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Elysium is a quiet place. Patroclus has spent longer here than he spent breathing by far – has no doubt passed decades in this sheltered glade by the Lethe, and he still finds the tranquility discomfiting. Even in his relatively peaceful youth he was used to noise; squealing boys and the roar of the sea and harsh bird cries. Everything in Elysium is soft. The wind whistles through ever-green leaves and low hanging fruit. Pink butterflies flap by, land gently on Patroclus’ limbs before hovering away to other perfect, temperate clearings. The Lethe wisps past, as tempting as air to a hanged man.
Patroclus cannot stand it. He fills the quiet. Talks to himself.
At first it made Patroclus cringe to hear his own voice in the vacuum. It still does if he thinks too hard about it. Granted an eternity in paradise only to squander it, a rambling old mad man wilted on the riverbank like a waterlily. He scolds the grass, reminisces with the columns, speaks words of adoration to the stone steps. Do the silk banners remember that summer with the rainstorm that lasted for what seemed like a whole season, that alcove in the forest? Do the flowers regret leaving him with no other option than to adopt their likeness and bleed? Has everlasting glory made the blue-green sky happy?
In his lifetime, Patroclus had enjoyed speaking to himself – had done so whilst polishing armor, whilst sharpening swords, whilst tending to unconscious comrades. He hadn’t minded solitude, preferring only a few people’s company to his own. Preferring one man’s company in particular.
Now all Patroclus has is solitude. Forever. He sees no point in befriending the ghosts of killers and even less point in fighting them for sport. He has his clearing. He is nothing if not well-rested.
And the Lethe streams past, as tempting as air to a hanged man.
One day Hector passes through. Elysium is large and sparsely populated, but eternity is a long time to traverse one realm, and it isn’t as if Patroclus is a very fortunate shade. He had deduced someone with whom he shared a less than savoury past would walk by one day. Several had already, in fact, simply shuffling onward upon meeting Patroclus’ blank, stony gaze. Unsurprisingly, Hector is no such coward.
Really, he’s just glad it isn’t Sarpedon. Hector is in the more awkward position here, being in Patroclus’ glade, having been the one to gut him like a fish.
Hector is a good and honourable man. Patroclus has never doubted as much. He sits beside Patroclus and apologises. Assures him he fought bravely, magnificently, that day on the plains of Troy. Admits his own folly. Calls the fight what it was: unfair. Mentions his son’s name – Astyanax – in a choked voice. Patroclus is magnanimous, pleasant even. If Patroclus has no room for friendship, he has less for anger, and he never felt much ire towards Hector in the first place. He offers Hector one of the strange wares he keeps stashed inside his cloak, and then a fat fig. Hector politely declines both.
“I should have listened to you,” he declares, forlorn.
“Words I’ve longed to hear from many,” Patroclus nods. He would not vindicate his murderer in this one regard. “You sealed your own death warrant. I said as much. Should’ve let a crony do it,”
“We heard his screams from the walls. That was when I knew you had been right,”
“How flattering,” Patroclus sniffs. He picks at a bunch of grass by his knee that immediately regrows in abundance. It is a childish gesture, done to avoid eye contact. He resolutely does not want to discuss this. It is all he wants to talk about.
(They had heard his screams from the walls.)
“He really isn’t here? I had presumed he had simply been avoiding me and…well, for fair reason. I was not exactly eager to meet him. But if he isn’t with you…if he isn’t here then who…?” Hector trails off.
“Then who can hope to be, hm?”
Hector gulps.
“To lock him out of all people…Aristos Achaion, they called him.”
“Oh, gods, I’m aware.” sighs Patroclus, rolling his eyes. Hector smiles at that, small and sad. Then Patroclus asks, “What happened? When Achilles came for you?” because it is inevitable that he asks that. Patroclus has blanks to fill. Hector has guilt to be absolved. The questions bubble out of Patroclus, desperate compared to the measured, toneless way he had been addressing Hector before them. He tells himself it is a kindness to them both that he asks, that he gets it over with. He almost feels brave saying Achilles’ name aloud, after so long.
