. Achilles is the worst of them all, birthed from the blood of a hero and forged in the flames of glory. The only thing Patroclus has begun to hate more than the prince’s skill is his face. If he had the ability to do it, he’d like to wipe the smug smile off of it in a heartbeat.

The next bout of games has the boys split into two groups of four—Patroclus is kept by Ajax’s side, much to the outright distaste the other boys have for him doing so. Not that their distaste matters much; Patroclus is out of their game only a second in as Achilles hooks a staff behind his knees and swings his body down with a loud thud. A small mercy.

By the end, it is only Achilles and Ajax left in the arena as the other boys cheer from the sidelines. The two circle each other like a dance their muscles have been learning for years, matching eyes staring each other down. A bear and a bird. The bird’s wings flicker across the soil with a flash of gold, the quick beating of feet on the ground. The dust settles, and Achilles is victorious.

The king’s applause echoes through the arena.

Achilles lowers his staff. “Father.”

 “Would it kill you to let Ajax win for once?”

Achilles doesn’t laugh. Instead, he squares his shoulders again—his feet, his chest, his face set in stone. “It’s time, father. Send me to train under the centaur.”

The smile on Peleus’ face drops, replaced by a slight chagrin in his jaw; the same sorrow in his eyes Patroclus had seen in the morning. “You are not ready, Achilles.”

“Mother foretold that he would teach me.” The prince lifts his chin. “You think you know better than a prophecy from the gods?”

“I know you. ” Not what he wanted to hear. “Chiron won’t accept you—no matter what your mother said.”

“You promised—”

“You changed.”

Patroclus watches as those green eyes alight with flames, stern lines cracking the beautiful stone of the prince’s face. “It’s no wonder she left you.”

There is silence for a moment. Two. Three. “There was nothing more I could do for Thetis.”

“Nor for me.”

The boys avert their gazes; Achilles holds his on his father’s wizened features. Peleus speaks into the cold: “You really think you’re worthy of the centaur?”

A fool, or perhaps a hero, Achilles nods.

“Fine. I’ll give you a chance to prove it.” His sandal scuffs the sand as he turns and faces— “Patroclus!”

They all turn to him. To him.

“You will face Achilles in the arena.” He will what? “Perhaps you could teach him a thing or two.”

On his way into the arena, Patroclus scuffs his sandals on the sandy edges, his hands outstretched in mercy as he pleads, “Sir, please—please, don’t make me do this—”

Achilles scoffs at the sight of a boy made of bones and tears almost grovelling at his father’s feet. “Listen to him, old man. He isn’t a worthy challenge.”

“This isn’t a challenge, boy.” The king takes two training spears from the racks with white knuckles. He shoves one into his son’s arms. “It’s a test.”

The other spear is tossed into Patroclus’ chest, the end of it thumping on the ground as it slips from him. “I—"

“You will fight,” Peleus says. “You will try.”

Standing across the arena from the prince of Phthia has Patroclus’ palms gooey with sweat. His spear is slipping out of his fingers, and he will not win this. There is not a chance in the world that he will win this.

Achilles’ speed is terrifying. And yet there is not enough time for him to be afraid, not when a spearhead aims for his eye with the might of a lightning bolt.

He blocks, he runs, he dodges, just barely. Sand finds its way into his tunic, his hair, beneath his tongue and between his thighs, a whirlwind of dust engulfing him with each parry of Achilles’ strikes.

In the slightest second of weakness, as Achilles readjusts his grip on his spear, that is when Patroclus lunges forward—when he catches the prince’s balance. Achilles arches back as he blocks Patroclus’ downward arc, teeth bared and snarling.

His teeth are bloody. Then his cheeks. His temple. His hair. The crack of his skull rips through Patroclus’ ears. He watches it all stain with thick, gluttonous red, the slick of it seeping into dark brown eyes.

This isn’t right. This isn’t—

It all flies away from him in a flash of green and gold, a perfectly pure prince glaring at him beneath furrowed brows. Achilles roars, the sound of it reverberating in Patroclus’ veins, too helpless and hopeless to hold onto his spear as it’s ripped out of his hands and clatters onto the ground.

He makes the mistake of looking.

The crack of a skull—no, the crack of wood against his jaw. It takes him before he can truly grasp where he is now, what he is now—right into his chest, down into his collar, across his cheekbone, the dull ache of the dirt’s embrace when he hits the floor. He thinks he can vaguely hear Ajax’s voice calling out his name, telling him that it’s alright, that he can do this, but he can’t, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t. He can barely wince at the coarse springs in his throat as blood splatters out from his teeth, barely feel the sensation of rolling himself over onto his back, barely make out the sunlight above him through the patches of black that blur his eyes, barely let the finest of breaths escape him—as he watches a hazy figure of the prince, with the sun crowning him, step closer, and closer, and closer. Achilles aims his spear.

He halts at the sound of a shrieking cry.

Another hazy figure joins the prince’s, a broad frame over a petite one, the shouts and cries becoming clearer with each passing breath Patroclus is granted.

“What in Hades is wrong with you?!” Peleus. “Look at him! Look at him!” Patroclus regains his sight just enough to see the king grappling his son, forcing him to watch where Patroclus lays. He refuses to look. “No one as broken as you will ever be worthy of the centaur.”

Achilles’ face as he rips himself out of his father’s arms is the ugliest Patroclus has since seen it—beautiful nonetheless, infuriatingly. For half a moment, he stares at Peleus with red-rimmed eyes and a quivering lip, before he turns on his heel, his hair whipping around and trailing after him as he leaves.

Without offering a hand, Peleus looks down at Patroclus as he staggers to his feet. “I did not grant you a new life in my house to sit and watch you waste it.”

The shame is almost impalpable; it bubbles in Patroclus’ gut, and he feels sick. “You knew he’d do that to me,” he mumbles, unbelieving. What had he done to Peleus to deserve that embarrassment? “You knew he’d do that to me, and you made me face him anyway.”

“It wasn’t my stupidity that provoked him.”

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint—”

Peleus’ lip pulls into a sneer. “Don’t twist my words.”

He is a king, Patroclus reminds himself. And you are no longer a prince. His jaw sets in with an ache and he feels a prick behind his eyes that threatens to make him waver just as Achilles had. “You wouldn’t have been the first king to have thrown me away.”

He pushes past Ajax’s chest on the way out of the arena, and he hopes he held his head low enough for his eyes to remain unseen.

⬩

Patroclus is inside the barracks and packing his satchel full of only half a dozen useless things when Ajax finds him. “Patroclus, wait.”

He scoffs. “Waiting does me no good here.”

“Where will you go?”

“As far away from your rotten family as I can get.”

“You can’t leave already—”

He throws his satchel over his shoulder, met with Ajax at the door. “Odysseus promised me that Phthia was different.”

Ajax’s face is red at the edges, as red as his hair. He sighs, scratching his jaw with those blocky hands. “It used to be. Everything changed when… when the Queen left.”

“One person can’t make that much of a difference.”

“Thetis was more than one person,” he tries. “She was one of the nereids.”

The nereids. The gods. A ridiculous notion built by people who had no true worries, and had decided to make ones up for themselves. “You don’t actually believe she was a sea nymph, do you?”

Ajax doesn’t hide his hesitation well. “Achilles believes it. And sometimes… sometimes building a myth is easier than swallowing the truth.”

Ridiculous.

Patroclus shoves past Ajax’s hulking body. And though one of his steps is thrice Patroclus’, Ajax remains only at his heel as he marches along the pathway around the palace grounds. “Please stay, just… give us a chance.”

“You’ve already had it.”

He hums. “Achilles’ pride rubbing off on you, huh?”

His attempt to goad isn’t enough to make Patroclus stop walking, but it is enough to irritate him. “I’m nothing like your cousin.”

“Oh, you’re a perfect match—stubborn to a fault.”

“Just drop it.”

“See? Stubborn!”

At the foot of the palace, the abraded rocky path leading to the sea, Patroclus halts. And turns. “I can’t stay here, Ajax.”

“Where else are you going to go?”

“Somewhere caught between the realms of gods and kings,” he says. “Where I can escape the mess of both.”

“Well, you can try,” Ajax laughs. “But they have a way of ensnaring us all.” These damn Myrmidons.

He heads toward the sea.

⬩

With absolutely nowhere in mind, Patroclus journeys through the sparse forest beside the water as the sun dips below the horizon, painting the trees a honeyed brown. Some may call it ‘aimless wandering’, but others—Odysseus, perhaps—may have called it ‘a requirement of self-discovery’.

Either way, it soon became glaringly obvious that Patroclus’ expedition into the forest and away from the palace was a choice not well-made. Even if he could make it out of Phthia, where would he go? Opus had no need for him. Peleus had offered him a roof—a place to sleep, to eat, to live. He’d been more blessed as an orphan within the Myrmidons than he ever had as a prince.

Lost in his head, Patroclus just barely hears the faintest of cries from the sea—a thick, wavering young voice, riddled with desperation:

“You should have taken me with you.”

The sound of it is haunting.

His feet guide him to a clearing, closer to the departing sunlight. As the trees disperse around him, he finds himself at the foot of the cliff-face overlooking the sea, a steep incline before him made of jagged rocks and solid dirt. Squinting against the sunlight at the very tip of the cliff, he makes out a figure standing at the edge—elegantly carved limbs, with a tunic flowing with the wind, and hair as bright as the sun. His arms are held out at his sides and his head is tilted forward, staring down into the water. He looks like something of worship.

