refusetofight | For @messageforyou

For @messageforyou

The palace at Skyros is only a loose sketch; Achilles dreaming memory can only paint it in sparing detail after so many years. The shapes and colors describe the place as much as Achilles’ emotions: The palace itself is washed out and bland, but the sunny rocks, the glittering sea, and the endless horizon just beyond are vibrant, tantalizing with the lure of fateful heroism.

It felt like a prison after the freedom of his bright, sunny youth on Phthia and his adventures on Mount Pelion. He was bored, impatient, but respected his mother’s wishes even as he resented them.

The dream palace is hollow and quiet. Lycomedes’ table is empty. His daughters’ looms are left abandoned. Achilles imagines the real Skyros must be in the same sorry state; he left Deidamia unwed and Lycomedes had no sons to defend his meager kingdom.

Achilles walks the halls and thumbs the shells encircling his wrist. He has no dream guide this time, but he came here on his own instincts: visit a memory both he and Pyrrhus share. Eventually, he finds an abandoned lyre and settles to play in a central courtyard where plucked notes echo hauntingly between colonnades—the only sound in the palace other than the sigh of the sea.

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“Someone who can’t visit you yet, but still cares about you. It pains me to keep this from you, lad, but I’ve made an oath to a god. I’ll not say more.” It’s the truth and he’s going to use it as a shield against further questions.

“As to the design: they would like anything Galene suggests. Her fine taste pairs well with your careful craftsmanship.”

Having fulfilled his duty to Lyra, Achilles clears his throat and shifts to another matter. He doesn’t consider that it might be equally baffling: “At Athens, you had a vision of your mother … Tell me, have you seen others like it? Anything unusual?”

For a terrifying moment, Achilles wonders if this woman, Ophelia, is the Morrigan in disguise. He makes it a point to ask Hermes to check when he picks up the bracelets.

"An oath to a what?" Neoptolemus says, and the slight wariness and confusion in the air turns to bafflement. What interest would the gods have in him? Is this... maybe an uncle or aunt that Thetis bore and didn't want to introduce him to? Thetis is the only god that any of them can think of who would care about what he does and doesn't know. He knows that Thetis hasn't spoken to him in a while, but the thought that his own grandmother might make his father swear to keep something from him is hurtful. Does she think so little of him? Or dislike him so much that she'd keep him from someone who holds some affection for him? And if she's still in contact with Achilles after his death, why didn't she ever tell him? He didn't think that his grandmother disliked him like that, so much that she'd interfere in his ability to communicate with family.

As the three are trying to muddle through their feelings on this matter, their father moves on to something equally confusing, but less hurtful.

"Visions of Mom?" Pyrrhus says, his confusion clear. "I haven't seen her since Anthesteria. Should I have? Did she say she tried to visit?"

"It's hard to tell if I see something unusual sometimes," Neoptolemus says. He gestures vaguely at his eyes. "My eyesight gets weird when a headache is coming on. Like... people look like they're glowing, or patterns and stars appear around whatever I'm trying to focus on."

The dream twists to show what he means. Bright auras around anything that a person tries to look at, because the aura is embedded in the eye. Rainbows and blind spots and strange geometric patterns like peering through a raw quartz or sketches of lightning bolts. It changes the quality of the world around it, making it indistinct and incomprehensible.

Achilles visibly relaxes. At least the Morrigan hasn’t appeared in that shape. Still, she could be the crone or the maiden, but Achilles doesn’t want to sow more paranoia in Pyrrhus’ suspicious mind.

Still, the Morrigan’s message was clear, and Pyrrhus should know it.

“That was not your mother,” Achilles says, voice low and serious. “It was a portent from a god. Not a good one, as you can surely guess … But it’s a fate that can be avoided.”

For how long? The Fates already had designs to take his son’s life by violence, and his temper can always usurp reason. Achilles knows that very well. “Please, don’t take up arms in battle, lad. For Molossus and Ophelia’s sakes.”

