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Achilles never gave much thought to the unlife that would follow his somewhat inevitable demise. The nebulous stretch of eternity seemed so far away, so inconsequential compared to the enemies standing before him and the rage that swelled to bursting in his heart. But young men in war never think their blessings from the gods will ever wane, think of their recklessness to be bravery and their stubbornness as noble persistence. An empty head is not the strength he thought it once was.
There is little to be done about that now, of course, and it would be remiss of him to say that it hasn’t granted him some delights in this afterlife. Only someone with the blood of gods and the audacity of an exalted hero would march to face the Lord of the Underworld himself and make demands. But he did, and now here he is. Achilles was prophesied to defy expectations and did so all his life, he supposes it only makes sense that he did so in death as well. Even so, something about the Underworld tends to soothe one’s ego. Living in the heart of Tartarus itself, surrounded on every side with beings of incomprehensible power, many older than even the Olympians; watching the endless droves of shades pour in from Charon’s ferry, sorted into their realms and shipped off to enjoy the rest of eternity wherever they had earned to be. Or perhaps Achilles is just getting old and sentimental in that way mortals always are and gods never do. No matter the cause, he holds his tongue and listens more than he thinks he ever has. He leans against his spear like an old walking stick and cannot remember the last time he raised it against another outside of his spars with the young prince. A small part of him wonders if Patroclus would be proud of his growth, his humility and restraint. His body aches for his praise, still ready to preen under the attention of the only man who has ever mattered.
A long time ago that ache came in all-consuming waves, a molten blade slotting between his ribs with its white-hot heat spreading out to the very tips of each finger and toe. Achilles isn’t sure what it says about him now that it doesn’t feel like that anymore.
There is no use floundering around in hypotheticals. Fear is for the weak and regret is for cowards. His days (or nights, it’s rather hard to tell down here) are filled with training the little prince, mostly, and when the Zagreus must return to his mother’s arms or his father’s side to be trained in whatever it is Underworld princes must know about, Achilles guards the gates and watches over the west hall. After all these years he has settled into a comfortable routine, though he does find himself wishing they pushed him harder, if only so the heady emptiness doesn’t find a home in his chest. It always does, of course: Achilles doesn’t think it’s ever really left him since Patroclus passed. There are always moments of that too-familiar blank nothingness, found between his shifts at the doors and training session with young Zagreus, when the lounge is filled with shades who want little to do with the world outside their own hushed whispers and Orpheus’ absence is just a little too obvious in the grand halls where the sound of every footstep ricochets off the walls. He tries to retreat quickly but it never feels quite fast enough.
Achilles still isn’t quite sure where his lodgings are: all the hallways and rooms tend to twist around and meld together, but he supposes that’s how they’re meant to work, and he can find his room without too much trouble most days or nights so it’s not that big of a deal. The accommodations are simple and plain, with a few grinning skulls to add that morbid Underworld touch, and it speaks more to how spoiled he was in life that the chambers come equipped with much less than he had during active war. There’s not much present in the sense of personal touches, even after centuries he’s spent in these lodgings— the most personable thing about the room is the thick stacks of parchment resting on the desk. Dozens of pages of notes about every god, monster, item, weapon, or notable shade he’s ever encountered since serving in the house.
It's there that he settles most days or nights and with a quill in hand, Achilles loses himself in the writings. This time he’s expanding out his entry of Tisiphone, who’s quite the curious soul; she was banned from the house long ago so accurate information is hard to come by, especially considering how grandly her reputation precedes her. Even he had the sense to fear her when he was alive, if only to worry what she might do to Pat once he entered the underworld.
Megaera’s nose wrinkles at the very mention of either of her sisters and any sort of greater expansion on the topic merits a withering scowl and the harsh crack of her whip against the marble tiles. She never liked to talk with him at first, too aware of his misdeeds in life, but for all her spit and vinegar lady Megaera has softened somewhat during their time together. Perched atop one of Tartarus’ jagged cliffs and passing a bottle of nectar between them, the two spilled twin secrets into the void— of family and jealousy and regret and anything else that would weigh down immortals such as themselves. Achilles isn’t particularly keen on earning her ire, and for all his bluster he has learned when to keep his mouth shut. What she’s entrusted to him is not something to be shared. So instead Achilles writes what he knows of mortal fear and immortal sense of duty, a mind corrupted by the endless hunt, and ponders on the properties of Titan Blood.