He lets his body drop forward.

Patroclus runs.

Twigs and bugs snap beneath his feet on his path around the cliff. He ducks under overhanging leaves and sprints directly into outstretching branches, the crack of them against his body echoing through the darkening woods. It takes him a moment too long to find the shore, the sun already hidden beneath the waves as he leaps out onto the rocks, and there, on the surface of the water—the faintest of bubbles.

The water is unforgiving. Its cold pierces through Patroclus’ veins with a strike as strong as Achilles’; he places all his energy on a reminder to continue breathing. The boy beneath the waves is but a blurry figure against the vast depths, but he swims as close toward it as he can.

Finding Achilles’ arm in the midst of the current is a short-lived grace—he spends no time in gratefulness, lest they both drown, and haphazardly kicks his way back up to the surface. The water holds him as tight as a mother’s longing embrace, though colder than he has ever known a mother to be, and black spots return to his vision just as he drags himself closer to the shore.

When his feet find the sand, the blackness has engulfed his vision completely, his rescue reliant on instincts and reflex alone. He isn’t sure how he does it. But by the time his vision returns to him, he sputters out half a stomach full of water, and his limbs feel like lead. He and Achilles are both lying on the sand, legs still tucked into the oncoming waves.

Once he regains his breath, his bearings, his mind, Patroclus reaches over and hauls Achilles’ limp body further away from the water, then collapses beside him.

Achilles’ hair pools around him like a crown, thick strands splayed across his forehead and neck, one over his eye and nose. Even on the verge of death, he looks divine. Patroclus finds it insufferable.

There’s no time left to dwell on the matter, however—right as the thought enters his mind, he hears a cluster of voices emerging from the woods: Peleus and Ajax.

Peleus kneels on the sand with a thump, his son cradled in his arms and his face buried in Achilles’ neck. “My boy, my boy,” he mutters, trying to wipe the strands away from the face and leaving patches of sand. He holds a hand against Achilles’ chest, and it rises, barely. “He breathes—oh, thank the gods, he breathes.”

Patroclus watches the shuddering shake of Peleus’ shoulders, his body hunched over the limp form of his son, and wonders if the gods should truly be the ones he thanks.

⬩

The physician’s part of the palace is set in the western wing, a trail of muddy sand and saltwater leading straight to it from the shore. Achilles lays on a pallet, canvas stretched out on its top to provide a makeshift bed for the wounded. He is fine.

Peleus stands beside it, his face aglow with the moonlight through the window before him, features set hard and unreadable, watching his son in a deep slumber. Patroclus himself by the door, unsure of where to look, or to be.

“I think he was talking to someone,” he says, finally, the moon already on its descent. “On the cliffs, before…”

The king shifts, slightly, his weight on one foot. The sea is in clear sight of the window, the waves pitch black and calm under the white of the moon. “His mother.”

Patroclus hears that name again. Thetis, they’d said. “What happened to her?”

“It does no good to reopen the wound.”

“Your silence does nothing to heal it.”

He reaches down, fiddles with a strand of his son’s hair. “Thetis was too good for our mortal world. At times, she was taken by fits of darkness and despair. When she was in those depths, not one of us could reach her. Not even our son.”

Leaning against the stone wall beside the door, Patroclus picks at the skin of his thumb. “You don’t actually think she was a sea nymph, do you?”

 “She drowned herself,” Peleus says. Patroclus stops picking. “When she left us, it broke the heart of all of Phthia. But none more than him. She thought he was worthy of the gods—her little hero,” he hums. “I lost them both that day.”

His hand has moved, now, to caress Achilles’ head, to brush all the hair away from his cheek, as if to expose all of his skin to the moonlight. Patroclus stares from where he stands, the carve of Achilles’ nose, his lips slightly ajar, the curve of his throat and the bump in the middle, the dip of his collar and the stretch of his shoulders. He thinks of the arena, of dirt and blood beneath his nails, of white-toothed growls and desperate pride. “You should send Achilles to the centaur.”

Peleus looks back at him. His face is shrouded in shadows, but he laughs. “Chiron will reject him.”

“What right do you have to judge?” King or not, Patroclus has faced much worse than whatever Peleus can give him. “He is who he is because he was raised in your household.”

“You don’t know Chiron.”

“And you do?”

“He trained me. A lifetime ago.”

Patroclus crosses his arms to stop himself from picking his skin, still staring into that shadowy face and hoping he’s meeting a pair of eyes. “Perhaps it isn’t just Thetis who inspires Achilles’ ambition.”

The king is silent for a moment. Patroclus watches him turn back to his son, the rise and fall of his chest. “He would never speak for you like this.”

“Why should that stop me?”

“I wish he had half of your wisdom.”

“It’s worth nothing in a world run by spears.”

Peleus pivots on his heel, marching up to Patroclus with the posture of a hunter lacking his bow. “If you were my child, I would send you without a second thought.”

“If you were my father, I’d ask you for nothing more than a quiet life in a forgotten olive grove.”

He places a hand on Patroclus’ shoulder. “You’re not ready for the peace you seek.”

“That’s the thing about fathers, isn’t it?” he muses. “They can give you the whole world, or they can take it all away.”

Peleus’ hand is rough, made of calluses and life, his fingers brushing against the skin of Patroclus’ shoulder where the tunic leaves bare. But within the rough calluses lies a sort of gentleness, a tenderness that Patroclus assumes a father would give. “Thetis was convinced that we would have two sons.”

He shrugs Peleus’ hand off of him, gaze averted. “I don’t need another family.”

Peleus chuckles with closed lips, amusement in his throat. His hand finds his other behind his back, shoulders squared and royal. “Take Achilles to the centaur. Convince Chiron to accept him,” he says, “and I’ll give you your olive grove.”

He leaves the door slightly ajar as he goes, leaving Patroclus alone in the bay with a sleeping prince and a waning moon. If he listens carefully, closes his eyes and stills his breathing, he can hear the waves, the song beneath them that he supposes belongs to the nereids.

Back to the barracks it is.

As he turns, a voice speaks: “What failings must my father see in me that makes you seem worthy by comparison?”

In the dimming moonlight, he can just barely make out Achilles’ features when he glances back, the prince’s open eyes staring at the ceiling. Patroclus sighs. “There’s a wound in his heart that matches your own.”

Achilles doesn’t move, at first, and Patroclus worries he’s just hallucinated the entire thing. But then Achilles scoffs, and sits up, piercing green eyes now locked on Patroclus’. “You should have left me for the waves.”

This is his way of thanking Patroclus for saving his life, it seems. There is a small flame within Patroclus’ gut that urges him to snap back, a sharp tongue and sharper wit—but instead he takes a breath, and watches the moon. “Someone told me once that the brightest of all futures lies on the other side of great suffering.”

“And how’s that working out for you?”

So much for playing nice. He turns to leave again.

“Patroclus, wait.” A hand grasps his forearm, an unrelenting grip made of smooth porcelain. He hadn’t even heard Achilles move.

He looks over his shoulder. “What.”

The prince’s eyes are flaked with gold, he notices now, a sliver of lantern light flooding in from the open door and illuminating a single eye. His lashes are blonde as his hair, long like a girl’s as they flutter against his cheek. “I hate you.” It certainly is a blessing, Patroclus thinks, to have such a face that insults flow out like daggers in contrast. “So much.”

His shoulder pushes past Patroclus’ chest as he leaves, a bitter taste left in the air of his presence.

What failings must my father see in me, the prince had said. The heat of it burns bright in Patroclus’ mind, his stomach, his heart. He hears it paired with the tone of a hopeful son—hopeful, sorrowful, desperate and despondent. He hears it paired with his own thoughts, young thoughts, much too young to exist the way that they did. Within the anger lies an ache that he knows well. It seemed that princes, in these lands, were born not only with a crown, but with a fracture. Patroclus’ had grown to something vast, a canyon in which he could lay himself to rest. Achilles’ was yet to be.

In the lantern light of the hallway, he looks down at his arm to find red markings—a broad palm, and elegant fingers wrapped around his limb. How embarrassing it is to have a marking of the golden prince tainting his skin.

Just around the bend, Ajax’s hulking figure bumps into Patroclus’, face to chest. He smiles as he looks down, a sullen puff to his eyes. “On your way again?”

Patroclus steps back and laughs, in place of everything else. “Stubborn to a fault, remember?”

“You may not care what happens to Phthia, but I do.”

“You’re too good for this place, Ajax.”

“They’re all I have.”

“Then you’ll drown along with them.”

“Still beats being alone.”

“No,” Patroclus says. “Alone is… easy. Easier.”

Ajax shakes his head, the scruff of red swaying with it. “It’s always easy to bring more pain into the world. It’s almost impossible to take it away.” He takes Patroclus’ hands in his. More similar in nature to Peleus’, rough yet gentle. Achilles’ had been nothing but soft. “Please stay.”

He considers this. Peleus, Thetis, Chiron, and the song beneath the waves. Ajax, Achilles, and the canyon of his birthright. The failings of a prince. “I can’t, Ajax.” The hands holding his go slack—he catches them again, and looks up with as much a smile as he can muster. “I’m taking Achilles to the centaur.”