Then he feels incredibly foolish. How humiliating; Patroclus, once the second greatest of the myrmidons, frightened to speak his beloved’s name.
The pair remain silent for a long time, Hector running a hand along his tightly clenched jaw. He too speaks in a calm and measured voice.
“He killed so many the river Scamander ran red. He ended up fighting the god that resides there, for he had nearly drowned him with corpses. He emerged victorious. And…and after finding and killing me he…he tied me to the back of his chariot and dragged me around the city limits for days, ‘til the flesh was worn from my face.” Hector purses his lips. “My father told me of the last bit.” Hector does not pick at the grass, does not slouch into the riverbank, does not mutter to himself. He looks Patroclus dead in the eyes, mouth pressed into a grim line. “I was not a fearful man, Patroclus, but he terrified me that day. He had the look of a wounded animal about him. Like he would sink his teeth into me if he could,”
Patroclus has nothing to prove anymore, least of all to Hector. He weeps.
He takes a mouthful from the Lethe after Hector leaves. It’s foolish really – Patroclus knows from past experience he has no control over what he forgets. Undoubtedly, he’s blunted some precious memory to a dull point in this futile endeavour. He will only realise in a decade or a century’s time when he reaches for said memory and finds, if not nothing, then close to nothing. But Patroclus can’t help himself. He wants rid of it, all that Hector told him: the spear to the throat, the river choked with gore, the image of Achilles’ beautiful hair caked with blood. And the rumours the Trojans had heard - that Achilles had refused to let go of Patroclus’ limp, oversized corpse even as it began to stink. Had kissed at his cold lips. Muttered to himself, just like a mad man. The images stay, a leech on Patroclus’ thoughts.
(I’ve heard from your fellow Greeks here that when he saw your body, he tried to slash his own throat.)
He takes another sip, just in case.
One day, or else night, Odysseus walks through the glade too. Thankfully it is as Patroclus dozes in a heap and not as he ponders the cruelty of the gods aloud. He has nothing left to prove to anyone, but does retain an ounce of dignity.
Odysseus makes eye contact with Patroclus for what seems like an eternity, before inclining his head mildly. He is older, far older, but his gaze remains as dark and astute as it was at Troy. Something hot bubbles in Patroclus’ chest as he realises. Odysseus is wrinkled. He connived his way out of Troy, in the end, and managed to live some sort of long and heroic life. Of course he had. It’s almost laughable. Patroclus has sworn off fighting in the afterlife, but if he’s honest, if he had his spear on him right now, if there was any sharp object in his general vicinity…
He wonders if one can truly feel pain in Elysium, or if the exalteds’ swords merely tickle each other before the Styx swallows them whole to be spat back out again. If it’s the former, Patroclus thinks he would like to jab an arrow through Odysseus’ heel and watch the spectacular ways his face would contort at the sensation. He thinks of the cliffs of Skyros, the way a peplos sits on broad shoulders, the type of idiotic promises people make in their youth.
We will each swear our loyalty to Menelaus.
I will follow you wherever you go.
I will do what you ask of me Mother.
Let’s play this game fairly, Cly.
The rage dissipates.
It’s as pointless here as it ever was. As Odysseus skulks past – and didn’t he always do that, weren’t his movements in life always akin to skulking – Patroclus wonders if he ever returned to his beloved wife. The stone door opens and closes without fanfare. Odysseus is gone.
Incorrigible schemers. Trojan princes. Minotaurs, according to rumour. All apparently more heroic than his Achilles. Promised a short life, promised pain and endless grief, in exchange for an immortal name and a place where Patroclus sat.
There are no nightmares in Elysium. Sleep comes blessedly easy and is always dark, or else sweet beyond measure; he dreams of the dark fall of Briseis’ hair, Chiron’s stern, steady voice echoing amidst trees, Achilles’ lips against his neck in their cot. The visions are so vivid as to taunt him. Patroclus wakes from one of these dreams only to realise he cannot properly remember what Achilles’ hands felt like on his waist – can presume that they were calloused, that they were warm, that they were heavy, but no. Patroclus cannot recall the exact sensation. He remembers a neat pink scar existed but cannot remember where. On his thumb? On the heel of his palm? It is useless. It is shameful. What does he care for Achilles’ hands? Hands he did not put to good use in Patroclus’ final months of life. Hands he used to butcher and steal for the sake glory, in the name of a king they both loathed. Hands Patroclus kissed reverently for years for no good reason.
