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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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?”

"I don't have quarrel with most of them," Pyrrhus says, shrugging. The memories flicker. He doesn't perceive the Greeks as being cruel to him. Passively accepting his exploitation, withholding support he needed, not giving him thought, yes. But if held anger for everyone who'd ever chosen not to intervene when he needed an adult, his heart would never stop burning. "I'd speak to them if they spoke to me. But I doubt they would. Diomedes, I'd like to thank for making sure I had armor. I might have already thanked him, but it's hard to remember much after the battle."

Most of the aftermath is just vague impressions and colors. A few spots of clarity, a couple memories vivid enough to make an impression, but mostly smears of what he's pretty sure happened and what he knows must have happened for him to go back home.

"Menelaus--he broke his oath to me. I intend to make him pay the price for it," he says. Menelaus had promised him Hermione if he fought, he fought, and he gave Hermione to someone else. At his father's instruction, he won't go to take Hermione back (which seems to have saved his life, and led him to a worthier wife instead), but he's still personally offended that a so-called king gave him so little in exchange for his life, and had the audacity to back out of the deal. It's the sort of quarrel he'll want to handle physically, though he doubts death sticks after one has already died.

"Odysseus, on the other hand, I intend to take off his head once for every headache I've had since Troy," he says casually. Perhaps he doesn't think the other Greeks owed him anything, but Odysseus was the one who recruited him. If anyone was responsible for his well being, it was him, and Odysseus showed utter disregard for whether Pyrrhus lived or died. He understands why--Odysseus' goal was to sack Troy and get home as efficiently as possible, and Pyrrhus was yet another child to pile on the sacrifices they'd already made--but Pyrrhus paid the price for Odysseus' callous practicality, and he has the means to avenge himself.

Achilles hums his sympathy. The both of them were ill-used by the House of Atreus … and Odysseus as their agent. Most of the other Greeks were oath-bound to retrieve Helen and every bit as eager to end the war.

“I’ve exchanged both words and blows with Odysseus since last we spoke. I would not fault you for more. Much more.” Odysseus’ best weapon is his silver tongue and after only a few words, Achilles had the urge to rip it out completely. He settled for a solid haymaker to shut him up before dumping the tactician in the Styx.

The other veterans laughed, pleased by the return of “old Achilles” even if the reason for it was baffling. Why was he suddenly so worked up about his strange bastard son? Achilles stubbornly didn’t offer any explanation.

“His son was about your age, abandoned for the same war.” Achilles huffs in renewed anger. “How could he not see his own lad in you?”

Pyrrhus gives a soft, amused huff of air. "My only regret is that I couldn't see you do it." It doesn't bear thinking what Pyrrhus would do to someone who did to Molossus what Odysseus did to him.

At the question, Pyrrhus turns his head to look at his father, eyebrows slightly raised in surprise. Maybe surprise at his father's anger on his behalf, or surprise at his father's lack of comprehension.

"I'm sure he did. That's why it was so easy to do whatever it took to go home to him."

There is no hint of Hermes in the thoughts that make that connection. This is something Pyrrhus understood without any divine help after he'd grown enough to realize the full implications of taking him to Troy. Pyrrhus may not understand friendship and companionship, but he understands the kind of cold pragmatism that allows a person to kill a child, and he understands the lines a father will cross for a son.

The memories flash. Astyanax. He doesn't actually remember killing the boy, nor does he quite remember killing Priam, but he believes the people who say he did. At his age, their ages hadn't seemed special, nor their deaths any more or less brutal than all the other ones he had doled out. But the adults treated it as very bad, and told him he had to go to Medea to be cleansed of the guilt lest the wrath of the gods follow him to Skyros. He might have forgotten that he'd killed the boy entirely if it weren't for Andromache.

He understands better now, what he did. He's accepted it just as he's accepted all the other ways he breached the etiquette of war as a child. But he has intimate understanding of what it takes to kill children, and it allows him to understand Odysseus.

Achilles hums again, but the note isn’t one of comprehension. The only similar moral crossroads he faced was with Priam. He could have taken the king prisoner, perhaps even ended the war, but he recognized his own father in the man. What’s more, Achilles and Priam were the only two people in that camp who knew the agony of fresh, devastating grief. Easing the king’s grief lifted a part of his own.