⬩ ⛭ ⬩

Achilles’ farewell is a ceremony in and of itself, complete with a banquet, entertainment, and dancing. Patroclus spends the night against the wall, a tiny plate of uneaten bread as his companion. Achilles spends the night frolicking in his new-found glory, occasionally glancing over at Patroclus in what seems to be deliberate glares.

When morning comes, the two of them set off, Patroclus with their supplies, Achilles with a spear and shield that Peleus had bestowed upon him with a final embrace and an oath whispered against his hair. At the foot of Mount Othrys, the silence breaks. “I suppose you expect me to thank you.”

Patroclus has been trailing on Achilles’ heel since they left the palace, and has no desire to be anywhere else. He’s thankful that Achilles stares forward as he walks, himself free to pull whatever expressions he feels like. “For what?” he chides, “oh, for saving your life? Or for convincing your father to change his mind? Or for putting aside all better judgments and joining you on your self-help quest?”

The leaves under Achilles’ feet crackle with his weight, the pause in his voice without a pause in muscle. “You’re not getting any of them.”

“Look,” Patroclus says as they crest a log covered in vines, most likely a fallen tree, “If Chiron accepts you—”

“He will.”

“If Chiron accepts you, you can run off with him and brood to all your heart’s delight.” Achilles scoffs at that, because that’s apparently all he can do, and Patroclus rolls his eyes. “But until then, we’re stuck together, so do you think you could drop the whole…”

He whips around with a glare. “Whole what?”

Patroclus sighs. “Didn’t think so.”

⬩

The sun nestles into the overhead clouds with a pulsating radiance, its heat touching the tips of their bodies from beneath the leaves. Achilles stops by a riverside between the crests of Othrys and Pelion to slip off his sandals and chlamys, the muscles of his calves loosening against the soft current. Patroclus sits against a tree trunk, half watching over their things and half watching Achilles as he strips off his chiton, the fine white silk of it rolling off his body in waves.

Even as a prince himself, Patroclus hadn’t been granted a chiton in his time—he was perpetually bound to an exomis, it seemed, the same as the other boys in Phthia and the same as the workers in Opus.

Achilles throws his tunic onto the riverbank and drops in. When he rises, Patroclus watches the water as it clings to Achilles’ skin in droplets falling from his hair, following the bumps of his shoulders, the line of his spine, the divots by his waist. “So,” he says to Achilles’ back, “where’d the gear come from?”

It’s apparently a great offence to speak to Achilles, if the way his face scrunches up when looking at Patroclus says anything. “Why do you care?”

“You don’t make friends easily, do you?”

He ties the leather around his forefinger and thumb before releasing it in Patroclus’ direction, just barely hitting his shin. “They were a gift from my mother.”

Patroclus brushes the droplets off his leg. “This whole hanging-your-life-on-a-retreat-with-a-half-horse was her idea too, wasn’t it?”

“It’s not just a retreat,” he says. “Chiron will make me worthy. He was the tutor for all the great heroes.”

“Like your father?” Achilles scoffs at that. Patroclus furrows his brow. “What have you got against him?”

“My mother was almost married to Zeus, you know. Until he rejected her when he heard the prophecy that her child would eclipse its father in every way. My father is jealous of me because he knows I will become the legend he never was.” He cups the water with his palm, running it across his arm and watching it against his unmarked skin. “Everything my mother does is to help me earn my rightful place among the gods.”

It's Patroclus’ turn to scoff, this time, leaning back onto the trunk as the man-child himself plays in the water. “And that includes jumping into the ocean?”

He's not even sure Achilles heard him, seemingly preoccupied with untying the leather holding his hair by his nape and dousing his face in the water. He uses the water to brush his hair away from his face, and watches his hands beneath the ripples. “She’s a sea nymph.”

“Yes. And I’m Zeus of Olympus.”

⬩

Pelion is a land mass larger than Phthia itself, stretching with dense greenery and uneven ground.

They pass by another river, but make their way hastily past it with Achilles’ hopes to make it to Chiron before sunset. With no clear path into the woods, Patroclus can only hope his body doesn’t give itself up in the presence of a spoilt prince. His hopes are not granted.

Perhaps halfway toward the peak, his foot slips beneath him against loose gravel. As he catches himself against a tree, he outright groans. “Wait. Stop.”

Achilles halts, a few paces ahead, and turns. “What.”

Patroclus shakes his head, the sweat of his scalp flowing down his nape and disappearing into his tunic. “I’m done.” The tree he leans against turns into yet another wall for his back. “If the centaur wants us, he can come and find us.”

“That isn’t—”

“I mean, I thought you’d at least get a feeling, but it’s not like I know where we’re going.”

“Shut up.”   The urgency in Achilles’ voice doesn’t fit him. He holds up a hand to stop Patroclus from saying anything more, his eyes roving across the trees. “Chiron?”

Silence.

And then— snap!

An arrowhead flies past Patroclus’ face and into the tree he leans against, the crack of the bark deafening him.

Achilles yelps as another arrow knicks the edge of his shield. “Wrong centaur!”

“What?” He doesn’t wait a single second for Patroclus to catch his breath before he’s off, sprinting deeper into the woods. Patroclus fumbles with the supplies as he throws them over his back and chases after Achilles, another arrow going right above his head. “What do you mean, ‘wrong centaur’?!”

They run together, through the thick trees and the overbearing bushes. “Chiron isn’t like the rest of them.”

“This wasn’t part of the deal!”

Snap! “You should’ve thought of that before you tricked my father into sending you.”

“You think I want to be here?”

“You only came to use us, just like all the others!”

Snap! “Oh, you have no idea.”

“Didn’t expect to find a broken family, did you?”

Snap!

The arrow catches the corner of Achilles’ cloak, pinning him back, the sudden catch tripping him over. In the second after Patroclus catches up, he leans down and rips the arrow out, before gathering the spear and shield that had fallen out of Achilles’ grasp. “Get up. Chiron can’t teach a dead prince.”

He goes to pull a pale arm over his shoulders, but Achilles yanks his arm back and staggers up to his feet with a dismissive groan. His knee is scraped and bleeding. Snap!

Patroclus runs, Achilles right behind him.

“Why’d they even send you to Phthia?” Achilles yells as they sprint, his words punctuated with the sound of arrows hitting bark with loud thunks. “Couldn’t your family stand the sight of you? Stupid little Patroclus—better make him someone else’s problem! Well, you know what?” His voice rings through the woods, “we don’t want you any more than they did!”

Patroclus keeps running, desperate to escape it—the voice, the arrows, both of them together. The blur of forest around him makes his stomach churn; he pushes everything down and focuses on the tiny sight of a clearing up ahead. The taste of iron and dirt fills his mouth, crawling underneath his tongue and between his teeth, and he squeezes his eyes shut to remember himself, losing sight and sense to all but the way his legs flail beneath him.

He skids to a stop when his sandal scrape against hard and dry soil. It’s not a clearing he’d seen and arrived at, he sees now, but rather a tiny patch of dirt and rocks between the otherwise dense forestry surrounding. He looks down at his hands—empty. Shit.

The arrows have stopped.

The silence is just as dangerous.

He looks back to where he’d come—who had been shooting at them? Had they followed him? And where was Achilles? Worst of all—could anyone see him?

A shrieking yelp escapes his throat as his back hits something warm and solid, whipping around and scurrying back. Blonde hair. A stern face.

Achilles yells at him. “Where are my things?!”

Gods, it’d just been his own stupid companion. Patroclus sighs, steadying his beating chest. “It’s good to see you too.”

“What have you done with my— You knew they were precious!”

“They’re not worth my life!”

“No—far more!”

“Why do you run from me?”

They both halt in the presence of a new voice, shuddering between the trees around them with a thunderous melody, the words trickling the backs of their necks, the soles of their feet.

Patroclus nudges Achilles’ leg. “Say something.”

“What do you want me to say?!”

“I can hear you,” the voice echoes. “Whisperers in the shadows.”

“Quickly—”

“Shut up!”

“Here’s a lesson for you: you should never be scared of fear itself, but rather fear of what it might make of you.”

Achilles gulps. “Who are you?”

“I am a child and a sibling, a parent and a partner. Born to the titan Cronos and raised by Apollo… or so the story goes.” A pause. “Your turn. I should like to know the name of my next meal.”

“Don’t answer that—”

“I’m Achilles of Phthia.” He has a death wish. “I’m looking for the centaur’s glade,” he yells, into the forest, voice stirring the leaves above them. “I’m here to train with Chiron.”

“I hear two heartbeats. Who is your companion?”

Achilles looks over. Patroclus scoffs. “Not a chance.”

He narrows his eyes then turns to the sky. “His name’s Patroclus—let me go and you can have him.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Peleus was wrong to send you here.”

A flash of recognition lights Achilles’ eyes. “Chiron?”

“Neither of you are ready for what I have to teach.”

“You’re wrong!”

“Your contradiction proves me right.”

“I’m not going anywhere!”

“No,” the voice—Chiron?—says. “Indeed, it is impossible to enter my glade and walk away unchanged. If you try to leave before your time, my family will tear you to pieces.”

“Didn’t you listen?” Achilles yells. “I already told you we couldn’t find it!”