As he strains to remember what Lady Nyx had said to him once about taking in the Erinyes he becomes startlingly aware of the heaviness of his eyelids and the fog invading his thoughts. His hand has gone limp, trailing a rather unflattering squiggle of ink across the parchment and before he can think too deeply about it Achilles raises the quill and stabs it into the back of his hand.
The thing about being dead is that it doesn’t make you immortal in the sense you can’t die, but rather in the way that means you can die over and over again and come back good as new every time. Stripped down to your base desires, mortal weakness is carried with you— blood still oozes from every cut and scrape and pain still laces every injury. It’s harsh sting is still something he hasn’t gotten particularly used to but now he uses that alarmingly exposed feeling to his advantage. Achilles is jolted out of his stupor as wispy blue-green plasma escapes from the wound and mixes with the dark ink into a brownish ooze. If he still had a functioning heart he’s sure it would be pounding.
“I ask you to leave me be, Lord Hypnos,” he says to the empty room. There is nothing but silence in return, draping heavy over him and weighing him down like a thick set of armor.
Achilles removes the quill from his hand and wipes it clean on the edge of his cloak, not bothering to staunch the bleeding. It’ll go away on its own before long. But before his hand is even halfway to the inkwell that creeping exhaustion is back, only this time golden shimmers begin to dance in his vision. They dissipate when he jabs the quill into the pad of his thumb and Achilles earns himself a spectacular case of vertigo when he forces himself to his feet, spear held defensively.
“Lord Hypnos.” His voice comes out somewhat of a growl. Achilles can’t bring himself to care.
The gentle notes of a lyre’s lullaby fill the room as Hypnos appears before him in a flash of crimson light. The godling is halfway through a yawn when he enters, though the moment his golden eyes see Achilles’ spear Hypnos makes an odd choking noise and his hands shoot up in surrender. He flails about in the air and just nearly manages to avoid dropping his ledger as he rebalances.
“Oh, there’s no need to mess around with all that Lord stuff! I’m just… regular ‘ol Hypnos, friendly house greeter!” The Godling’s voice is a little pitchier than normal, and the wings on either side of his head flap around quite like a frightened gull might.
Achilles has long since learned not to take the promises of the Gods at face value. He lowers his spear anyway, as Lady Nyx would likely have him exiled for killing one of her sons for such an inane reason, no matter how fond Zagreus has become of him.
“Is there anything I can help you with?”
“Nope!” Hypnos lowers his hands, tucking the ledger under his arm. He does not seem inclined to elaborate, or even aware of the fact that he should.
Achilles isn’t sure if this is intentional obliviousness or simply the way Sleep is. While he and his twin are the youngest of Nyx’s children they are still eons old, and yet not quite full grown. It’s a strange thing to meet with a being so ancient yet so childish, and from what he understands, Hypnos is quite childish. He always existed on the periphery of Achilles’ mind in the first few centuries of his tenure at the house: never running around with the young prince or young master Death as they hitched ferry rides with Charon, nor tussling with them in the training yard outside of the prince’s quarters. Instead he spent most of his time tucked away in his mother’s skirts, dozing peacefully and occasionally lifting his head up to crack a joke with a dry smile before falling back into slumber.
It is only his position now— both in terms of the labor force and his physical location— that means that he’s readily available in just about every scenario. Achilles can’t help but find him a little… dense, all things considered, but in that charmingly boyish way you cannot help but to forgive. Perhaps it is this, combined with his dry sense of humor that always manages to make the Master’s beard twitch with a hidden smile, is the reason Hypnos has not been fired yet.
“Why is it you disturb me so?” Achilles prompts.
“Well, it’s been a while since you’ve slept, is all! And you know, the only thing mortals like to do more than die is sleep, so I figured since it’s been so long I’d stop waiting for you to come to me and kinda uh, lend you a hand with the whole thing!”
Achilles neglects to mention the fact that his mortality has no sort of bearing on his sleep schedule now that he no longer has a proper heart or lungs or even a true brain to put to rest. “That’s really not necessary, lad, I have other matters to attend to.”
“Huh, well, that’s the great thing about being dead! You’ve got all eternity to deal with that stuff. A nap couldn’t hurt.”