For all the ways Achilles and Pyrrhus are similar, pragmatism is the thing that sets them apart. Achilles’ judgement has always been strongly swayed by emotion. Love, anger, grief. It’s a wonder Athena was his patron and not Aphrodite or Ares.

It occurs to him that the tale of Priam’s visit didn’t make it far beyond his own camp. “It’s true. A father will do anything for his son … Did you know that King Priam once visited my shelter at Troy?”

Pyrrhus starts a little in surprise, looking to his father with wide eyes. "Really? When? Why?"

Why would Priam enter the shelter of his enemy's greatest warrior, and why would Achilles let him go unharmed? Achilles has proven himself more thoughtful and reflective than Pyrrhus ever imagined, but he would have never imagined the father described to him in legend as being one to show mercy to his enemies.

Pyrrhus' drive parallels but doesn't quite match his father's. Pyrrhus is driven by loyalty and the duty he feels to others--loyalty to his mother, to his absent father, the duty he believes he owes to those who serve him loyally in turn. For him, loyalty is an expression of love, the only one he's confident he can perform well.

It's only after he thinks on it for a moment when it dawns on him. "Was it for Hector's body?"

It's the only thing he can think of that would drive an old man into the tent of his enemy. Wouldn't Pyrrhus do the same for his own? But from what he knows of the story, he's surprised his father didn't run Priam through.

Achilles isn’t sure why he mentioned this at all. Maybe to impart some kernel of knowledge to his son without being prescriptive? Pyrrhus can take from it what he will.

He nods. “It was for his son’s body, yes. It was an act of cruelty, of barbarism on my part, to keep it from him and from Andromache. From all of his family.”

Achilles shares his own glimpses of memory: Xanthus and Balius’ hooves churning the field outside of Troy, Hector’s limp body in tow behind the chariot. Come evening, that same body left carelessly at the edge of his shelter to be chewed by rats and dogs. “My fury was aimed squarely at Hector. I killed him in battle, I claimed my retribution. To deface his corpse and deny him rites only prolonged my own grief.”

The dream offers a glimpse of Priam, clasping Achilles’ knee, not as a king, but as a devastated father. “It was a great act of love and sacrifice to cross the field of battle and enter my shelter. For Priam to prostrate himself before me …”

Pyrrhus leans against his father, watching quietly the pieces of Achilles' life he's allowed to witness. His face doesn't shift at the gruesome way Hector's corpse degrades, numb as he is to the grotesque reality of violence, but there's a twitch of pity in his heart for Priam as he watches the old king kneel and plead for his son's body. Were Pyrrhus himself sapped by age and unable to take his son by force, he'd also be ready to beg to save his son from an eternity trapped outside the Underworld. In that, he can respect the king for being a devoted father.

He frowns, his brow furrowing as he watches the memory of Priam. "...I don't think I even knew what he looked like."

That doesn't sit quite right with Pyrrhus. There are very few things owed from a killer to the person he kills, but this feels like one of them. He killed the man, so he should remember his face. But he doesn't. Killing the king of Troy was about as remarkable to him as killing anyone else, and smeared away in the recesses of his forgetful mind. It's easier to remember killing Aspasia's old master and presenting his head to her, and the man was much less worthy of remembering.

But he notices the flinching shame of his father, remembering this. Remembering the grief of Priam, bent low and begging his enemy. How did he even get into the tent without someone in the Greek camp seeing him?

"Are you proud of any of it?" It's an honest question. Pyrrhus cocks his head at the memory of Priam. "Not Hector. I mean any of the war."

The way his father was described to him, Pyrrhus had expected some boasting. At the very least, respect for himself and for the worthy opponents he fought. But Achilles consistently seems full of regret and grief whenever he talks about the war and his choice to stay there.

The gap in Pyrrhus’ memory is understandable, not just due to his headaches. Achilles knows how it is in the thick of battle. The faces of his individual victims are mostly an anonymous blur—particularly in those moments when he was blinded by his own rage.

Achilles meets Pyrrhus’ weight and turns over is question with the careful consideration it’s due. He knows how much Pyrrhus’ own purpose hinged on finishing what his father started.