There are no nightmares in Elysium. Patroclus spends what must be months thinking of that scar.
At some point he grows used to the quiet. Perhaps the distant echoes of the arena – now packed with souls dying to see that moronic Theseus and his strange companion – were disruption just enough, raucous white noise of sorts. Patroclus still speaks to himself, but nowadays does it to keep the memories alive. He knows even without desperate sips from the River Lethe a shade can fade. Patroclus has little vitality and finds no joy in recounting his time at war to any soul that will listen, unlike many of the exalted. Shades are no more than memory substantiated. Without it, their edges blur. He needs to keep himself sharp, remind himself of his life, of his feelings, of his beliefs, lest he fade to nothingness.
This is what he tells himself as he rips the petals from a beautiful iris flower and lets it know that always, always, you chose your own pride over me. Chose the vague prospect of glory over my flesh and blood. I came, almost, to expect nothing less. Where are you now? What have you done now? Or have the fates finally, truly forsaken us so? Are you to be the gods’ plaything forever, even in death? Do you simply hide from me? I grow tired waiting here, waiting like you did in that damn tent…
Ideally the iris would answer petulantly. Patroclus isn’t sure what exactly it would say.
When they were boys, when Patroclus’ beard had not quite begun to grow in and Achilles still had a penchant for scaling trees, he had told Patroclus he originally dreaded the idea of having a liege. Patroclus, once a prince himself, thought he might feel similarly in Achilles’ position. He had disliked the constraints and expectations of his station back in Opus, the way servants had refused to meet his eye and other children would avoid him out of fear. Perhaps rightfully so, it turned out. Nonetheless, the concept of a liege sounded awfully stifling to Patroclus. But Achilles wasn’t like him. Achilles enjoyed awe-filled stares and high expectations and the subservience of others. He accepted his status as one accepts a deserved compliment. There were rumours the boy was half-nereid, for gods’ sake. Surely to Achilles, a liege was just another part of the equation of his birth. Patroclus said as much to Achilles one afternoon as they sat by the sea.
“They told me you had killed that boy before you came,” Achilles explained simply, spitting an olive pit out of the corner of his mouth.
Patroclus scowled at this. Inside his heart was seized with dread. He was aware Achilles knew of his sins – everyone knew, how couldn’t they? – but he still disliked being jumped with the knowledge out of nowhere. Especially so flippantly. And he disliked where this conversation was headed. Who wanted to be around a murderer? No one. Achilles had not been an exception. He hadn’t wanted some murderous child to serve him. This was not something Patroclus had to be informed of. The knowledge plagued his thoughts every night.
“That boy was called Clysonymus,” he mumbled. Achilles pursed his lips together.
“Right. Clysonymus. Sorry. Well, knowing that, I wasn’t looking forward to your company,”
“Of course you weren’t.”
“Hm. Not for the reasons you’re expecting. It was an accident, Pat, everyone knows that. You were only little. I just presumed after something so grim…well, I feared you would be a very sullen and unpleasant companion – or else…”
“Or else what?”
“Or else completely nuts.” Achilles grinned guiltily at that confession. It was so honest it startled a puff of laughter out of Patroclus. “You know, miserable and chatting to your own reflection or something. But you are not like that at all. You arrived and seemed so calm and thoughtful, I almost felt guilty.”
“You felt guilty in my presence?”
“You said a lot of things that made me think I ought to read more,”
“I still do, let’s be honest,” Patroclus snorted, blinking up at the sun. When he looked back down Achilles’ was staring at him so fondly it was almost uncomfortable.
“You made me laugh. I liked that too.” Achilles popped another olive into his mouth and Patroclus averted his gaze, cheeks warm. “I’m glad you’re here Pat. You’re my best friend. And probably saner than me, it must be said, despite all my fears,”
Patroclus chucked a seashell at him.