Maybe it's the brain damage, but all three of them are baffled.

"...What?" Neoptolemus says, squinting at his father in open confusion.

"No gods are interested in me, except maybe Grandma," Pyrrhus says, his little brow furrowed. "And I have to fight sometimes. That's all I'm good at."

"Maybe start from the beginning?" The king frowns thoughtfully as he brings his stylus to his tablet again. "How do you know it was an omen? Who sent it, and what does it mean?"

Mentioning foreign gods feels like too much to put on his son right now, so he gets to the heart of the Morrigan’s interest instead. “I believe you evaded your intended fate. I believe—”

Achilles winces at a swell of emotion and he hugs his son closer. He didn’t lie when he said he loved Pyrrhus. His son’s heart is good and honorable, though hidden away under guarded callousness and aggression.

“You were meant to die,” he says thickly, “and one of the gods cannot abide this subversion. They are responsible for the omen, a portent of your death in battle.”

He knows how impossible this request is, both for a king and the son of a demigod. “If you avoid warring and violence, you may still elude death for a time.”

His father just told him that he's passed his fated death, and that a god is waiting for the opportunity for his life to extinguish in battle. He should have strong feelings about that, shouldn't he? And yet he doesn't, not immediately. The king frowns, letting his stylus rest on his tablet as he contemplates the words he's already written. Neoptolemus pauses his fidgeting, Pyrrhus' face falls into a thoughtful furrow, even as his father clings to him.

The walls of the courtyard ripple. Visions of memories from long ago. Pyrrhus, long before Odysseus returned to Skyros, asking a servant why he would only kneel on folded linen instead of the stone floor, and the servant laughing that he'd understand when he was old enough for his knees to hurt. He remembers thinking without any basis that he wouldn't, because he wouldn't survive to old age. He doesn't know why he was so convinced so early that he'd die young--was it growing up with the legend of his father, fated to die young? Was it childish impulse? The smallest lick of prophecy, bore to him from divine blood?

Kneeling at his father's tomb. Troy, the stink of burning flesh, the stickiness of drying blood on his hands. Holding his mother's hand as she died. Clawing a grave in the earth for Pergamus. Holding Amphialus' cooling body to his bare chest. All the people he's killed, from the respectable warriors who held their ground to the sniveling cowards who cringed before someone their own size to the normal, everyday people who had the bad luck of being in his way. All the times he's wanted to take his own life, all the times he beat and bullied himself into life.

In the swirl of thoughts, there are flecks of luminescent orange, a little bit of Hermes' gift. Not shaping his contemplation, but making connections between thoughts. His father never lost a child, not yet. Not like Pyrrhus has. Pyrrhus knows the anticipation, the grief already burrowing in Achilles' bones. That's what shapes his reaction.

Pyrrhus, Neoptolemus, the King, they're all swept away. The whole stands before his father, taking his hand. Despite the restlessness of his pieces, the whole seems calm.

"If I die soon, my only regret is that I won't see Molossus grow up," he says, looking at his father with solemn earnestness. He's trying to reassure his father, because the loss of his own life doesn't disturb him, but he knows what it's like to see one's child march inevitably to death. "But I've lived my life by the sword, and I've always known that I'd likely die by it. And you know how futile it is to fight the Fates when they've made a decision."

Achilles grips his son’s hand with both of his own. He knows it’s hubris, but … “You have to try, Pyrrhus. Molossus needs you.”

Apollo’s vision burned such a hot scar into Achilles’ shade, it echoes in the dream. The prophecy is a blurred afterimage of an eclipse: Achilles leaving Pyrrhus in Deidamia’s care, Pyrrhus’ true death by Orestes’ hand, Molossus left fatherless. The curse manifests in each generation until it reaches distant Alexander and his own son.