“I was proud at the start of it all. Too proud, perhaps.” A memory blossoms: Achilles, glowing with youthful divinity, surrounded by his adoring Myrmidons. “Like you, I was made for war. Killing was effortless. I was praised and rewarded and feared for my skill. Who wouldn’t brim with pride?

“But I suspect you want to know if I’m proud now. And … to that, I say no.” Memories blur into each other: days, weeks, months, years. Raiding villages along the Troad, battling at the walls of Troy like an inexorable tide, the shelters and ships along the beach rooting into a makeshift city. “What have I to show for my ten years at Troy? Fishermen and farmers feed hungry villages, stonemasons build beautiful cities, scholars illuminate the world with knowledge. What does a warrior accomplish? I wasn’t defending my kingdom against assault. I killed hundreds, thousands to retrieve another man’s wife.”

"You have a legend to show," Pyrrhus says. He says it simply, as straightforward as a fisherman's catch or a stonemason's construction. Achilles' story is told across Greece, and is fated to be told forevermore. Pottery is painted with his likeness, mosaics made to commemorate his deeds, songs sung about his story.

Pyrrhus hums thoughtfully. He watches the memories he's allowed to witness. His father looks different in the memories, cockier, like a proud bird showing plumage rather than a warrior focused on the task before him. Maybe that's the difference between them. Pyrrhus sees violence as a mundane task, a means to an end, and his father saw it as something grander, and now his father seems to see it as a farce. "Seems a pity to not be proud, after everything."

Pyrrhus isn't going to take his father's feelings away from him. Achilles has the right to feel however he does about the choices he made and the consequences that came of them. But after all the sacrifices he made, Pyrrhus can't help but feel that the greatest tragedy is that Achilles regrets them all.

Pyrrhus finds his father's hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. His own memories play in and out. Sparring with other boys in Skyros, effortlessly taking down men twice his size in Troy, effortlessly cutting through resistance in Epirus. It was almost tedious, how easy it all was. "I can't say I'm too proud of my fighting either, really. It was never something I had to dedicate myself to. I didn't work for the skill--my blood did."

It's easy for him. It seems wrong to be proud of something that's so easy because of who his father happens to be. There are more flashes in the dream--Aspasia sitting next to him in his grief and talking like they're equals, Lykos begging him to buy Galene knowing that it was out of line to ask, Galene taking a broom and smacking a snake that got too close to Molossus even though she was so scared of snakes she was crying--people who have no means to defend themselves, no divine blood or combat skill to speak of, who still have the courage to act anyway. Pyrrhus respects them more than his peers, who so often snivel and shake in his mere presence, and he admires their ability to stand up and keep their heads high even when they know how easily they can be knocked down.

“If someone can learn from my tale—if they learn the perils of hubris, if they learn to value those they love over glory and wealth—I’ll be pleased.” That’s truly the only silver lining he can pull from his time at Troy. Hopefully the bards know better than to glorify his stubborn pride.

“You’re exactly right, lad. True pride comes from doing what’s difficult. From overcoming struggle.” Achilles smiles, pleased to hear more of his son’s wisdom. The memories of Troy evaporate, giving way to one that might appear strange to a mortal: it features the labyrinthine Underworld full of shadows, danger, and melancholy beauty. In it, Achilles patiently adjusts a young man’s stance and grip as he wields all manner of weapons. That same pupil—a godling, by his strange features—appears before Achilles bloody and beaten, again and again and again. But determination never leaves his mismatched eyes.

“You share the same dogged persistence as my pupil. He sought to escape the Underworld and find his mother.” Achilles presses an affectionate kiss to Pyrrhus’ temple. “You fight well, but living was a challenge. You kept at it, though, even when the Fates took so much from you.”

Pyrrhus looks curiously at the memory of the young god. He's never seen one besides his own grandmother before, and this one seems very... human in comparison. If it weren't for the red eye and the burning feet, Pyrrhus might have mistaken him for a demigod instead. The thought that his father is so admired by gods that he was allowed to mentor one makes a bloom of pride in his chest.

But as he watches his father teach the godling, there's also a lick of envy, wishing his father could have also taught him the same way. That his father could have adjusted his stance, or critiqued his technique, or just greeted him with a smile every time he came back from a challenge. But what's done is done, and they'll make up for lost time when he's dead. Pyrrhus closes his eyes at the kiss, allowing a ghost of a smile to dance across his face as he happily soaks in the affection and pride his father now showers him with.