“A life led in fear is a life in the dark,” Chiron tells them. “It blinds you to what is right before your eyes.”

The trees above them open up with a flash, as if stretching away to reveal the sun in all its glory, beaming down on them with blinding white. With such sudden radiance, Patroclus has to step back and blink harshly, his vision filled with a ripened red the colour of raw skin.

His sight returns just in time to see Achilles blinking away his own shock, rubbing at his eyes with a frown. They look around—the forest is gone. Replaced by a glade, beautiful beyond compare, an uncanny contrast to the overbearing forest where they had just been standing. The hard soil beneath their feet has turned into grass, slightly damp, a vibrancy contesting Achilles’ eyes that search the area—the lake to their left, the waterfall a few feet from them, and the greenery to their backs, so dense they look like a wall. Patroclus’ navigation, limited as it may be, is useless in the glade—he hasn’t a clue where on Pelion they may be, nor which direction from whence they came. The sun has dipped behind the large wall of trees that hold them within what looks to be a large circle. An arena. To their right sits a cave made of dark stone, its walls carved into a mound that stretches across to the waterfall across the water.

Achilles has been shouting for Chiron, to no avail. So much for a hero—so much for worthy. Patroclus pulls the bag of their—Achilles’—supplies onto the ground. “Well, this is perfect! Fine show you made for yourself, offering me as a sacrifice. Definite hero material, that’s—”

The prince whirls on him with a growl, his tunic caught in a pale fist. “Do you ever shut up?”

Like he would respect a man-child in his time of desperation. “This isn’t my fault, you know.” He smacks Achilles’ hand away, a sigh heaving his brittle bones. “What do we do now?”

“We wait.”

“For what?”

He gestures to Patroclus in his entirety, a quirk in his brow. “For you to drop the whole…”

⬩

With no sign of Chiron, or of any other creature for the matter, Patroclus guesses they will spend their night here. And he supposes every other night, until they venture off, or are met with the centaur. Or killed, perhaps.

Patroclus has spent the time lingering in the cave, setting their things along the ridges of stone that look like benches, and stretching out their simple canvases—one along a raised, flat stone, and one on the cold ground a foot or so away. So this is what he ends up with—a prince to play servant for.

He steps out to fill their waterskins and finds Achilles still training. He swings around the two blunt staffs he’d made out of some logs on the outskirts of the glade, fighting off invisible soldiers like he’s dancing with them. Leave it to the prince of nothing but dishonour to be spending his time throwing sticks around in the midst of a crisis.

Adamantly ignoring Achilles, he kneels by the lake and dips a waterskin in. The water is cool against his hand, the soft current only noticeable in the way his skin ripples and waves at him beneath the water, like air itself.

The blunt end of a staff presses under his chin. He looks up. “Train with me.”

He scoffs. “Because that went so well the last time.”

When he stands up, Achilles pushes the staff into Patroclus’ chest, a slight curl to his lip. “Chiron isn’t coming back until we prove ourselves.”

“He’s a sadistic horseman,” Patroclus says, pushing the staff out of his way. He fills the other waterskin and largely ignores Achilles’ huffing. “There’s no reason to any of this.”

“What do you suggest, then?” He huffs this, again, because he apparently doesn’t know how to speak in any other way. “We make flower crowns and sunbake?”

The staff is pushed up to Patroclus’ chest again. He takes it, and watches the smug grin wipe off the prince’s face when he drops it. It makes a dull thump on the grass. Achilles’ left eye twitches. “Might as well.”

Achilles frowns. Then looks to the water. Back to Patroclus. The staff on the ground. “Pick up the stick.”

“No.”

“Pick up. The stick.”

You’re so spoiled you can’t even handle refusal, Patroclus wants to say. And he almost does. But Odysseus has taught him to hold his tongue—and sometimes, he manages to. “No.”

Half a step forward and with the waterskins gathered in one hand, Achilles’ staff hits the front of Patroclus’ shin with a whack! “Make yourself useful, wounded pup.”

His leg won’t bruise, but he can’t say the same about his dignity. “Fine. You know what— fine. ” The waterskins flop onto the ground. He kicks them away—and the staff—then holds up his fists and tries not to let his hands shake.

“Oh,” Achilles says, with half of his mouth curved up to a smirk, “this’ll be fun.” The staff is thrown away, and it clatters on the ground as he takes position.

Already, Patroclus feels unprepared.

He takes the first strike anyway: a straight punch to the jaw. Achilles dodges his fist with an irritatingly jovial smile, then whips around, the side of his forearm cracking the side of Patroclus’ neck. That awful grace has him tracing the soles of his feet against the soil like a dancer. Or a snake.

His knuckles make an example of Patroclus’ body, stinging against his back, his shoulder, his stomach, his chest. By the time he gathers his bearings, Achilles has his hands on his hips and is smiling. “Is that all you’ve got? It’s no wonder you—”

The other half of his insult flies out of him as Patroclus tackles his body, his shoulder colliding into a stomach. He lands straight on his spine, and Patroclus hears the wind knock out of his lungs, rejoices in the wheezing sound and the sharp intake of breath. He sits up, knees braced against each side of Achilles’ waist, and his fist cracks against a nose. He tries with his other fist. He tries again. And again. And again.

When he pulls back, it is a sight to behold. He has dirtied the golden strands, the beautiful face that scrambles from him, stricken with horror as words strike at him across the grass.

His knuckles are numb.

Achilles has been yelling for a while, now, but only his last words seem to make it to Patroclus. “—what in Hades is wrong with you?!”

“I—” He stumbles on his way up to his feet, swaying in the fallout of adrenaline, his vessels pumping. “I’m sorry, I—I didn’t mean to—”

The prince darts back when Patroclus reaches for him, to tend to or to kneel before, his green eyes stark against his bloodied face. “You are so messed up.”

He looks at Patroclus with the might of a king, and Patroclus nothing more than a blemish on his plate. His vessels pop. “And you strut around like you’re some sort of god, but you don’t even know what it means to kill someone!”

Silence fills the glade, the space between them, met only with the rise and fall of their chests and the blood dripping onto the soil.

The grass mushes under Patroclus’ feet as he pushes past Achilles and returns to the cave. Their shoulders brush as he goes. Achilles flinches.

⬩

Night falls in the midst of silence, a single look between the two boys as Achilles enters the cave, and more silence. There is a fire in the middle of the stone, begging for attention, that they both are ignoring. The flatbread Peleus gave them is eaten plainly and miserably.

Patroclus feels a pair of eyes on him at all times, scrutinising him, daring him to do anything other than just breathe—yet no words are exchanged. Until they are in their separate bedrolls, against the back of the cave, on opposite sides. “Who was it?”

The fire crackles in patience of his answer. He stirs, pulls his aching body away from the wall, and is met with Achilles’ face. Clean, now, if not bruised along the nose and cheek, cut along the lip.

Firelight beams across his features in the dark, the few inches between their faces warm with tension. “Who was it?” Achilles repeats. His voice is soft. Earnest, almost.

Patroclus can’t bear to look at him. He turns to the ceiling. “His name was Clysonymus.” Somehow, speaking the name after refusing to for so long feels… freeing. “We grew up together in Opus. He liked… hunting me.”

Silence. Listening, maybe.

“One day he started pushing me, calling me names. The usual. Only this time, I… pushed him back. It was so stupid—he was twice my size and twice my worth. He could have killed me.” He can see it along the stone above him, the light and shadows of the fire painting his vision with the memory of the wood, the boy, the blood. “But his foot caught on a root. And his… his head, it—cracked open. On a stone. Gone before I knew what I’d done.” The sound is the same as his fist colliding with Achilles’ face; that horrible, wet squelch of something bursting. “He was the son of my father’s most powerful general. Their alliance meant more to him than I did.”

He steadies his breathing after the admittance, his eyes squeezed shut to escape the firelight. Achilles speaks into the space: “That’s why you were sent to Phthia.”

Stupidly, he nods. “My father wanted me dead. Odysseus convinced him that exile would be worse. I… I was never like the other boys. They all knew it—my father did too.”

“I know what that’s like.”

He almost laughs. “You think you’re so different from all the other brutes, but you’re the worst of them.”

Opening his eyes at the sound of rustling, he sees Achilles sitting up to lean against the wall, legs crossed and fingers fiddling. “I had everything taken from me, just like you.”

He has nothing to say to that.

The two stare at each other, the strange intimacy they’ve created. Achilles lifts his chin as if remembering who he is. “If you listen closely, you can hear my mother in the water.”

Patroclus sits up as well. He leans against the wall too, but lets his legs stretch out. “The sea nymphs aren’t real. It’s a story for children.”

“I don’t care what you think,” he gets back, shrouded in the ferocity he’s used to. “My mother still lives beneath the waves, because if she doesn’t, then…”

For such a warrior, Achilles is more naïve than Patroclus thought he should be. But he tries to understand. If there were some possibility of his own mother alive somewhere, waiting to greet him… perhaps he, too, would still be bright-eyed.

Achilles procures a twig from the glade outside, kept somewhere within his bedroll, and picks at one end. “Before she left, she told me I had a choice. A long life of anonymity, or a short one worthy of legend.”

“Your mother loved her prophecies.”

“She wants me to be a hero.”

And perhaps he possesses that potential. But Patroclus is not made to be a hero; he’s far from the cloth of which Achilles was weaved. “Which did you pick?”