Achilles ineffectually closes his eyes against the vision, but when it fades, he looks at his son. He sees all three of his aspects: the gentle boy, the angry youth, the detached king. If Pyrrhus dies, Molossus will never know his father’s complexities. He’ll be raised on tales of violence and conquest, just as Pyrrhus was before him.

“He needs to know you, lad. Your heart, not your legacy.”

Pyrrhus lets the vision wash over him. He doesn't know where it came from, but he knows his father is sure of its reality. Orestes was supposed to kill him. How strange. And then generation after generation of fatherless warriors until finally someone kills the last of them when he's too young to defend himself.

But his reaction isn't horror. He just... sighs softly, as if releasing a held breath. He's never seen violence as a great evil as many do. To Pyrrhus, violence is a tool. It's a tool he knows how to use, so it's the one he utilizes the most, the same as weavers use looms and carpenters use saws. There's a resigned sadness to his sigh, not because he grieves the violence, the continuation of their shared profession, but because he grieves all the boys who will grow up fatherless like him, until that final child cut down before he can defend himself.

"If I fight the Fates, all I will do is hasten my own ignominious demise." 'Humble' isn't a word that anyone would generally assign to Pyrrhus, not even himself. Yet he didn't inherit his father's stubborn defiance in the face of gods and prophecy. Maybe it was because he was forced early and often to face how truly powerless he was against forces larger and older than him--whether by far away war, disease, snake venom, or ill birth, he's always been powerless to stop death from seizing what he loves. And now, soon, it will be his turn to be seized.

But his heart hurts. It hurts for Molossus, fated to grow up without his father or his mother. It hurts for his own father, trying to defy the Fates from beyond the grave to save his son. Wouldn't Pyrrhus have done the same for any of his children?

Pyrrhus squeezes his father's hand and gently bumps their foreheads together. "I'm just a man, Dad. I'm not going to spend my time fighting Fate. I'll spend it making sure Molossus is taken care of."

Ophelia is good with him. If Pyrrhus marries her, he trusts her to love and nurture Molossus after his death. He just has to make sure there's someone around who can protect both of them when he's gone, lest one of his many enemies choose to exact revenge on them when he's not around to retaliate.

“Please. You can’t surrender.” His jaw sets, stubborn, and he moves his hands to grip Pyrrhus’ upper arms. There must be something they can do … some way to chase this foreign god from Greece. Let her meddle in someone else’s affairs. His son deserves a different fate now, a second chance.

But he hears the exhaustion in Pyrrhus’ voice. He’s spent his life fighting at everyone else’s request. This is more of the same. Asking him to continue is cruel.

I’ll spend it making sure Molossus is taken care of. Those words are the final blow. Tears sting his eyes—pride in his son mixed with shame and regret for himself.

“Oh, lad—” Achilles sighs through his nose and drags Pyrrhus into a painfully tight embrace. He catches his breath thickly and continues, whispering the words into his son’s hair. “Oh, lad. You’re a far better father than I.”

He is exhausted. Exhausted struggling so hard to just stay alive. Just getting from day to day feels like a constant swim against the current sometimes, and even divine blood doesn't make him immune to fatigue.

He'd still fight if his father demanded it. But he's glad he doesn't. Instead, he embraces him, and the painful pressure is reassuring now. It's only after his father speaks that Pyrrhus realizes how closely their stories mirror, how both were fated to die young, and Pyrrhus chooses to spend his time with his son. No other option had even occurred to him.

A part of Pyrrhus wonders why other options had occurred so easily to Achilles, why he hadn't felt the same inexorable need to look out for Pyrrhus as Pyrrhus feels about Molossus, but he presses the thought down for now, wishing instead to just wrap his arms around his father and pour as many years of lost hugs in the embrace as possible.

"You can make it up to me after I die," Pyrrhus murmurs into his dad's shoulder. "We can spend more time together, then. And maybe it'll be easier for me to remember everything you say."

If only he’d seen it sooner: abandoning Troy, raising his son was always the true path to immortality. His selfishness sealed his fate, Pyrrhus’ fate, Molossus’ fate … his decision casts a long shadow into the future.

