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Chiron stands at the peak of a hill, still like the silence that surrounds him. The wind blows, swirling up forgotten twigs and newspapers that surely none of his students have read. In the late autumn weather, the scattered yellow and orange blankets coat the paths into the forest, where the dryads are preparing for the winter. The leaves shuffle and swirl like the discuses and volleyballs the demigods throw across the camp, leaving their loud yells echoing through the valley.
He stares at the grassy hill before him, a vast grassy expanse with a lone pine tree, a golden shimmer dusting the barrier between their camp and the outside world. The fleece draped across one of the branches sways with the cold chill—incoming onslaught of winter. It’s not like before, when they would have to weather the cold inside the cave on Mount Pelion, stacking the furs and not moving from their blankets, waiting for the snow to subside. Chiron doesn’t miss it. Here it’s a moderate temperature year-round. Thank the gods for climate control.
He had a reason to be here—but if there’s something you learn through millennia of life, it’s that you can take time. There’s no need to rus—
Chiron’s train of thought is interrupted when he sees the barest glimpse of gleaming blonde hair nestling against the shoulder of a dark-haired shorter boy. It looks like they’re unaware of his presence. They lean on each other, watching the sunset from their spot on the hill. It feels like the world makes way for them, the warmth of sunshine and the chill of death settling into his bones, polar opposites that feel right when the powers of the gods ripple from them like tidal waves.
He sees them, the way they lean into each other, throwing their heads back in laughter when one of them whispers something into the other’s ear. He can hear their laughter carry on the wind, echoes of a long-forgotten time.
Is this his chance at last? Is this the sign from the gods that what he lost isn’t too far from him? To say goodbye one final time?
He never did say a proper goodbye to either of them. They left with the winds of change, sudden like an electric shock, and Chiron thought they would come back. Expected they would come back. Through training other heroes, his mind was always on them. Whether they would show up knocking at his cave one day and say, “We’ve returned, Chiron.”
They might have, but their fate denied them so. He wanted to tell them they were men with so much skill, potential, heart—the list was endless. Achilles said he’d come back soon. Soon. The words weighed on Chiron’s mind like they did thousands of years ago. He didn’t realize they were too far gone until too late. Never a proper sendoff. Never a proper goodbye.
He’d thought grief was something that would vanish with time, but here, millennia later, it still carved a hole in his heart, if ever-so-smaller than before. Time didn’t heal scars. It might patch them up, but his scars never healed fully, only were replaced by something else—another hero to train, another one that left—until they came apart again. Chiron still thinks about all the heroes he’s taken under his wing. About how they marched to their deaths, sure in the face of human-ness, of mortality, of the weight that hung above their heads every time they sung their war cries and ran into battle, fighting like they had nothing to lose.
And if that was what it meant to be a brave soul then maybe Chiron didn’t know true bravery, the way it felt, the way it gave birth to the stories everyone heard. But maybe he didn’t need to be a hero. Maybe that wasn’t his fate-given destiny or what he wanted or needed from this world, and he was meant to be the mentor—the reliable one, the person who waited for the demigods he trained to come home. They never did, taking a piece of him until more students came along to add their own pieces to the broken patchwork of his heart.
So if this is the gods-given last chance he has, he’ll take it. “Achilles!”
The blond boy turns, and the dark-haired one turns with him, their soft expressions twisting into surprise.
“Patroclus!” Chiron calls again, quieter this time.
He sees too soon that Patroclus’ fingers are adorned with dull silver rings and chipped black nail polish, his oversized black shirt modern with skulls and daggers.
He sees that Achilles’ hair is much too short, and he isn’t wearing one of the unprincely tunics Chiron had told him to replace infinite times—he never did listen. A free spirit, that one.
He sees the cargo shorts and feels the warring feelings of sunshine and death beating upon him, casting an invisible weight into the depths of his heart. The son of Hades and the son of Apollo. An unlikely pair, but they were perfect for each other, just like Achilles and Patroclus thousands of years ago.
He sees the way they hold each other, just like how he saw a the young heroes he trained intertwine their hands and their fates and their lives thousands of years ago.
“Patroclus?” Will asks with a frown, tugging Nico with him as they trudge their way to the Big House.
Chiron stares wistfully at the sky, averting his gaze from the young men. “Nothing. Just something old. A memory of sorts.”
Nico raises his eyebrow ever-so-slightly, staring up at Chiron like he’s going to say something. Before he can decide, Will pulls on his arm, deciding Chiron needs some space. The centaur watches as he runs to dinner with his young love. He smiles a sad smile, staring over at the chattering demigods. How long will it be before I lose them too? They meet their other friends at the dining pavilion, and waving hands welcome them to the table.
From the distance, Chiron can see only their silhouettes, shadows cast over the gleaming marble. In those shadows he can see a tale of love from long ago, a tale from today, both that he’ll never forget for as long as he lived.
He turns his back on them then, still seeing the shadows they cast and the way he sees his former students’ echoes in them, a distant memory now, but always still as present in his mind as thousands of years ago. He takes a deep breath, pushing the memories away, letting them subside. He shoves them into a box, into a space where nobody will ever see the heartbreak he’s felt in his millennia. He hopes the memories will fade with time, that the pain will become less acute, less sharp. The memories stay there, building up a well of pain and regret for what could have been.
Chiron thinks through the peaceful times, the wartimes, the violence that clouded his days both then and now. Humans never changed. But sometimes, he still wishes to forget, that one day he’ll feel an emptiness in his mind where his memories once were. That the pain could disappear. But it never does.