Chapter Text
Shouts reverberated from where people were throwing spears as far as they could. Others cheered from around them, and all those who weren't at the impromptu competition were playing smaller games by throwing rocks, or sharpening sticks, or racing. One man slipped and laughed, and another standing nearby pulled him back upright.
It hurt to see it.
Everyone celebrating, playing games and shit like all that mattered was fleeting entertainment. The games meant nothing. Nothing compared to the life of their youngest soldier lost. Nothing compared to ... everything else.
It was disrespectful, really—to leave Elpenor’s body rotting in the ground as everyone cheered and partied and celebrated all they didn't deserve. And all Perimedes could do was watch.
And what a fool he had been—and still was—for not having cared enough to watch after Elpenor, and ... just ... done something . Couldn't he just have done something? Maybe if he had stayed a little longer, or convinced Elpenor that the ground was safer, then maybe he would have done something !
Someone sat down next to him on the little sodden bench, and almost automatically, Perimedes shifted to the side to make room. Then felt self-conscious, but did it even matter?
“I'm going to miss him,” said the person, and almost immediately Perimedes recognized him as Eurylochus. Nobody else really had that warm, commanding timbre. “Didn't really know him until recently, but he seemed nice. Agreeable and shit.”
Perimedes nodded, almost subconsciously. “Yeah, he was,” he said softly. He thought back to Elpenor’s stories, light chatter, kind nudges and all. He hadn't quite known how much Elpenor had changed him until he was gone, huh?
He wasn't going to mope—or worse, cry. Right? He could close his heart again. Sew up the hole and pretend it had never been there in the first place.
All he had to do first was forget what it felt like to live.
To breathe. To let himself talk a little about the past, the present, the future. To listen to dramatic tales taller than the oceans were broad.
Fuck.
He stared down at the decorated armor and wooden oar by the open grave. It was odd to be sitting so close to such a stark reminder of death that he almost felt some morbid giddiness bubble up inside his chest. Or maybe that was the empty loneliness, but who was he to say?
And all of a sudden he was talking. When had he begun talking?
“He used reasoning yet still knew how to understand emotion. Knew how to take risks. Was the most mature I'd ever known, even though he's the youngest on the ships, though when I first met him I'd had no idea of it. Told good stories, too, and he'd have been even greater if he'd just ...” Perimedes paused. Swallowed. Couldn't talk. He just sat there, staring at the hole in the ground, angry and frustrated.
Eurylochus just listened. Seemed as if he didn't quite know how to react—if he should be trying to be comforting, or if he should just listen, or maybe something else.
Finally he opened his mouth to respond. “He didn't deserve it.” As if Perimedes didn't already know that, but it was nice to hear someone else say it. “At least some of the others got deaths of glory, huh? But it's fitting that he didn't die in battle. He didn't seem like the type to start fights, yeah?”
“Right,” murmured Perimedes, desperately keeping sentiment out of his voice. The anger was gone already, and all that was left was a growing pool of regret.
Eurylochus just listened and stayed.
Thanks for being here, Perimedes wanted to say. Maybe. It’s not your burden to listen to me, he added in his head. Out loud he said nothing.
When Eurylochus was gone it really hit him.
It was the last time Perimedes would see Elpenor ever again, and it was just his decorated body. Or maybe they would meet each other in the Underworld. With his luck, he could never be quite sure.
Because now that he was to be buried, Elpenor would be able to cross the River Styx and reside on the other side of the waters. Probably in the Asphodel Meadows—he reckoned Elpenor hadn't done anything too bad, right?
If he was lucky, he might make it onto land again and be buried. And then he'd be there, too.
If he was lucky.
And then all of a sudden he couldn't contain himself, a grown man turned to a child yet again as he fully realized he was at his friend’s funeral. Best and only true friend. Or something like that.
And it hurt inside, and his heart beat hard like it was empty and gasping for life, and Perimedes finally knew what it was like to fall apart for someone. When it had been his family and neighbors back in Ithaca, it had been a cold nothing that had settled in his stomach and sunk in until it began to rot. When it had been Trojan soldiers, out of the battlefields in front of the gates of Ilion, it had been a quiet dread that wrapped its arms around him like a drunken lover. When it had been everyone else on the ships, drowned by Poseidon’s wrath, it had been one part guilt and another part anxiety, for some reason.
And now all of it was crashing down on his head.
“You fucking idiot,” sobbed Perimedes as he clutched Elpenor’s old helmet. He wasn't quite sure whom he was saying it to. Maybe both of them. Elpenor for going and getting himself killed after all of this. Himself for letting it happen.
Was he on the floor now? He was kneeling on the ground, knees aching from the gravel pressed into his skin, hands shaking just a little. “Damn it, if only ...” He didn't dare finish that sentence. His cracked heart just wouldn't let him.
He sat there a while, refusing to look at his own reflection in the warped metal of the armor and chest forever aching in the light of the dying fire.