Somewhere, he hears Hermes and Patroclus, urging him to set aside his gnawing regret. All he can do is march ahead.

“We’ll have plenty of time. An eternity together,” Achilles says, voice still choked with emotion. “You and I. Your mother and your sons …”

He slowly pets the back of Pyrrhus’ curls as tears slip down his cheeks. “Until then, I only ask that you enjoy every moment with Molossus and Ophelia. Swim in the sea as often as you can. Savor every meal.”

All the things that can’t be had in the Underworld.

This isn't what Pyrrhus imagined when he imagined finally meeting his father. But maybe this is better than his shallow fantasies of an instant bond, instant slapped backs and shared drinks and stories. The ache of his father's embrace, his grief could almost be real outside the dream.

"I will, Dad. I promise."

He needs no encouragement to swim in the sea and savor meals, just as he needs no encouragement to hug his son and enjoy the company of his few loved ones. And when he dies, he can die without fear, because he knows that more people he loves are waiting for him in the Underworld.

After the time to contemplate his meeting with his father, after the few but impactful conversations they've had, Pyrrhus can accept that his father regrets choosing to be a hero rather than a father. And that it was a choice, one Pyrrhus could choose to hold against him, but he can't stand the thought of letting that stop him from having a relationship with Achilles.

"I know you're sorry, Dad." Pyrrhus turns his head to press his face against his father's neck. "But I'll be okay. And I don't have regrets."

Things he'd do differently? Sure. If he could do it all over again, he'd throw a pot at Odysseus' head for trying to recruit him, and stay well out of war until he was old enough for it. He'd be more careful about snakes. He'd spend more time with his mother. He'd settle with a wife whose company he delights in far sooner, and not bother with concubines whose forced affection seeps like poison. But regrets? No, for everything he's done, and for everything that's been done to him, Pyrrhus has made his peace.

Strange, he thinks, how at peace both Pyrrhus and Lyra are with death. Lyra makes sense, he supposes, as the daughter of a psychopomp. As to Pyrrhus, death has long been his constant companion …

Meanwhile Achilles, the dauntless hero of Troy, still recoils from the mere thought of fresh grief. He smiles grimly to himself.

“I have many regrets,” Achilles sighs, his breath rustling Pyrrhus’ hair. “If they were kindling, there would be enough to build my pyre twice over …

“Regrets make for a restless afterlife.” His embrace loses its tight desperation with his exhale. His arms relax heavily around his son’s shoulders. “But it brings me peace to know that you have none.”

Pyrrhus relaxes in his father's hold. He's not in a rush to let go, even as Achilles stops squeezing so hard. They have many years of hugs to make up for, after all.

"I think I'm so busy keeping up with the day to day that I don't have time to ruminate." Pyrrhus gives a soft, breathy chuckle against his father's neck. Silver lining to his memory and organization struggles, he supposes. It's hard to spend too much time contemplating the past and his mistakes when it takes so much effort just to contemplate the present. "I can't spend too much time regretting. All I can really do is realize I did something wrong and then focus on doing the next thing better."

When his long dead father isn't talking to him, Pyrrhus generally doesn't think at all about his grief, his history, the things he's done wrong and the things that have been done wrong to him. After all, they're already done. He has no more power over them. If his time and ability are limited, he'd rather use them for something he does have power over.

This is exactly why Pyrrhus endured through so much pain and loss, Achilles thinks. He has the power to let go. Meanwhile, Achilles stubbornly rolls grains of grief into lasting pearls of regret.

He leans back far enough to cup Pyrrhus’ cheek in a calloused hand and examines his son’s brown eyes thoroughly, confirming the honesty he hears in his voice. There’s deep weariness in them, of course, but Achilles doesn’t observe any regret.

The serious set of his face softens into a fond smile. He’s proud, but he can’t take any credit at all for his son’s perseverance or pragmatism.