“The short one.”

“What if…” He watches Achilles’ hands, the grace of which they pull at the wood, sharpening it to a point. “What if it had been a happy life? A long, joyous, anonymous one?”

Achilles looks at him. “No such thing.”

Patroclus meets his eyes. The fire makes them match his hair. “You really think you’ll become a legend?”

“It hurts a lot less to have something to believe in.”

“I don’t believe in the gods.”

He laughs. “I’m not talking about the gods.”

“What else is there?”

The twig is sharp, now. A weapon made of nature. He leaves it between their bedrolls. “You’ll find something.”

⬩

Achilles wakes up alone as the dawn starts to settle, the fire extinguished and the cave half-filled with streaks of sun. Patroclus’ bedroll is tidied. Achilles doesn’t bother with his own. When he makes it outside, Patroclus is standing by the lake with two staffs in his hands. He says, “Good morning,” and Achilles lets himself smile.

They train. Patroclus can tell Achilles is going easy on him, and reprimands him for it, and tells him, “I can handle it.”

He laughs. “Are you sure?”

“What, you want a repeat of yesterday?”

“Depends. Are you going to aim for the face again?”

A few moments later, Patroclus does, in fact, end up aiming for the face again, when they’ve tired out the formal training and have resorted to boyish wrestling, the grass and dirt clogging their skin as they roll around.

They spend the daylights exchanging blows—Achilles teaches Patroclus how to wield his staff correctly and how to lighten the weight of his feet, how to dodge a blow and how to keep his eyes from wandering too far during a fight. Patroclus teaches Achilles about the plants on the outskirts of the forest around them, the little creatures they find and the things Odysseus taught him during their travels. Just behind the cave sits a patch of hyacinths, regal purple under the sun, a flower Patroclus recognizes enough to rattle on about what its petals stand for. He picks a few and passes one to Achilles.

Their nights are spent making meals together and weaving stories, exchanging names and places. One night is spent outside, by the edge of the lake and under the stars. They move their bedrolls outside. There are hyacinths to make crowns of and a lake to swim and wrestle in; there is a sun to bake beneath and an olive tree at the top of the cave that they spend a day lounging under and talking. They get used to it—to existing beside each other, the daily schedule of meals, teaching, and training that almost always turns into brawls. At high noon one particular day, Patroclus lays on the ground, beaten and bruised and laughing. Achilles holds the end of his staff by his chin and smiles. “Need some help?”

He swats the staff away and gets pulled up to his feet. “Same time tomorrow?”

“I’ve got nowhere else to be.” He swings his staff around with a flourish. His new favourite trick. “You know, I was thinking—your father really should have exiled that tree root instead of you. You wouldn’t have stood a chance without it.”

Patroclus scoffs, then pulls Achilles’ staff from his hand and hits the back of his ankle with a smack! The prince yelps and jumps, Patroclus’ laugh echoing through the trees.

Despite his laughter, Achilles continues to goad. “Careful—I could’ve tripped; you could’ve killed me!”

A haunting wail strikes through the glade, cutting off their laughter. From the east, Achilles thinks—he takes the staff back and holds it tight in his grasp, glaring out to the trees surrounding them, keeping Patroclus between his back and the lake. The sound strikes again: a horrible wail, animalistic, a mix between a roar and a shriek. Or what Patroclus thinks it—a sob.

“Wait,” he says, a hand on his back. “Don’t attack.”

“Don’t attack? And what, get eaten?”

Patroclus shushes him and steps out, closer to the tree line. Odysseus has taught him about the wood; has brought him to animals and taught him to offer care from his hands where others cannot. “I think it… needs help.”

Before Achilles can make any snap judgments, the two watch as a bear stumbles into the clearing, wailing and roaring out as it leaves a trail of dark red. Half the size of any bear Patroclus has seen—a child. He surges forward with his arms outstretched, involuntarily yelping as it roars at him and dashes out. “It’s okay, it’s okay! I’m not going to hurt you.”

He largely ignores Achilles’ judgement as he slowly, but surely, akins himself to the baby bear—and manages to get close enough to examine it.

Its fur is covered in gooey blood, not yet dried and old, but not fresh. Its own body uninjured, as far as Patroclus can tell. “I think it’s alone.”

“It’s never going to survive without its mother.”

“You did.” Achilles rolls his eyes and drops the staff by their bedrolls, watching Patroclus squat and try to befriend a bear. “Quiet, quiet… Come on, it’s alright, little… Arcus.”

“That’s an awful name.”

“Would you rather I call it Achilles?”

He flops onto his bedroll—or perhaps Patroclus’, he isn’t sure anymore—and shrugs. “Knock yourself out.”

Patroclus hums. “How about Heracles?”

“I don’t care!”

“You obviously do.”

“It sure beats Arcus.”

“Heracles, then.” He turns back to the bear, whose wails have turned to small growls. “Quiet, little Heracles, it’s okay.” His hand makes contact with the matted and bloodied fur, and the bear drops down into the grass at the warmth.

The sun settles into the horizon as Patroclus finishes cleaning Heracles by one edge of the lake, inspecting his body for any injuries. Thankfully, none.

Once he’s all cleaned up and seemingly happier, Heracles bounds to the bedrolls and coddles up to Achilles’ legs with soft grunts. Patroclus sits, the fire Achilles has just finished building crackling under the darkening sky. “I’m starting to think Chiron’s never coming back.”

“Could be worse,” he says. “At least here, it’s just you who hates me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

Achilles huffs, half of a laugh. “That makes one.”

“Two,” Patroclus corrects, pointing to Heracles, gladly making a bed out of Achilles’ limbs. “Don’t worry about what the rest of the world thinks. They don’t even know you yet.”

Trying to hide his smile as he watches the baby bear snuggle him, Achilles raises a brow. “And you do?”

“Yes,” Patroclus says. “I think I do.”

⬩

The face of an old man inches away from his own wakes Patroclus up, and he nearly falls into the lake as he screams.

Achilles is up on reflex before his mind has time to catch up, poised and ready to fight as his eyes are still opening. “Wh—what’s happening? What’s going on?”

On his ass and with his heart in his throat, Patroclus steadies his breathing to realise they’re not being attacked. He sees Heracles first, winding between a pair of horse feet—thick calves covered in brown fur, that he trails up to a muscly body. And then the fur breaks into skin—dark, human skin. He gasps, unintentionally, at seeing the centaur before him.

The centaur’s human body itself is large, larger than even Ajax, and covered in dark brown hair across his chest and arms. His jaw is square, with a thick beard, and what Patroclus can only describe as earthen features. The centaur smiles. “I see your time in my glade has worked wonders.”

Achilles has woken up. “Chiron. You came back.”

Chiron nods. “And you are free to go.”

Whatever joy had blossomed in Achilles’ chest at Chiron’s arrival dissipates as he frowns. “What? That—that can’t be it, you haven’t taught us anything!”

The centaur shrugs, leaning down to pat Heracles. “This forest and its trees are better teachers than I could ever be.”

Achilles has reverted to his huffing, a harsh line between his brows as he steps up to Chiron. “You can’t be serious. I can’t go back to Phthia already, I—”

“Then choose to stay,” Chiron says, simply. It takes Achilles aback. “And I’ll give you the training you desire.”

Past the initial shock, a wide grin stretches across Achilles’ face, an ecstatic shout escaping him. “Did you hear that?” He cries, eyes shining and gleaming as he takes Patroclus by the shoulders and shakes him. “He’s going to teach us!”

“You,” Patroclus corrects. “He’s going to teach you.”

The shaking stops. Achilles’ giddiness is replaced by a sudden confusion, the corners of his lips still tugged upward while he registers. “What do you— But— I thought that…”

Patroclus shakes his head, pushes Achilles hands away from him. “This is your future, Achilles. Not mine.”

Chiron interjects, fingers splayed across an intricate spear made of dark wood. “Heroes come in all shapes and shades, young one.”

Not in his shape. “Achilles will do you proud.”

It almost hurts to look Achilles in the eye when he says it, the dull green where it usually gleams bright. Achilles turns his head away for a moment, then back, his brows stitched together. “Will you wait for me? In Phthia?”

Patroclus pulls his tongue back from saying what he wants to. “You’re going to do great things, Achilles. You don’t need… me.” And with that, because he can’t bear to see Achilles disappointed in him anymore, he stalks off to the cave to gather his things. He has no place here.

“You cannot change the path of another,” Chiron says in the breeze Patroclus leaves behind, to the back of Achilles. “But you can always choose to follow them.”

The prince’s fists tighten in their own grasp, the swing of blonde hair as he turns away from the cave. “Patroclus’ path is his own. I’ve already chosen mine.” He picks up the staff and takes position. Chiron watches.

⬩

There are not many things for Patroclus to pack. But surprisingly, he finds he is leaving the glade with more than what he arrived with. A sharp, carved twig is not something useful to him, but he packs it anyway.

A voice echoes through the cave as he tucks the twig into the sack. “I see the way you look at him.”

He turns. Chiron stands at the entrance, his hulking form filling out the entire space, almost blocking the sunlight. For such a large figure, he moves with such stealthy grace that it terrifies Patroclus as much as it endears him. But Chiron’s words make their way to him, and he frowns. “What?”

