Work Text:
He’s seen it all, in all the time he’s been alive. He came to Thebes as a young man, spring in his step, the warm sunlight on his face, basking in the joy of being alive. He had a reputation for his mind and his wits that went ahead of him like a summer breeze. Cadmus was building his new city, rubbing the dirt from his palms as he watched his earth-men hard at work, proud as a mother bird with her chicks.
“Good, aren’t they?” he’d said to the passer-by. “They were a gift to me. The best men there are.”
Tiresias made a polite noise. A smile spread across Cadmus’ wide, stolid face. “You don’t have to pretend to be interested.” He’d said, and slapped him across the back.
Tiresias had liked Cadmus. Deep down, he was still the little boy who had gone searching for his sister, a little boy lost in a foreign land, confused as to how he’d ever become king. His grandson, little Pentheus, was much more kingly than him. After the death of Echion, Pentheus’ father, Cadmus took him under his wing, more mother-duck than ever, could do nothing more than cluck proudly and parade him around while Pentheus wriggled from Cadmus’ arms to play with his mother’s jewellery.
He remembers dancing hand in hand with Cadmus when their bones were worn enough to click with every movement and they felt light – so light – with that heady madness he would come to associate with Dionysus, and they felt young together, both of them. He had still been dancing off the last of the madness when they’d found Pentheus’ body, scattered for a mile across the mountain. Cadmus had been the one to see it, to gather the limbs, Tiresias in his blindness just following, letting the other lead the way for once. It saddened him. He remembered Pentheus’ threats, his blustering, but he also remembered the little boy who had delighted in his mother’s jewellery, strutting up and down and laughing.
Cadmus grows old and dies. Tiresias just grows old. What he doesn’t tell Cadmus is that he has the gift of extended life, a full seven generations that will wax and wane before his bones are laid in the ground. He lets his daughter lead him home.
He remembers Laius and Jocasta, the way they stood and stared at each other, always apart, never even daring hold hands. If they had a child, it would grow up to curse them all. Of course, they couldn’t stop fate. Tiresias could have told them that. They abandon the baby, leave it to die. If they’d asked Tiresias, he could have told them they couldn’t avoid their destiny as easily as that, but they don’t, and secretly he’s glad. He hates to be the bearer of bad news.
When he tells Oedipus that, he remembers his parents. Of course, Oedipus doesn’t know who he is really. Tiresias has no wish to tell him.
Oedipus curses his sons to fight until death. Creon always respected Tiresias, asks how to avoid this bloodshed. Tiresias’ curse is that he has to give him the answer he wants, the answer he couldn’t possibly want: kill your son. His death will avert the war.
His son dies and the war happens anyway, but Creon is happy enough. He becomes king, with the rest of them dead. But from beyond the grave, those boys return. Return and return, begging both of them to be buried. He warns Creon not to bury Antigone alive. Creon, to his credit, listens. The girl was stony-faced in the face of death. She looked death in the eyes and didn’t look away. When they open the door, her wide dead eyes stare back.
Seven generations of Thebans come and go like shadows dancing out their lives on a wall. He watches them pass without seeing them, knowing their fates without knowing their faces. It’s a lonely life for him, him and his daughter, until she’s snatched away too by the young men come to fight for their father’s names. When he hears there’s a new war to be fought in a place across the sea, he’s almost relieved. He imagines it to be the calm in the middle of the storm.