“You have much to teach me, lad,” he laughs. “In fact, you’ve already given me plenty to think about.”

Pyrrhus gives a soft chuckle, almost bashful. "You don't have to flatter me, Dad. I know I'm no wise man."

Part of Pyrrhus' struggle reflecting on himself manifests as not meditating on his effect on others, which can look like a lack of empathy, but it's also a lack of perspective on the good things he can do for others too. He doesn't fully appreciate how much he protects his servants any better than he appreciates how much he scares those outside of his intimate circle, and he certainly doesn't appreciate how much or little wisdom he could provide a man who died after choosing not to raise his child.

But regardless of his ability to reflect, Pyrrhus likes having his face held by his father like this. He likes whatever affection his father chooses to give him.

"Molossus will live to adulthood. That's a victory." His smile is lopsided, appreciating the bittersweet reality of knowing that his son will die young, as will his grandson and his great-grandson. "And what he does as an adult will be his choice. And whatever he does with it, I'll be proud that he made it himself."

“Wisdom isn’t the exclusive domain of philosophers and sages.” As it happens, even young godlings and mischievous little girls can be very wise.

Achilles likes this complete version of his son: affectionate, determined, pragmatic. He wonders what his son could have become if his youth wasn’t consumed by war, if he’d had a father, if he hadn’t suffered so much injury and loss. But he wouldn’t be the same man, would he?

To love his son is to make peace with the circumstances that shaped him. Pyrrhus has already learned to show Molossus grace, no matter how fate shapes him.

Achilles presses a kiss to Pyrrhus’ forehead. “He’s lucky to have you for a father. Truly.”

His hands drop to find both of his son’s once more. Hands stained with the same blood, coarse with the same callouses. Hands that have plucked lyre strings into song and threaded delicate shells into tokens of affection. “I love you, Pyrrhus. You’ve grown into a fine lad.”

Pyrrhus isn't used to smiling much, but he smiles now, almost shy as the dream around him warms with his father's praise and love. It's all he ever wanted. It smooths something jagged in his chest to have it.

"I love you too, Dad." And it's honest. Pyrrhus has always loved his father, even though he's never met him. Even though he used his father's visage to abuse himself, the thought of living up to his memory kept him alive in times that nothing else could.

He squeezes his father's hands. The courtyard shifts just a little, bleeding into a beach, as if the liminal palace were built where the sea lapped the shore.

For all the vulnerability and emotional fallout, Pyrrhus is happy his father sought him out that night. He's happy he gets to know Achilles the man, rather than just Achilles the story.

Pyrrhus looks out at the dream sea, at the foam lapping up against the courtyard pillars. His thoughts turn to the future his father has portented, to the long trail of young deaths in their family.

"...What does it feel like to die?" From anyone else the question might sound frightened, but from Pyrrhus, it's clear he's just curious. And his mind is already working, thinking of the things he'll need to do, and the tasks write themselves around him as if on a wax tablet. He needs to send a messenger to Corinth when he wakes up to find Pherenike's child so he can repay her before he can't. He needs to send Lykos to arrange for Ophelia's bride price so he can ask for her hand properly. He should send a slave to the market, too, to get ink and parchment. He remembers how much he craved anything from his father growing up, and he wants to write letters for Molossus to read as he grows. He may not be able to see his son grow up, but he can do everything in his power to still be there for him in spirit if not in body.

And he should go with Molossus and Galene to the beach to gather seashells for three more bracelets. Maybe if he teaches Galene how to make the bracelets, she'll teach Molossus when he's old enough.

Achilles feels the courtyard’s worn stones shift into soft stone beneath his feet, like the dream has released a long-held breath. He hums at the question.

“Death is different for each of us. Whether we welcome it, or fight it. Whether it’s sudden or prolonged,” he begins. Achilles has spoken with may people about their deaths. An old woman described it as falling into a deep, restful sleep. A fisherman said it felt like coming unmoored from his body and drifting away on a riptide. A child said it felt like stumbling and breaking like a vase.