It seems Achilles had him figured out from the start. Here Patroclus is. Sullen and unpleasant and completely nuts forever, a restless soul rambling to a crumpled flower. Still, he is determined to keep his memories of days like that abound - if only to note the irony of his circumstances.
By now Patroclus is quite certain he will never see Achilles again. Eases his pain with the knowledge he has the rest of time to become accustomed to the absence. He has always existed as his own man, separate from Achilles, despite what some may say. Things will remain that way, however sorrowful an existence it might be.
Sometimes he watches certain souls hover through his clearing, the ones without voices or edges or concrete features. They always look so peaceful.
Patroclus likes the boy almost as much as he doubts him.
It is hard not to like him. The first time Patroclus saw Zagreus he had approached the enormous bronze statue in the corner of the meadow and smashed every ceramic pot surrounding it to pieces. Then he had scooped golden obols off the floor whilst grinning, expression oozing surprised joy. He hadn’t known the urns were filled with money. He’d simply swung. Blood was dripping down his forehead. He called Patroclus sir, and ignored any obvious vitriol Patroclus directed toward him. Yes, Patroclus liked Zagreus. Gave him a pick of the wares in his cloak, items he had snatched from souls that bothered him during his rest. You slew me on the plains of Troy, they would say. And Patroclus would say I slew many on the plains of Troy. Please be more specific. Next thing you know a ghost would try to skewer him. It was a rare occurrence and still somehow managed to be tedious. Patroclus has sworn off fighting in the afterlife, but he’s not about to let any old faceless beggar with a spear and bit of royal lineage interrupt his brooding.
Finally, he feels as if those encounters have a point – he always has a Kiss of Styx to offer up to the young prince of the underworld, or else a fistful of cyclops jerky. It’s irritating, sometimes, being so abruptly interrupted, especially when Zagreus is feeling particularly interrogative. Mostly he doesn’t mind though. Even if it’s impossible, he wants Zagreus to escape. He likes Zagreus’ questionable confidence. He has missed noise and stupid young men.
Then Zagreus says: “You know Achilles, don’t you, sir?” and ruins everything.
Patroclus blinks at the question, unimpressed. In truth he is close to screaming. He did not scream often in life and has never screamed in death, but he’s just – he’s getting rather sick of this. Everything comes back to that man no matter what. He can’t have one thing to himself, not even this bizarre god and his mission. Achilles follows Patroclus around like a curse. This is yet another reminder that he and Achilles are so entwined disentanglement is impossible.
And yet the words Zagreus says are so sweet: he longs for you. He misses you. I have reunited wayward souls before.
Just when Patroclus has resigned himself to eternal absence, he is offered hope by a god. It is familiar. It is torturous.
It’s not surprising either, really. That’s what makes it twice as frustrating. It’s probably why Patroclus is fond of the prince. So much about him echoes Achilles; the manner in which he grips his weapons, the restless twitching of his right leg, the lazy way he scans a room. Patroclus almost feels foolish not working it out sooner. But it is just so absurd. Achilles, in Tartarus? Achilles guarding Hades himself? Achilles assisting Hades’ son in breaking out of the underworld?
But then, this makes sense too. Of course the gods pick the most famous mortals to serve them. Of course Achilles would oblige their requests. Impressing gods had always seemed to be one of his top priorities, no matter how much Patroclus protested. A cold anger trickles over him.
“We have nothing more to say to one another.”
The bitter words ring hollow even to his own ears. Zagreus takes his cyclops jerky and leaves, hazarding a worried glance back at Patroclus before the stone door closes behind him.
This is worse than not knowing, Patroclus thinks. Now Achilles feels close enough to touch even as he remains unfathomably far away.
During his next visit to Elysium Zagreus tells him about the deal proper. Swapped their places. Was for the best. Achilles had feared his anger and wanted to appease him. Felt Patroclus had always been more deserving of a place in Elysium. Patroclus nods apathetically at the information, gazes nowhere in particular. When Zagreus leaves the glade – not before sighing a few times – Patroclus breaks. He claws at his own arms as if to draw blood, though he knows it’s impossible. He tugs at the roots of his dark, curling hair. It turns out shades do in fact feel pain, but it is a dull approximation of the keen and sharp wounds Patroclus knew when breathing.