“You see a version of Achilles even he struggles to find,” Chiron says, like it helps. “He looks at you the same way.”

“Way? What way—what do you mean by ‘way’?”

Chiron doesn’t answer—but rather, smiles, and maybe laughs. A warm, soft grunt that reminds Patroclus of Heracles. “I’d heard of you, Patroclus. Long before you came here. The boy cast out by his family—a young life, crushed between an accident and politics.”

“What a thing to be known for.”

“The past is the past. What matters is what you choose to become.” He holds out his hand—broad and callused, and Patroclus watches as the vines adorning the cave’s exterior weave and wind in a huge mass by the centaur’s hand, slowly crawling away again to reveal the shield Peleus had gifted.

Dropping his sack where it sits on the stone, Patroclus shuffles up to gawk. “Does he know you have this?”

“He doesn’t need it.”

“Every hero needs a shield.”

Chiron hums. “Come, Patroclus. Look closely.” He looks. “The surface is adorned with carvings, but of all the figures there is not one warrior. Not one god, nor king. All ordinary people—tending fields, raising families, falling in love.”

He examines the shield, the intricate carvings, depictions of what Chiron narrates. And sure enough, he’s right. “Why put the ones who suffer most on a tool of war?”

“It’s a reminder, Patroclus.” The vines wind back into the cave, over the shield and back out, an empty space where the large bronze plate was. “If you want to find peace in this world, you must give everything to protect what you love.”

Patroclus scoffs. What good is he for protection? And for the things he loves—what, the golden prince of Phthia? Even if he did love Achilles, he’d be useless in protecting him. His life thus far has made it abundantly clear that all he is good for is wit. “I want nothing to do with the world of gods and kings.”

“And yet,” Chiron muses, “you’re still here.”

He leaves Patroclus with those parting words, and the silence that follows is deafening. A glance over his shoulder, at his belongings splayed across the stone floor—and Patroclus’ mind begins to wander.

Golden as he is, Achilles still seems to be on the short end of a fuse half the time. And perhaps Patroclus could help with that. It’s bad that he starts thinking like that—like Achilles needs him. What’s worse is that he hopes for it.

He steps out of the cave and remains by the arch of rocky stone to watch Achilles and Chiron on the grass around the bend. They’re training, it seems—Achilles is finally fulfilling the desire of what brought him here in the first place. The glade is his to conquer, and he does so with elegance Patroclus should be used to by now, but will not ever be.

Chiron has gifted him a spear to train with now, and somehow it suits him better than a staff. The long, dark wood gripped in his hand arcs through the air like an extension of his body, the sharp tip of it glinting in the sunlight as he jumps and runs and lunges and thrusts. May the gods forbid he see a battlefield—Patroclus can picture Achilles perfectly in the midst of war, and it scares him. It scares him, and mystifies him. War was supposed to be a beautiful thing, a tapestry of glory and honour weaved by heroes and legends. But no matter how well Achilles would suit it, Patroclus yearns for nothing more than this—than a golden-haired prince dancing in a glade, like a work of art carved by the gods.

By the time they finish training, Achilles has dived into the lake to rid himself of the sweat. Patroclus watches Chiron stalk away before he approaches, legs hanging off the edge to dip his feet in the water.

At the sound of the splashing, Achilles turns and wades closer. “I thought you were leaving.”

He leans back on his hands. “Do you want me to?”

“No.” He says it so quickly that it catches Patroclus off-guard—both of them off-guard, apparently, if the steady reddening of Achilles’ ears says anything. He clears his throat and crosses his arms on the lakeside. “I mean… I would like it, if you stayed. I think it’d get a bit quiet without you.”

“Heracles would still be here. Chiron, too.”

“And do you see them around right now?”

The answer is no. “Well, you know what I mean.”

Achilles chuckles. “Look, I won’t… I’m not going to stop you, if you want to go. But I would like it if you didn’t.”

He won’t lie—he’s already convinced. He was convinced hours ago, when the sun was still in the middle of the sky and he was watching a warrior dance with a spear. But Achilles doesn’t need to know that. “What’s in it for me?”

What he doesn’t expect is for Achilles to hum at that—to avert his gaze and, apparently, think about it. “You wouldn’t have to travel back to Phthia alone, for one. And who knows—maybe Chiron can teach you a few things, too.” He says this next thing with a wonky smile and a gleam in his eye: “So you won’t be completely useless.”

With a scoff, Patroclus splashes him with water. Which, in hindsight, is a very bad idea—his legs are pulled right out from under him, and he’s sputtering water soon after, the sound of Achilles’ raw laughter permeating through the waves.

He breaks through the water with a gasp—and shoves Achilles under.

⬩

Their fire is built by Chiron that night using wood that, strangely enough, produces smoke that smells more of myrrh than of ash. They sit beside the flames in their undergarments, tunics off and drying, with Chiron kneeled on the other side of the fire and Heracles against his horse body.

He's in the middle of teaching them—or rather, bestowing his knowledge. “Balance is everywhere,” he says. “It is what holds our world together. But don’t expect to find in a second what must be read over a century. An abundance of food one year can lead to a famine the next—alone, each tips the scale, but together they level each other. With that knowledge, you can walk through the darkest of times and know you will find a brighter future.”

Patroclus perks up hearing that. “That’s what Odysseus said to me the day he saved me from my father.”

“And it’s what I said to him,” Chiron says. “When he was my student—long before he went on to save all of the Achaeans.”

It’s met with Achilles’ unbelieving scoff. “There’s no hero who could do that alone.”

“Have you not heard the story of the marriage of Helen?” A shake of the head. “Tell him, Patroclus.”

He shrugs. “I don’t know it.”

There is the smallest of silences as Chiron tilts his head. “Strange.”

The prince is impatient. “Well? Go on, then.”

With a light laugh, Chiron crosses his arms and stares into the dancing flames, his eyes alight with memories. “Helen was… the most beautiful youth our world had ever seen. She was born to Leda, lover of Zeus and wife of Tyndareus. When the time came for Helen to seek marriage, half of Greece turned up to beg her for her hand—High King Agamemnon, Prince Menelaus, Odysseus of Ithaca… and many others. Even a father, petitioning for his child. Helen received them all as equals and vowed to choose her favourite among them.”

“She could never have chosen the child,” Achilles laughs. “The other kings would have lost their minds.”

“Child or not, whoever she chose would mean the rejection of all the rest. Helen knew too well the power of jealousy—and the violence that was sure to follow. None of the petitioners wanted conflict. But neither would any step aside.”

Patroclus watches the way the fire reflects off Achilles’ skin, eyes half-lidded to hide his line of sight. “So what happened?”

“Odysseus happened,” he says, eyes glazed over with the memory of years ago. “He proposed an oath. That whoever Helen chose, the others and their kin would defend the bond of the couple with their own lives. ‘For as long as there is breath in our bodies,’ he promised, if I remember correctly.

“And he negotiated. He stepped aside, away from Helen’s hand. It was enough to convince Menelaus—and so, he accepted. The other kings all took Menelaus’ example. The oath was sworn and all who had gathered were bound in their agreement—great kings, people from distant lands… even the child. Helen made her choice and was married. And from then until now, there has been peace between the Achaean kingdoms.”

“So,” Achilles says, after a moment, “who won?”

Chiron chuckles. “Every one of us that was spared the war that would have followed.”

“But who did Helen choose?”

“Menelaus,” he answers. “The Prince of Sparta.”

“Why him?”

“It is not our place to question her choice—that was the purpose of the oath.”

“Well, why do you think she chose him?”

Patroclus cuts Achilles’ incessant questions off with a laugh. “It doesn’t matter. Odysseus is the real hero.”

His answer gets an approving nod from Chiron, and part of him feels prideful. “It won’t be long now when you will both have a place beside him, shaping the course of the world.” With that, he gets up, his horse legs lifting him up to his gargantuan size. Heracles shifts and shakes his body out, bounding around and through Chiron’s legs. “Go and rest,” he tells them. “Tomorrow is waiting.”

Heracles follows him as he disappears into the trees, to wherever a centaur resides in his own forest, leaving the two of them by the fire.

It’s quiet, in the glade. A nice, gentle quiet that Patroclus never thought he could have, let alone appreciate. But the sky is clear and the little lights in the darkness are beautiful, each twinkling for his attention. And the trees sway with their own melody that he swears he can listen to, if he closes his eyes and just tries. To sit somewhere and exist—he didn’t think he would ever like doing that.

He hears Achilles shift beside him, then feels a shoulder pressed against his own. He doesn’t move away, but he does open his eyes when he hears Achilles ask, “What’s wrong?”

Patroclus looks at him; the eyes that glow golden before the flames. The planes of his face, princely and naïve and beautiful. He shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s never nothing, is it?”

“You’ll laugh at me.”

“I won’t.”

“You’ll think it’s stupid.”

“No, I won’t.”

He’s adamant on this, it seems. In Patroclus’ hesitation, Achilles grins and shoves his shoulder into Patroclus’, nudging him further, asking him wordlessly. Mischievous little runt. “It isn’t a big deal, alright?” Patroclus laughs, shoving Achilles’ face away with a palm against his face. “You’ve made it a big deal, and it’s not.”

Achilles just stares at him, completely unphased by the hand in his face.

“It’s…” He sighs. “I’m happy.”

A pause. “What?”