“It felt like sloughing off heavy armor. A dizzying lightness, then abrupt and absolute silence. The chaos of battle no longer reached my ears.” He brings a hand to his own chest. “I never understood how loud my own mortal body was until my heart and breath had stopped.”

Achilles’ eyes look toward the sea. Those final days were a numb blur. “After all that had happened, I welcomed the stillness. It was my fate as foretold, and half of my soul had already been lost.”

Pyrrhus listens in quiet contemplation, keeping hold of one of Achilles' hands. A part of him twists to hear his father call someone else half of his soul, but he pushes that part aside. He doesn't care to hear about the man who Achilles wanted to spend time with so much more than the mother of his child or his son--another piece of the resentment he'll have to deal with one day, but doesn't want to face today--but he does know what it's like to lose someone and see death as welcome release from the grief.

"It sounds peaceful," he says. Yes, taking off heavy armor and having complete silence sounds very peaceful to him. When his head hurts the worst, it feels like every little noise is a nail hammered into his temple. He'd give a lot to have complete silence then, to be free of the vulnerabilities of a body.

"What's it like in the Underworld? For the dead?" He watches his father's face. Not out of any distrust of his answer--only because he wants to try to memorize what it looks like. He forgot the details of his father's face after Athens, and he never quite remembers them when he wakes up either, fighting as he is to remember other things long enough to commit them to wax. "You said you work for the gods, but surely most people don't do that."

He wonders if gods are frequent sights in the Underworld. Achilles described Hermes as cheerful and friendly, and he'd probably be the one taking his own soul to the Underworld, so he doesn't anticipate the trip down to be unpleasant. But he wonders what it will be like once he's there, once his deeds are weighed and he's sent to his own afterlife. Do people do anything, if they don't have work? Pyrrhus doesn't know what he'd do with himself if he had no headaches anymore, but no more work headaches would prevent him from doing. Maybe he'd try to learn how to play the lyre, if they have those down there.

“It depends on how you are judged. I suspect you will be given to Elysium, where you can expect tournaments and feasting.” A warrior’s specific deeds in battle scarcely matter, so long as he won enough renown and didn’t offend any gods. Achilles isn’t sure how well Pyrrhus will enjoy Elysium, spending his eternity with the shades of men who both used and shunned him at Troy.

If Pyrrhus’ obvious resentment for Pat ever cools, they would probably enjoy some quiet commiseration.

“The Underworld is much like the stories say. It doesn’t boast the same splendors as the world of the living—no sea, no sky, no seasons, precious few animals—but it still inspires awe.”

He senses the note of concern in his son’s question. “If you’re concerned about how to occupy your time, arrangements can be made. The Underworld needs skilled guards to keep shades in and the living out.” He carefully doesn’t mention that the last living person to enter the Underworld was Pyrrhus’ half-sister. Instead, he runs a thumb over the bump that’s formed on Pyrrhus’ finger from many hours of writing. “Your experience with the stylus and tablet would lend well to clerical work. There’s plenty of that to be done.”

Pyrrhus listens, the dim half-thought imaginings he has of the Underworld glittering in the dream sea. He's never spent too much time meditating on what the Underworld must look like--he imagines it's quite dark, and probably not very colorful. Unless the shades of the dead take it upon themselves to make it prettier. He supposes it'd make sense if they did, since the living does the same on the surface.

"I'll see how I feel at the time." He leans his head against Achilles' shoulder, affectionate in his quiet contemplation. "Maybe tournaments and feasting will be more fun when I don't have a head to hurt."

He remembers enjoying watching athletic competitions when he was a child. These days he avoids them--the screams of the crowd and the harsh sun tends to prompt a bad head day.

He gives Achilles a gentle nudge, a small attempt at playfulness. It's a little stilted--Pyrrhus doesn't have a wealth of people his own age he'd be playful with--but he tries anyway. "Maybe we could spar. See if we're still sharp after we die."