Easy for him to say. Achilles has never met someone so ill-suited for doing actual work. Hypnos spends most of his time napping and the rest of it pretending that he wasn’t napping as he scrambles to find his quill. “Why are you so dogged in your pursuit of this matter? You never treat your duties to the House with such fervor.” Not the kindest words he could have chosen; a prickle of regret worms its way through his gut.
Hypnos doesn’t even seem to even register the fact that was an insult, laughing it off with an easy smile. “Well— that’s different, you know! That’s just my job, this is like, my duty. And if you’re worried about being all weird about it, don’t even! I know how you war heroes like things to go: all glorious victory and great afterparties and none of the sad stuff— all the champs in Elysium like their dreams that way!” Ticking each item off on his fingers, chest puffed out with self-importance and pride, the shining satisfaction and hope in his eyes dies out when he looks at Achilles' face. Slowly, like a flower wilting. “Or, uh, if that’s not your thing we could totally talk about it! Anything you’d like, I’ll be on it!”
“I mean no disrespect when I say this, but I no longer harbor a desire to dream. Their temptations and fantasy mean little to me now. Please leave me be.”
“Why didn’t you just say so? I can do no dreams at all, easy as pie— or whatever else it is mortals like to say.”
While it’s true Achilles has gotten better at controlling himself, he does not bother to stop his annoyed huff. Dogged wasn’t the right word to use, for Hypnos does not chase, instead relentless in the same way mountainous terrain might be. A consistent obstacle. Sleep isn’t often rejected and he does eventually come for them all, one way or another: another similarity between the twins.
Unfortunately, unlike his brother, Hypnos doesn’t seem to know when he is not wanted. Nor whenever a conversation has run its course. Young Thanatos would be more likely to leave halfway through a sentence, actually, but that’s neither here nor there.
“Okay, so I get you’re not that happy about this whole thing but do you know about the uh, Pythagorean cup?” Achilles furrows his brow and shakes his head. “It’s a neat little party trick! You’ve got this totally normal cup, but if you fill it up too much some fancy mechanism in the middle that spills all the wine all over whichever greedy schmuck decides to fill it up all the way. And it doesn’t like, stop when it gets to the normal amount of wine it just goes and goes and goes until it’s all empty.” Hypnos’ eyes twinkle with a dangerous delight. “You are that cup, and the wine falling out of it. You shades have gotta take care of yourselves or else you get all mushy and disorganized and cause stuff like Doomstones to happen.”
“I imagine a transformation like that would take a rather long time.”
“That’s true. But you’ve been here for actual ages and, no offense, but you haven’t ever really been, like, normal? So instead of starting about here,” Hypnos waggles his fingers at around shoulder height, “you’re like, up here.” His hand raises and dusts the top of his curly hair. “And it’s a lot easier to prevent stuff like that then reverse it when it’s already started. You’re pretty great and all— best of the Greeks, right?— but the Master isn’t big on wasting resources! Lotsa heroes to choose from to train the prince.”
“I see. Puts me in a rather difficult position, doesn’t it?” Achilles hums. “Please know I do appreciate your concern, lad, but this is something I’d rather handle on my own.”
“Okay! No problem! No problem at all,” Hypnos giggles, something just to the left of malice glinting in his tired eyes. “It’s just, well, isn’t that the sort of thing that got you killed? Just a tip, it might be better to learn from those sorts of mistakes, hahaha!”
His molars grind together and a familiar, frothing rage rises up within him. Hypnos is not a tyke in the same way Zagreus is: he is old enough to understand the weight of his words but coddled enough to not fear the consequences of them. The coy smile on his face says that much. The anger in Achilles boils: surges like a roaring wave and pounds against the confines of his heart, begging for blood. He’s killed men for less. But that is not his place, and if violence was his birthright it is not something he took with him to the grave.
He breathes deeply, in through the nose and out through the mouth, wind whistling from behind his teeth. “If you’ve come here just to insult me, I must ask you to take your leave.”
“Fine! But don’t come crawling back to me whenever this all blows up in your face in a big ‘ol explosion of shade ooze and abandoned dreams!” His words carry an edge of finality, but the god makes no attempt to leave.
“Hypnos. You may either grant me your honesty or your absence. Pick one.”
The godling groans, drags his hands down his face and mutters something under his breath that Achilles can’t quite catch. “Don’t you get that everyone’s gonna miss you a whole lot if you turn into an evil rock.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I’m not near as important as you claim me to be.”