“I’m… happy. ”

“You’re sad because you’re happy?” He laughs, now, loud and unapologetic. “There’s no winning with you.”

Patroclus sways as Achilles pushes into his body. “There’s no happiness in this world that isn’t taken too quickly,” he mumbles. “If not by force, then by the quickening passage of time in its presence.”

With a small snort, Achilles leans closer into his space, clearly amused and somewhat endeared. This close to the prince, Patroclus doesn’t bother hiding how his eyes trace the dancing firelight along his skin, the tug upward of his lip. “You’re really overthinking this.”

He knows he is. But this is the storm within his mind—just, for now, for some reason, he speaks it aloud. “There’s going to be a time when all this is over. What happens then?”

Achilles shakes his head, laughing. “You’ll ruin the good times if you worry about what’s coming.”

“How can you say that when your days are numbered as they are?”

A grin. “So you do believe in my mother’s prophecy.”

“Prophecies are woven by the gods,” he says, “and I believe in neither. What I do believe in is heroes and heart—in sunshine and starlight. I believe in you .” He isn’t ready for his own honesty, but lets it happen anyway. “There’d be nothing left for me in this life if you were taken from it.”

Achilles isn’t quite smiling anymore. His eyes are ablaze with knowledge, suddenly lined with something Patroclus can’t will himself to understand. He reaches out and takes Patroclus’ hand. Patroclus lets him pull it the few inches between them, and place it against his chest. “I’m here.” His other hand reaches up, a broad palm cupping his jaw and a delicate thumb against his cheek. “I’m with you.”

His skin is warm, now. And dry. His heartbeat is steady, a drumming beat against Patroclus’ palm that he closes his eyes and listens to. He feels his own heartbeat match the pace, his chest following the rise and fall of the one he holds. He isn’t sure for how long he does so, but Achilles doesn’t stop him at any point. When he opens his eyes, a golden-green pair catch onto his. Traitorously—he glances down. Back up, to find them doing the same. Their eyes meet—Achilles pulls away.

Patroclus feels breathless in the lack of him, the aftermath of their proximity, like he’s forgotten how to breathe without matching Achilles’ rhythm. A bit too loudly, Achilles coughs. “We should get some sleep.” He clambers into a bedroll without a second glance.

If he’d given himself one, however, he would catch Patroclus staring into the fire, hands clutched to his chest, teaching himself how to breathe again.

⬩ ⛭ ⬩

Atop the hill in which the cave is built, Patroclus sits in the shade of the olive tree, twirling a pointed twig between his fingers as he watches, just below—a new performance.

Achilles dances through the glade with his spear embedded in his limbs, rehearsing the graceful step, step, leap of his routine. His hair flows around him like the lake’s waves, untied and free to cascade across his shoulders and neck as he whips around, never still for a single moment. Patroclus watches the sunlight across his skin, now tanned and lithe—perhaps not as built and large as Chiron, but certainly not as thin as he was when they arrived. He has grown to Chiron’s chin—much taller than Patroclus now, and wider by a significant feat. Now he lowers his chin when looking at Patroclus, rather than vice versa, and Patroclus can’t help but feel it almost feels more right, having to look up to meet his eye. It reminds him of when he first saw Peleus, the regal stance of a hunter. His smile gleams under the sun, and there is a constant scruff along his jaw. Adulthood treats him well.

After his training, Patroclus joins him by the lakeside, their belongings packed and on their backs. They leave the glade today, or so Chiron says—with nothing left to teach them.

It is bittersweet and almost melancholic, to leave the glade that raised him for the better part of his life. He wishes he could stay forever.

“My family will miss you two.” Chiron greets them by the water’s edge, a trail of vines following him, along with Heracles, now half the size of the centaur himself. “As will I.”

“Of course you will,” Achilles chides. He has grown into his smile, just as gracefully as he has everything else. It suits him better than a crown, Patroclus thinks.

Chiron laughs. Then holds out his hand, guiding the vines to the grass before Achilles’ feet. They entwine in a large mass before slithering away to reveal a bronze shield, carved with stories, and a matching spear. “A parting gift,” he says.

The pure joy that riddles Achilles’ face as he sets his eyes upon his belongings could rival that of a king meeting his son for the very first time—that infinitesimal moment in their shared life, where he could be anything his father sees fit, anything in the world: a hero, a legend, a rightful heir.

He jumps—genuinely jumps —to collect them, his laughter ringing through the trees.

“You had them! All this time, you…” He whips around to Patroclus. Now, he’s able to see the prince for what he is—perhaps what he had always wished to be, beneath the pain. Bright, and starry-eyed, and happy. An excitable man with a golden heart. “Did you know?”

Chiron answers for him: “He’s the reason you didn’t need them.”

Whatever slight twinge of guilt Patroclus harboured dissipates with the sight of Achilles’ smile. The blunt end of the spear hits Patroclus on his calf, a mischievous grin painting Achilles’ handsome features. “You’d better be ready for a lecture on our way home.”

“Oh, spare me the boredom.”

In an attempt to hide his sadness, Patroclus gives Heracles the tightest hug you can give a bear without hurting it. Which is very tight. Then he gives Chiron a nod, because the centaur has never been one for physical affection. Achilles does the same, and Chiron nods back to them both.

“Give Peleus my regards,” he says, with a warm smile. “My family will protect you through Mount Pelion—may the gods protect you onwards.”

What Patroclus wants to say, because he has always been one for snark, falls along the lines of, ‘We don’t need the gods to protect us. Achilles can do more than they ever will.’ What he says instead is, “Thank you.”

They leave the glade with their hands entwined.

⬩ ⛭ ⬩

Phthia has grown warmer in the years of their absence, and has also grown more trees. The first thing Patroclus notices as they crest the hill towards the palace is the large expanse of shrubbery surrounding the barracks in which he once slept, a collection of what seems to be oak and mahogany.

The second thing he notices is a man by the entrance of the palace: Peleus, his arms already open. He has aged, of course—with grey littering his hair and beard now, and a significant less stomp in his step as he runs forward to clutch his son.

Tears are not shed, but Patroclus’ heart aches at the sight of Peleus holding Achilles’ face between his hands as gently as a newborn. What truly gets him is their height. Achilles is taller than his father now, and cranes his neck down to hide his face within the crook of Peleus’, his strong arms held across Peleus’ body like it’s being stolen from him.

He hears Peleus mutter against golden hair, “It’s good to have you home, my son.” As they break apart, his eyes seem more green than grey. He turns to Patroclus and pulls him in too, a fatherly embrace for an otherwise fatherless child. “You have worked a miracle, Patroclus—you’ve brought my boy back to me.”

Patroclus shakes his head and laughs. “You have it backwards, Peleus.” He meets Achilles’ eye and smiles. “He brought me.”

They pull away, Peleus’ face bright, wrinkles across his forehead and smile lines cutting deep. “Your mother would be so proud of you. Of both of you.”

Achilles takes his hand and rests it against his chest, bowing his head, practically begging for forgiveness. “I was wrong to blame you when she left us.”

“You were hurting.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

A shake of the head. “I was cruel, my boy, to punish you for burning and then lament the loss of your warmth.”

They clamber into another embrace, for there can never be far too many, as a voice sounds from behind Peleus— “What did that centaur do to you?” Ajax.

They break their embrace just in time for Ajax to take a running leap right into them, his hulking frame even bigger than Patroclus remembered. Achilles catches him anyway and spins, as feather-light as a dancer, their golden and red hair flowing around them like ribbons.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” Ajax cries as he’s spun around like a maiden, his booming voice cracking with emotion. Patroclus laughs, the sound accompanied by Peleus’.

“Come!” Peleus opens his arms out like a beckoning call to the gods, his teeth on full display as he leaps backward into the palace. “Let us find a place with enough food and wine that we needn’t move until we are dead!”

As he places Ajax back on the ground, Achilles tugs on Patroclus’ hand with a smile. “We’ll catch up.”

Peleus grants them a nod as he disappears into the palace. Ajax follows soon after, but not before clapping Patroclus on the back with a broad grin. “You’re a Myrmidon now, whether you like it or not. No more running away.”

Left alone between the grand entrance and the rolling fields, Achilles stares as Patroclus leaves their hands together. He leans forward, looking past the golden strands, to see what’s happening. “Are you alright?”

Achilles lifts his head and gives a wonky smile. “Remember when you said you were sad, because you were happy?”

A long time ago, now. He laughs. “Unfortunately.”

“No, you were right. I understand it now.”

“How do you mean?”

Their hands are still clutched together, their fingers now entwining with Achilles’ guidance. He pulls Patroclus’ body flush against his. Patroclus has seen him this close before, but never awake. He has stared at the plump peachy lips, slightly agape in the dawn air, tiny plumes of fog escaping from behind the teeth. He has watched the long, light-coloured lashes in the glints of sunlight, fluttering against tanned and supple cheeks.

Never has he seen them open, staring back at him, the regal green whirls around the black void, speckled with flakes of gold. He wishes for it to be like this, always, for any other time he stares.

A broad palm snakes its way to the small of his back, the warmth blooming through his tunic and onto his skin, as Achilles’ breath hitches, for a second, before: “Do you think you could make Phthia your home?”