Achilles smiles fondly and strokes his son’s curls. He likes this optimism; maybe death will be a blessing in some ways. Maybe Achilles will actually attend more feasts along with his son. Let the Greeks see that Pyrrhus is no monster.

“You’ll find that I’m woefully out of practice,” he laughs. Particularly now that he no longer trains the prince.

“Which arms are you best at?” Achilles asks, head cocked. “Spear, blades, bow and arrow?”

If Pyrrhus was anything like him, fighting came as naturally as breathing or walking or swimming. Mastering a new weapon or technique only took a matter of days before the weight, the movement, the balance was second nature.

But even demigods need someone to get them started. Lycomedes had few fighting men, and none of them skilled. “Who was responsible for your training?”

"Spears or blades, if I mean to be in battle. But I've never struggled finding a weapon." Pyrrhus sighs softly in contentment as his father strokes his hair. The dream flashes with fragments of memories--moments when conversations turn violent in a split second, when someone thinks to ambush him and within a blink he's plunged his stylus between their eyes. He remembers flashes of his clumsy introduction to war, to dropping his spear because he didn't realize how slippery blood would be, to using whatever he could reach as a weapon and killing people just as easily as if he'd still had it. Shards of pottery, chunks of marble, even the folds of a dead woman's chiton was easily and swiftly twisted into a weapon fit to tangle and pull an enemy down where he could stomp on their head.

That's when he even uses a weapon. These days, he finds his bare hands are more than enough if he wishes to use them. Maybe his confidence in the ease of violence is what would have spelled his doom fighting Orestes.

"There was a man that Grandfather used to train up the boys. He wasn't all that good, but he was able to teach me the basics," Pyrrhus says. There are memories there too that fade in and out. Pyrrhus was trained with other boys his age, the few handful of potential warriors on Skyros. At the time he'd been hopeful that they'd play with him after training, since it was no fun playing tag by himself, but it was clear that they didn't like him. He didn't understand why at the time, but in retrospect, he suspects how easily he dominated them in sparring was intimidating, and he also suspects that people spread rumors he was a bastard and his father never intended to come back. It's the sort of thing parents don't want near their proper citizen children, lest a bastard one day think to make new bastards with their daughters.

The dream flickers with a half-memory. The one time a boy dared say that to his face, Pyrrhus shoved him off a ledge on the beach. The boy fell on some sharp rocks and screamed and cried, and at first Pyrrhus was scared he might have hurt him badly, but the boy only had scraped his knees and the seawater got into the scrapes, so Pyrrhus hadn't felt bad for laughing at him and his caterwauling. The boy made up stories and said that Pyrrhus had tried to scoop his eyeballs out with a spoon and scared all the other boys in training, and Pyrrhus didn't have a chance to repair his reputation before he was deemed too advanced to get anything more out of training with everyone else.

It was for the best, he supposes. He doubts the sorts of kids who sincerely believed he went around plucking out eyeballs would have been good friends.

"I was mostly self-taught after I outgrew him. Diomedes and Odysseus showed me a thing or two. Philoctetes wanted to show me some tricks with a bow, but there weren't any my size."

Pyrrhus’ fighting instincts strike Achilles as raw and efficient. Like a hungry lion moved by pure survival. Rage moved Achilles that way—made him ignore the usual ceremony of battle in favor of shedding blood as expediently as possible.

It disturbs him that his son was always this way. Pyrrhus was cast as a monster even before he landed at Troy. A bastard. Isolated. His untamed strength feared instead of celebrated.

He should have been there for him, Achilles thinks, to give Pyrrhus legitimacy, to shape his divine strength and cool the anger that was passed down in his blood. He could be a son, a friend, a student, not simply a weapon.

“What will you do when you encounter their shades in Elysium?” Achilles asks gently. “Odysseus, Diomedes … the other Greeks?”

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Dreamwidth ate my comment ;.;

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