Brash and headstrong Achilles deciding their fate. Patroclus following along, helpless. They are trapped in the same foolish cycle for all eternity.
You idiot. How could you do this?
He says the words over and over again, until even the Lethe stops listening.
Sometimes Patroclus cannot help it. He yearns more than he seethes.
“Stranger, tell me: how is he?”
Zagreus’ eyes glint at the words. He is not used to Patroclus asking the questions.
“Achilles, you mean?”
“Who else?” Patroclus scowls. The prince can be astoundingly dense sometimes, or else, pretends to be. “What’s he like now? How…how does he spend his days?” Zagreus opens his mouth to protest. “Or nights. Whatever it is.”
The god shifts his weight between two burning feet.
“He’s…well, I’ve told you, sir. Achilles taught me everything I know. Since I was a young child he trained me in combat, although I suppose even as a child I was much older than him by a few millennia. He doesn’t train me much now, of course. Spends nearly all his time guarding the West Wing of the House of Hades, that’s his primary post. It’s a dull job, but I can only guess that’s because no one is fool enough to even try to cross Achilles. He’s a kind man. Calming to be around. The shades that pass through the House tend to like him– though Hypnos isn’t the quickest at processing souls, so for a very long while Achilles had, uh, been the one that killed a lot of them. That, yeah, that caused some trouble…”
Patroclus tries not to gawk. It is not the last part that surprises him.
“Calming, you said?”
“Yes. He’s always been a wise teacher.”
“Achilles. Calming? Wise?”
“Well, I…you asked, sir, I just...”
Zagreus scratches the back of his neck, unsure. Patroclus scores his faces back into a passive mask. Shades have no need for bodily fluids of any sort, but he swears his mouth has gone dry. His Achilles, calm. As when he would strum his lyre for Patroclus on warm summer evenings. As when they would wander the span of Mount Pelion searching for wild berries. As when Achilles would sprawl out before their cot mending a leather chest piece – he would peer up and smile so softly it made Patroclus forget, if only for a moment, about all the blood caked beneath their nails.
Before Patroclus’ death those moments of calm had seemed like far off fantasies. Achilles’ anger rose so near to the surface in those last years of war that to converse with him was akin to conversing with hot iron. War had done terrible things to his beloved. Upon hearing of what he had done to Hector, Patroclus feared Ares had broken him irreparably. To think of him as he had once been…
“Does he have friends? Companions?” Patroclus’ voice is quiet with thought.
“Like I said, he’s very dedicated to his work. But I think Nyx, my mother – well, sort of mother, it’s a thing don’t - well, Nyx is fond of him. They talk from time to time. And we aren’t meant to have drink in the House, but I’ve seen him having nectar with Megaera on their breaks. I think they get on pretty well. Respect for each other as warriors and all that,”
“Megaera?” Patroclus blinks. “Of the Erinyes?”
“Yes. My ex-girlfriend actually,” Zagreus seems to bristle at Patroclus’ tone. “Meg’s really nice when you get to know her. She’s a bit of a workaholic too, mind you, might be part of why they’re friends.”
Patroclus cannot help it; he laughs. Throws his head back with it. It might be the most he has laughed since dying. Zagreus stares at him as if he’s sprouted another head. The young god had probably not thought him capable of such acts.
“Sir?”
“Achilles is illicit drinking buddies with one of the furies of hell. Yes, yes, that sounds more like him,”
Zagreus grins. Patroclus’ chuckles taper off, and the clearing returns to eerie tranquility. The prince’s smile falters at the silence.
“He is sad, sir. Always. Terribly so. I never noticed as a child. But you can see it in his eyes. Like part of him is missing.”
Patroclus’ smile falters too. His gaze strays to the gushing waters of the Lethe.