Patroclus’ breath escapes him as the air is punched out of his lungs—the intake of breath that follows is full of Achilles; it drives him half-delirious. “I don’t know,” he mumbles. “You tell me.”

“I think you could.”

“It would mean a… long, anonymous life.”

With a lilted laugh, Achilles tells him, “I think it could be a happy one.”

Patroclus tilts his head with a smile, gaze flickering between two eyes that hold the sun. “I think you might be right.”

His hands find their way to the sides of Achilles’ neck, the flawless skin that he watched stretched and grow into the man before him. The prince smells of myrrh from their time in the glade, with hints of something else that Patroclus can only ever attribute to Achilles—something golden; something beautiful. Something divine.

Their chests knock together. Then their foreheads. Their noses brush—and then their lips.

It matters not who initiated; it matters that after a decade of wondering and imagining what it would feel like to kiss the prince of Phthia, Patroclus is blessed with it. And it is more than he had ever dreamed.

⬩

The banquet is an event larger than life itself, an extravagance that stretches through all of the hallways and into the gardens, running the wine stock completely dry. They dance, and they sing, and they laugh, and Achilles pulls Patroclus in every spare moment, to the joy of the other Myrmidons. Deliriously flittering through the palace, the two drench their throats with pomegranates, wine, and each other.

Late into the night, they collapse into one of the spare quarters along the hall of Peleus’, a mass of cloth and bedding along the floor before the hearth. The fire crackles, flooding the room in low light, as Ajax snores his cares away and Peleus shares a drunken tale about the Myrmidons. Patroclus, in his own drunkenness and exhaustion, thinks he hears something or other about Zeus and ants and loyal soldiers.

Peleus finishes his story with a flourish, one leg up on an oak table to pose like the hero of his name. Patroclus raises a glass. “To the Myrmidons.”

Peleus raises another. “To my boys.” As they drink to that, two figures enter the chamber—one leading, one being led. Patroclus lifts his head from the between the limbs of Achilles and Ajax to meet a familiar gaze.

“I do hope I’m not interrupting,” he says as he enters.

“Odysseus!” Patroclus frees himself from the entangled limbs as quickly as he can in his rush, clambering into Odysseus’ embrace. They are almost the same height now, and he isn’t sure how to feel about it.

Peleus puts his drink down to embrace Odysseus as well, with a hearty laugh. “Odysseus, my old friend, after all these years, your wisdom has worked its wonders.”

“I’m pleased to hear it.” He claps Peleus’ shoulder, leaning in towards his ear. “I need a word with you.”

“Oh, there’s nothing you can’t say in front of all of us.”

There is the slightest hint of hesitation that befalls Odysseus, and therefore the room, silence in the face of Ajax’s snoring. Achilles has risen, too, now standing beside Patroclus with curious wide eyes.

The silence— Odysseus’ silence, of all things—drives Patroclus to near-panic, sobering his system. He takes Achilles’ hand as Odysseus says, “Helen has been taken.”

Peleus’ immediate response is a loud, pah! “Nonsense. There’s no Achaean stupid enough to cross the Spartans.”

“Because it wasn’t an Achaean.” The room turns to look at him, the eyes in the walls twitching to find him. “It was a Trojan. Paris—the youngest son of King Priam. Menelaus has invoked the oath, sworn by those to defend his marriage.”

It seems the gravity of the situation has begun to sober Peleus as well, and he loses his grin. “Well, none of my Myrmidons swore to your oath.”

“Agamemnon has heard of Achilles’ skills. He wants Achilles to claim his glory before the walls of Troy to earn his place in legend.”

“Tell the High King I’ve chosen a different path.” He looks to Patroclus in the low light; they share a smile. “My place is here, with my family.”

“There you have it, Odysseus.” Peleus is back at the oak table, draining his goblet. “Take your cause elsewhere.”

A tremor dances across Odysseus’ brow, made of something like resignation or frustration, before it glimmers away to make room for his usual gentle smile. “So be it,” he says, lowering his chin. Then: “Patroclus, you’re welcome to travel with my army.”

He says it with such an off-handed air, already turning to walk out the door, like he hasn’t just said the most absurd thing Patroclus has heard in years. He frowns, and tries to scoff, but lets it die in his throat. “I’m not sailing with you to some stupid war.”

Odysseus turns. “You don’t have a choice.”

Before he can question it, before he can do anything, Peleus is butting in: “Don’t do this, Odysseus, I beg you.”

“Peleus?” The king refuses to look him in the eye. “Peleus, what’s he talking about?”

“You didn’t tell him.”

“Not all of us are meddlers, Odysseus—”

“You were there.” Odysseus is the one to look him in the eye, now. Under the gaze of his silver eyes, Patroclus feels, once more, like an orphan boy made of stretched skin against a ribcage. “On the day of Helen and Menelaus’ marriage, you were there.”

He steps back as if to escape his own saviour, his shoulder hitting Achilles’ chest. “That’s impossible—”

“The youngest of Helen’s suitors,” Odysseus says, “sworn to the oath by your father.”

“He disowned me—”

“It was sworn in your name.”

An arm wraps over his collar, the muscles coiled and tight, a face popping with veins beside his. “You’re not taking him.” Patroclus whips around, feet heavy, to take Achilles’ face in his palms. How miserable he looks, with a furrowed brow and tilted eyes. A boy as bright as the sun should never be sad. “You don’t have to do this.”

 The weight of Odysseus’ gaze drags his heart down into his gut, the familiar churning feeling of unworthiness. He thought he’d left that in Opus. And if not in Opus, then in that glade. His blood has caught up to him after all. “I can’t break an oath.” He knows that much. From everything his father berated him with, he knew at least that much. “I can’t bring that shame to you, not after all you’ve done for me.” He lays their foreheads together, so tightly that it hurts, the grip of his palms glued to the planes of Achilles’ cheeks. Flawless, as smooth and soft as the rest of him. The only scars he owns are from their boyish days of play-fights; this is the only thing keeping him that way. “Achilles, please, listen to me: don’t tempt your mother’s prophecy. Let me go.”

He is not Achilles—there is nothing special about his form, his technique, or the way his eyes rove the battlefield. He will die the moment he is put in the fray. But he will die happily, knowing that Achilles was living a painless, anonymous life. A hand cups his, the harsh line of Achilles’ brow staring him in the face. “You’re not going alone.”

“That’s—”

“Tell Agamemnon he’ll have my spear,” he tells Odysseus, before he even looks at him.

“Achilles!”

“Patroclus is a Myrmidon,” he commands. “Where he goes, the army of Phthia follows.”

And with a nod from Odysseus, Achilles’ fate is sealed. Patroclus’ nostrils flare with fear, agony, everything he knows of the future. “Achilles,” he begs, quieter now, between their lips. “Please, don’t do this. If you sail to Troy, you won’t be coming home.”

Achilles casts a quick glance to the men in the room, both averting their gaze. He takes Patroclus to the courtyard and lets the door slam shut behind him, anything his old man says be damned. There is a glistening line by Patroclus’ lashes that he tries to ignore. “I know,” he says, when they’re alone. “I know.”

“ You know, ” Patroclus mocks, his hands clutching Achilles’ wrists like they’ll disappear if he releases them. “What happened to a long, anonymous life?”

“It would be long. It would be anonymous.” He lowers himself ever slightly, pushing his face into Patroclus’ sight. “It would be torture, without you there.”

He is silent for a moment, his blurred vision of Achilles’ gentle smile pulling him closer to sanity. “You don’t deserve to die.”

“And you do?”

“Better off my life than yours.”

Achilles hums. He lets Patroclus continue grasping his wrists, seemingly comfortable with the position. “And what do you expect me to do, whilst you’re off at war? Make flower crowns and sunbake?”

“This is death , Achilles. Your death. How can you—” He’s cut off by a kiss, then a gleaming grin. It takes him by surprise, the first time they have shared a kiss since their return to Phthia. His stomach mixes giddiness into anxiety, and he isn’t sure what to do with himself.

“I took my oath: to be with you.” His nose pushes into the curve behind Patroclus’ ear, warmth between their bodies in the dead of night. “You will not break your oath. And I will not break mine.”

The gods have meddled in their lives far too many times, and Patroclus grows tired. His hands are still holding Achilles’. Flawless, pure, untouched by war. Poison leaks from his palms and into pale golden skin.  Those green eyes that he so dearly adores are not yet dull; not yet stained. But that will not last long.

⬩ ⛭ ⬩

The Achaeans are gathered, and the view is tragic.

Aulis’ shore is vandalized by the ships from across Greece—the cultivation of the oath. Agamemnon, the High King, stands aboard his ship to address every soldier, Patroclus included. He does not listen to a word. He is shown the face he will fight for: Menelaus. He does not recognize him, nor does he care to. Achilles takes to being the leader of the Myrmidons, and with a grace that twists Patroclus’ stomach with every speech. Achilles was made for this. It terrifies him.

On the dawn at which they sail, just before the sun rises, Achilles finds him at the bow. He takes his hand. “You spoke to my father once. An olive grove, cut off from the rest of the world.”

He laughs. It sounds… wrong. “It was a stupid dream.”

Achilles traces the lines of Patroclus’ palm until he looks at him, his tender and knowing smile. “When all this is over, we’ll find our peace there. Together.” He kisses his Patroclus here—with no one around to see. “There’s nothing any god nor king can do to stop us.”