Chapter Text
‘I will cut you open and eat you raw.’
This is it, Hector’s mind whispers to him. A single moment, the fulfillment of his purpose, a complete life.
When he was born, the messenger from Delphi had declared, “He is to be the best of the Trojans, eclipsed by none but the aristos achaion.”
Hector was not a fool. The Fates did not change their minds.
It was easy from then on. Every spear he threw, every arrow he shot, every sword he wielded was against that faceless man. And always, it ended with Hector bleeding out on the ground.
By twelve he had bested all his father’s soldiers. By twenty he had a wife. By forty, an heir. It was not enough. Under the same sun, another mortal was more perfect than he.
Paris had let his city be swarmed by the filthy Greeks for a filthy woman. His people had cried out at his window.
“Your city is falling, greatest!”
He had seen. Houses burned after being picked clean, men’s throats slit, women raped.
And he had fought.
The shadow developed a face and a name. Achilles, he was called. Divine and royal blood. Sea wind under his heels.
Even as he had plunged his spear into Patroclus’ chest Hector had wondered if Achilles would kill him so beautifully. He wants epics to be written about the sound of his body striking the earth.
Tomorrow they will weep for him. Beat their breasts, fill the walls with wails of anguish. “The gods are cruel,” they will cry.
Cruelty is a novelty for Hector. The deeper the pain, the more the pages.
He knew Apollo was lying. It didn't matter.
The metal splits open his ribcage, his lungs, his heart. ‘Give my body back to my father.’ But even as he says it, he knows it is fruitless.
Achilles stands over him, blocking the sun. Ichor drips on the same ground as his own red blood.
Hector has not earned his death.