“Pick your wares, stranger. I won’t keep you any longer,”
Zagreus’ tilts his head. It’s a pitying gesture Patroclus has no time for. He bids the boy adieu and returns to idly weaving pieces of grass together
He thinks the worst part is the tone Zagreus used. Like it was simple fact. Like the denizens of the underworld knew of Achilles’ sadness as they knew of darkness and death. Here is Hypnos, sleep incarnate. Here is Nyx, maker of night. Here is Achilles, half-empty - he made a bad deal, don’t you know.
Patroclus has spent so long wanting to punish Achilles. It is a foreign sensation when he begins muttering words of comfort to the glade.
Ten years of war makes you distrust poets and gods alike.
Hope is the most painful of all feelings. A sentiment repeated throughout much of the literature Patroclus consumed during his short life. He understood it. The prospect of future happiness makes eventual desolation worse.
Oh, but Patroclus is a soldier, and as such he knows the most painful of all feelings is a spear to the liver. A close second is the utter numbness that comes with knowing someone you love is determined to die young and bloodily. There was no hope to be found in Troy. Every sweet touch between him and Achilles, every rare moment of playful reprieve, every game of dice was tainted by the inevitable. Achilles saw Patroclus’ gloom and took to reassuring him constantly – was he not peerless in battle? Was Hector not far from his blade? Would they not be heroes amongst heroes after all this, just as promised? He would say all this with a guileless smile. Some part of him really believed they would emerge from the war victorious. But that made no difference.
Achilles had come to Troy to die. Patroclus had followed to watch.
At least Patroclus hadn’t actually had to watch, in the end. It’s a shallow sentiment, he knows, but it’s one of the few comforts he’s taken with him into Elysium. It’s partly why he drank from Lethe after all Hector told him. The vision of his bold and beautiful Achilles taken out by that coward Paris, high in his tower, was too pathetic to contemplate.
Still, he doesn’t think he would have erupted into any spectacular or mythic rages at the sight of a dead Achilles. The terrible truth is he doesn’t know what he would have done. Gentle Patroclus, great tactician, peer to gods in counsel, left clueless.
Maybe he would have brutally avenged Achilles, and mourned for years, and recovered, and married a pretty girl. Maybe he would have gone to the banks of the river Scamander to rot. Maybe he’d have taken a sword to his throat and no one would have stopped him.
Alas, he never got to find out. Patroclus was his beloved’s undoing, because the Fates were determined to concoct a scenario so cruel that no mortal could have imagined it. They would always die horribly, and always be separate in death.
Or so it had seemed, for too long to reasonably count.
Gods, he would have given anything for hope in those days. Anything.
“Tell him to risk it all,” Patroclus says, finally. He stares into the prince’s mismatched eyes with that same stony gaze that has driven shades away from his clearing for aeons. The prince recognises the expression for what it is – not emptiness, or resentment, but sad perseverance. Patroclus remembers because he still can. He speaks because he still can. It is enough.
Zagreus nods at the request, lips pressed into a determined line.
No, hope is not a painful feeling. It's light and pleasant. It is all Patroclus has left.
Still, it is hard in those last few days. Or nights. However time works in Elysium. Patroclus does not trust gods. He will always trust Achilles, as the tides trust the moon, but he knows better than to think that a good thing.
He is more numb than usual.
And, like always, the Lethe streams past, as tempting as air to a hanged man.
Patroclus speaks to himself.
Won’t you be here? He asks. He asks it in a thousand different ways, in a thousand different words, but the meaning is always clear.
He receives no warning beforehand. The heavy door to the meadow opens. Patroclus barely glances upward at the noise, presuming it to be some silent, wayward shade or else Zagreus ready to cripple some ceramics.
Footsteps shift towards him. A spear scrapes against stone. And then he knows. Patroclus is sure he could die a million times and drink the whole Lethe and die again and he would recognise those sounds, those movements, that easy, certain gait.
“Achilles?” He breathes.
And his Achilles, his beloved, he falls to his knees and crawls to him. Presses his forehead to Patroclus’ shins like a suppliant, and grips at the folds of his chiton as though he might disappear. He says his name over and over, muffled and husky and disbelieving. Patroclus. Patroclus. Patroclus. Yes, Patroclus.