“Humble, too! See, that’s why everyone’s such a big fan. You know, for being as unimportant as you say you are, you still have a ton of people dreaming about you! A bunch of people from the war wonder about where you ended up, since you’re not in Elysium and stuff; that centaur who trained you and your mom, they both worry a lot. Well, maybe worry isn’t the right word, but when they end up sleeping they end up dreaming about you most of the time.” Achilles is grateful the lad keeps prattling on. He isn’t quite sure his voice would hold. “And that’s not even to mention everyone in the house! I mean, just look at my mom— you had three whole conversations with her yesterday, and she hasn’t talked to me in a century! Sounds like you’re pretty important to me.”
“I still don’t… I understand your concern, but this is something best handled alone, I think.”
Achilles manages to hold the godling’s gaze for a half-breath. It’s a difficult thing, every warrior’s instinct in him screaming to strike quick and true, to run, to beg for his safety if need be. A more prideful part of himself spits and turns up its nose at the very idea of doing such a thing, but the defiance doesn’t last very long. Lord Hypnos has a corpse-like pallor about him, his pale yellow eyes glowing faintly, pulsing and flickering like a candle in the wind. The colors of sickness. Plague. It happens all in the instant they lock eyes: his ears begin to ring, the edges of his vision tunnel and blur, bitter taste of bile coating his tongue as his stomach rolls.
The sensations leave just as quickly as they came on when Achilles drops his gaze to the floor. He does not have true weight but he cannot hide the way he sways on his feet.
Achilles has never feared for himself since coming to serve the house. Servitude did not come easy but he knew enough to understand his place and understand the consequences of his actions in potential. The only time he felt the sting of Megaera’s whip was during his tenure as a prisoner, freshly-dead and raging to the point of madness; for all his sternness and harsh orders, Master Hades has always made it perfectly clear what he expects. But this is something else. Not a threat, not any promise of future violence to come or anything of the sort. Hypnos doesn’t wish to harm him, but the power that is leaking out of his pores is something dangerous in its act of existence alone. The boy has existed before the dawn of civilization and he will outlast every single one to follow. To a being so ancient, with so much power over every living creature in the heavens above, on Gaia’s green earth or in the underworld below, the only desires that truly matter are his own. The mind is a rather flimsy thing.
There’s not much he could do if Hypnos just chose to send him to sleep. All it would take is the snap of his fingers. It’s beyond him why the godling didn’t do that in the first place.
Hypnos floats forward a few tentative feet and sinks down onto the bed, mattress sagging under his weight. He picks at the nail of his left thumb, head bowed low.
“It’s okay to be scared. I won’t like, judge you or anything, I see just about every part of human existence: no one can hide from their dreams. You really think a little bit of fear is going to surprise me, huh?” His laugh is perhaps not as bright as it usually is. “I’m not dumb, I know you don’t wanna have to see him again in your dreams, or wake up without him at your side. I get it. It sucks. But I’m not gonna let you pity yourself into a slow, painful, second death into a hunk of rock.”
“No. I don’t think you do.” The words slip out before he can even think to silence them.
“Huh?”
“I don’t think you could ever understand my pain. Nothing against you, lad, simply… a fact of this unlife, I suppose.” Achilles’ laugh is dry and obviously forced, petering off and leaving a small hollow in his chest.
“Why? Because I haven’t died in a bloodied blaze of glory and war crimes? C’mon, I thought you were gonna open your mind by this point. We had a real thing going!”
“Then please, enlighten me.”
Hypnos is quiet for a while. The room is completely silent. For a moment Achilles wonders if Hypnos has realized how swiftly he’s been caught in a lie, or that perhaps he’s going to disappear mid-conversation like his twin.
“Sometimes home is a person, and when you lose them it feels like the whole world is folding in on you. Everything gets all twisted and gnarled and wrong, but it never breaks all the way through so you’re still there and just have to like, deal with it? And it’s like, since no one ever notices, was it even worth anything at all?” His laugh is pitchy and Hypnos winces like it stings his own ears. “Just gotta… keep on keeping on, right?”
For all the time he’s been dead or alive, Achilles has never heard such sorrow in words, or at the very least he never stopped long enough to listen to it. “It’s not coldness, aye? More like the absence of their warmth.” Achilles dares not speak his name. It is a right that he forfeited long ago.
“That’s a neat way to put it.”
