Work Text:
Why is the moon so bright?
Why are you so nice?
See you alone at the Walgreens at night
I used to think that you'd always return
to your woman-in-waiting
My love belongs to no one
And just about the only thing left is a lie
I wonder where you are
Then I wonder again
Devendra Banhart - Middle Names
Achilles and Zagreus lie next to each other, one arm furled around a shoulder hunching in, the smaller demigod curling up on the warrior shade as the light chill of the surface seeps into the underground chamber. It is very early morning, and they are only just waking up.
“Zagreus,” says Achilles, under his breath, overtaken by that old tenderness when he feels the boy nuzzle his messy black hair into his side. Some things had changed, some hadn’t. He and Zagreus don’t make it a habit to lament what has gone. It’s a bit difficult to, all things considered.
Zagreus hums in response, voice husky with the remnants of sleep and lilting up at the end as he lifts his gaze to his mentor. Both of them reek, a little. One grimy, unwashed demigod and a shade whose most poignant memories are largely of sweat. Real smell and spirit smell, intermingling.
The older man takes a finger, runs it down his temple, down the side of his warm face, then to where his throat meets his jaw, rests there a little.
Zagreus was in trouble, not too long ago. Something terrible—not the usual mischief of a restless princeling who had grown too big for familiar corridors. He hardly had that reason to misbehave now, anyway, since the eased tensions between his family and the Olympians meant he was welcome to visit the surface, for as long as his chthonic constitution allowed. Zagreus had only been too happy to take the opportunity. He loves the fresh air, especially. Finds something comforting about its crispness, the way it hits him full in the face as soon as he breaks through the gate.
There was this person out there. Man or woman—Achilles did not know, and did not try to find out. He only knew the human being had been an adult. No prior relationship with Zagreus, absolutely no indication that they had even known of each other at all. The person had not seemed evil or even guilty of any particular crime. Zagreus took it upon himself to destroy their life.
The news took everybody in the Underworld by surprise.
As the space around them breathes its emptiness into his mind, Achilles’ thoughts wander back to this subject over and over again. Occasionally, he presses his lips to Zagreus’ head with an absentminded tenderness, feels the boy grunt and fidget as he tries to burrow into his side a little more or shove Achilles an extra inch of blanket. It’s not like the shade needs it. But Zagreus is sweet like that. He had always been so sweet.
“If it’s alright for me to ask, lad,” The words escape Achilles as if bearing some strange animus of their own. “Why did you do it…? That person, living in the town you liked to visit. On the surface. Why did you do that to them?”
Zagreus stiffens in his embrace ever so briefly, takes his time to reply.
“I don’t know.”
“Surely there was some sort of reason.” Achilles sometimes has to take care to keep his tone gentle with his charge—gods know how the boy can test him. But this time the gentleness comes naturally.
When Zagreus elaborates a little further, his gaze is distant, the hand he places on Achilles’ chest soft in the way its fingers half-curl. He does not mention places where he should, does not talk about color, light, smell, and sound the way he loves to. All emerges as fragments of something that, even at its most whole, was only ever half-solid.
“I think it was when, I saw her standing there. With what I think, who I think was her family. One mum, dad, brother or sister maybe, and a dog. Nice, sort of. Standing there. They were smiling and talking, laughing. Some food on the table. Fruits, some honey and nuts, really nice stuff.”
Achilles nods such that Zagreus can feel his gesture, and waits for him to keep talking.
“They were smiling and talking a lot, I think. One of them said something, can’t remember, something about somebody getting married, maybe a cousin or a friend or a sibling. Happy thing. ‘Happy for them’, one of them said, I think. They were talking about the feast they were going to have. The dad turned to mum and then his child and said, something like, ‘Well if they live a life anything like ours I’d consider them truly blessed by the gods.’ Something like that.”
Zagreus peters out, and then it doesn’t really look like he’s going to say much more. Achilles remembers Hermes, wild-eyed and so harried he looked entirely unlike himself, bursting in upon the threshold of the House. Muttering and spluttering about how they were not even able to recover all the pieces of the family’s bodies. That it was the sort of sight to make even immortal blood curdle, and good thing Lord Ares wasn’t there, or he would’ve had something really tasteless to say. The heads, severed and disfigured, had been arranged neatly on the table with the meal, surrounded by a ring of fruits and nuts. A flower, presumably plucked from one of the nearby shrubs, had been placed rather facetiously on one of the heads as garnish. A springtime bloom, come in fresh with the beginning of the season.
The old Achilles, the one who lived and slaughtered and gloated, might have found such a thing amusing. The shade of Achilles merely contemplated it at the time.
“I see. Thank you for sharing that with me, lad.” The hand at Zagreus’ throat finds its way up to his hair, where it massages and strokes his head with a soft, almost languid rhythm. Zagreus murmurs something indistinct and stretches into his touch, like some sort of animal.
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me…? Before we pack up, and move on.” It has to be Achilles who breaks the silence—it feels too poised to solidify around them, trapping them in this room, this time, forever. “Is there anything…?”
Zagreus’ eyes are carefully blank.
“No, I think that’s all I have to say.”
He pushes Achilles’ hand away, as softly as he can.
“Thanks for asking.”