Achilles never bowed to anyone like this in life. It is a strange enough sight to make Patroclus wonder if he’s only dreaming again, but then, of course he isn’t. He could not picture Achilles this well, so solid and real.
This idea might have pleased him once, the sight of Achilles groveling, but the reality of it only hurts his heart.
“Stop that,” he runs his hands through Achilles’ hair, shorter than when Patroclus had left him, lanker, yet still golden as sun. “Stop, let neither of us do this anymore. Just be with me Achilles,”
Achilles clambers closer, settling himself in Patroclus’ lap before wrapping his arms tightly around Patroclus’ waist, his hands warm and heavy. It’s like he would climb into Patroclus’ rib cage and take the place of his heart if he could. Patroclus feels similarly. Holding Achilles after so long, being held by Achilles after so long; it is bliss, plain and simple.
The press of Achilles’ lips to his forehead is so surreal Patroclus feels faint.
“Are you here?” He wonders, because he cannot be sure.
“I’m here, Pat. I’m here.”
Achilles kisses his eyelids, and his cheeks, and his collarbone too. He says: Patroclus, I love you. I missed you. I love you.
And in return Patroclus seizes Achille’s face in both hands, traces his cheekbones with calloused thumbs, says: You…you seem older.
To anyone else, it is a benign observation, but they both know it to be a blessing beyond words. Achilles, older, in Patroclus’ arms. It's heaven.
“Must you leave again so soon?” Patroclus sighs through his nose.
“Aye, unless you want to incur the wrath of Lord Hades himself,”
Patroclus shrugs lazily, stretching himself out further on the grass.
“Can’t be worse than Chiron, surely?”
Achilles laughs. Patroclus uses the laughter as an opportunity to kiss at the underside of his jaw. Frankly it’s rather chaste, but Achilles turns red nonetheless.
“Pat…” he wriggles where he sits, pushing Patroclus’ wandering hand off his thigh with a wry grin.
“You blush like a young maiden now, Achilles. Scarlet at the very slightest of touches…” He punctuates the last statement by tracing a fingernail along Achilles’ forearm.
“I’m not used to it. How will I ever get used to this again?”
They kiss again. For a while. It does not escape them that they behave like lovestruck youths. It tickles Patroclus and embarrasses Achilles deeply. He is already witness to Prince Zagreus’ bumbling attempts at romance everyday in the House – to relive it again during their time together is doubly mortifying
Oh, but Achilles loves it really. He cannot go a moment without touching some part of Patroclus’ bare skin, and he talks of the Prince’s love life like a maid gossiping about her employer, not a fallen warrior discussing a god’s courtship of Death.
Well, they’ve been friends since they were children so neither will move an inch. I want to seize the lad by the neck and force him to say something! Gods, Pat, it’s like watching us back on Mount Pelion in some awful, dim mirror.
“How will you keep yourself entertained in my absence?” Achilles huffs as he stands to straighten his chiton.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Patroclus stands too, not bothering to fix his clothes. “Harass kind strangers, talk to myself, the usual,”
“Of course, of course,” Achilles nods easily. But Patroclus sees the ghost of a grimace on his beloved’s face. He ought not to be so flippant he supposes. Patroclus never likes to send Achilles back to the House of Hades with any doubt in his mind. They have infinite time to argue and to mourn and to reconcile during visits. Goodbyes are for sweet words and gentle reminders. Patroclus grabs Achilles’ hand.
“I only kid. I am going to search for some wood I can use for carvings. There should be some in a grove east of the arena,” Achilles’ expression relaxes in a way that might be inscrutable to anyone but Patroclus. Softly, he turns Achilles’ palm over in his hand. There it is: the harsh pink mark, stretching from the knuckle of his index finger to the base of his wrist. “I had forgotten about this scar,” He looks up at Achilles with a melancholy smile. For a second, Achilles’ gaze strays to the Lethe. Then he looks back, entwining their hands so completely it seems there is no possibility of disentanglement.
His eyes twinkle like sunlight on the sea.
“I will have to tell you all about how I got it then, when I return.”