Achilles shrugs. “Simply the way I’ve always seen it, lad.”
Silence once more, though much kinder than before.
“Never gets easier, does it? Better, sure, but never easier.” Hypnos’ spindly fingers toy with a curl of his hair. “Every day hurts just as much as the first, but you can learn to forget how long it's been.”
Hypnos has a point. He has forgotten how long it’d been: he used to count how many minutes, how many hours they had been separated. That astuteness bled away into days, then weeks, and now Achilles doesn’t know how to describe it with greater specificity than lifetimes. Pat was the sun's rays on his face; the wind at his back; the port to which he would always return, no matter what storm came his way. The words to describe the splendor of Patroclus don’t exist, and if they did Achilles doesn’t think that anyone but the finest poets could perform such a feat.
“Would you like to talk about it, lad?” Is the response he settles on. It seems the right thing to say, considering how the words stick to the roof of his mouth and stubbornly refuse to come out.
Sleep shrugs one lazy shoulder. “Maybe. I dunno where I would even start.”
“Wherever you’d like.”
“I’m never a burden to her.” Hypnos’ voice is quiet and he picks at a loose stitch in the bedding, eyes low. “She takes me for who I am and that’s something a lot of people aren’t too jazzed about, haha! Kinda cool to have a real break every now and again. Like, I can’t help the way I was born! She’s the only one who ever seems to get that.”
“I see.” Achilles tries to say it, he really does, but his vocal cords burn at the very thought of it. So he swallows his pride and lowers his gaze to the floor. “We were the same way. Never had to think about the prophecy or the war when I was with him, even in our last days together.”
They talk for a while longer, gentle confessions falling into the space between them and dissipating into the air like smoke. Achilles thinks that there’s a certain beauty to it, being freed of shackles that you didn’t know you had.
“M’ sorry for pushing the whole sleep thing,” Hypnos mumbles into a pillow, having migrated to the head of the bed.
“It would be remiss of me to blame you, O Sleep. Would be rather strange if that wasn’t your first response to most of your problems.”
Hypnos smiles at that, not teasing or lopsided, smaller than his usual smiles. Just one dimple appears as the corner of his mouth teases up. “Still, shouldn’t have done it. It’s your choice if you want to see him again or not. Even I know that much!”
A stone weighs heavy in his gut. “There’s nothing more I wish to see him again, but it’s not something I’ve deserved for quite some time now. I don’t imagine he wishes to see me again. With the contract I made with the Master it is the law of this very land that I will never see him again.” Speaking the truth is different from knowing it only in your heart. Stings quite like an infected wound. “Delusion is what got me here. I do not wish to make that mistake again.”
Hypnos shrugs. “That’s one of those big differences between gods and mortals, you know? Gods live forever so we tend to get stuck doing the same stuff we’re used to. You mortals have so little time you rush around everywhere until you keel over dead, and when you’re dead you spend the next few centuries running around in circles, starting petty drama with random shades because you don’t know anything else. Takes a few centuries for most people to move on.”
“I’ll never be able to leave him behind.”
“People with stories like yours usually can’t.”
He wonders how many hapless souls like him Hypnos has met: blessed rosy-cheeked mortals with dreams of idyllic landscapes and puckered lips, only to meet them again as they shuffle off of Charon’s skiff and crowd the Great Hall with their wisped forms. The Fields of Mourning are always overcrowded with those who have lost themselves to a failed love.
“I’m not gonna make you talk any more or anything. But what I said before was true, about the whole turning into an evil crystal. You gotta take care of yourself before you get old and bitter and. You know.” Hypnos mimes an explosion with his hands and various sound effects. Achilles can’t help but huff out a laugh.
A small part of him wishes they could stay and talk here for a little longer. But time marches ever onward and for as unfortunate as it is, they do have their own priorities to attend to. Nothing to be done about it, he supposes.
“You know… I might have an idea, actually. To help with your whole sleep problem? Find me on your next day off, cuz right now I gotta get back to the pool.”
Most of Hypnos’ plans seem to involve either killing all mortals at once to make their lives easier or every worker in the house taking a century-long nap. “Aye, lad.”
“It was nice talking to you, Achilles.”
“Likewise.”
“Seeya!”
With a cheerful wave the god disappears in a flash of scarlet light. Achilles’ bed is down a pillow, but it’s not like he was using it anyway.