"Not sure how impressive it really is, but I'm glad you think so," he says dryly. He really isn't sure how impressive it is that he has such difficulty doing what everyone else finds so easy, but maybe it's the same as admiring Galene's sloppy swings with a broom when he can kill a man with his bare hands in a blink. "Has he ever succeeded? Breaking out and finding his mother?"

Pyrrhus can confess a soft spot for sons devoted to their mothers.

Achilles is beset by his own fresh regret. The first boy he taught should have been his own son. While he was encouraging Zagreus onwards, Pyrrhus was fighting his own battles alone.

“Indeed he has, but only after many, many painful attempts, and with help from a great number of allies. His father opposed such efforts at every step.” Achilles hates that Pyrrhus labored so long under the harsh scrutiny of a similar father, albeit one of his own imagining.

Perhaps it was even worse, though: Pyrrhus’ imagined Achilles had all the more power to target weaknesses and self-loathing flaws with brutal accuracy. The mind is a terrible thing.

“… But the Prince’s mother has since returned,” Achilles continues, “and his relationship with his father has mended. Somewhat.”

He gives a grim, huffing laugh. “If it comes as any consolation, divine families are every bit as complicated as those of mortals.”

Pyrrhus wishes that he could have had what this god had from Achilles. But if anyone should have what's denied a mortal, it should be a god, and it should be one who clearly appreciated Achilles so well.

"The stories certainly make them sound complicated," Pyrrhus says dryly. "Hard to imagine things getting more complicated than having so many siblings some of them start marrying."

Pyrrhus was an only child--he enjoyed being the apple of his mother's eye, but he imagines childhood would have been less lonely with a little brother to roughhouse with--but of all the things to envy from the gods, their giant family and the drama that ensues isn't one of them.

"Even if I had a good memory, I think I'd start losing track of everyone's names." Maybe that flirts with sacrilegious to say, but surely gods don't punish you for what you say in dreams.

“I admit,” Achilles laughs, “remembering each of your great aunts’ names and who they belonged to was a challenge.” All but a few of the fussier Nereids were ready to forgive their nephew’s foibles. The poor boy was half-mortal after all.

Someday Pyrrhus will learn just how entangled Achilles is in the business of gods … and why. He’ll learn that Achilles had a hand in Zeus’ downfall and Ares’ imprisonment. For now, he only says, “They are intimidating and powerful beings, but they still hunger for their family’s love and approval. Learning as much made me appreciate them all the more.”

Particularly when he found that the most intimidating of the Olympians, Athena and Apollo, have such a soft spot for Hermes. Of course, Hermes in his turn craved that acceptance.

“Sometimes mortals mistake that hunger for weakness.” He is, of course, thinking about the parts of Pyrrhus that are still mistrustful and guarded. “But seeking and giving love is an act of bravery.”

In truth, Achilles is also thinking of himself: loving his son has meant opening old wounds and reckoning with pain and regret.

Pyrrhus hears what's unsaid, the lessons his father is trying to impart upon him. There's a ripple, a strain--the tension of three parts threatening to split him into pieces again. The boy eagerly embracing his father's affection and agreeing that he's lonely and wants to be loved, the warrior snapping at the implication that he hungers for love, hungers for anything he can't take, the king ready to clam up and remind him that nothing is free, his father didn't come here for nothing, he wants something and his affection and trust is the way to get it.

Pyrrhus closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. There's a pulse of pain behind the eye as he steadies himself, trying to keep every part of himself in tandem. He doesn't want to split into pieces again, doesn't want the chaos and headache of going in three different directions all at once.

"Tell me something about the gods. Something that the rest of us wouldn't know." The sudden change in topic may have seemed nonsensical if they were in the real world, where all of Pyrrhus' sickness is confined to his own head. But in the dream, there's a distinct sense of him flinching away and avoiding something that threatens his fragile stability. There's a sense of familiarity to it--he's had to back away from dangerous thoughts and topics many times, so much that he barely notices himself doing it. Avoidance is just as much a coping mechanism as emotionally brutalizing himself with the ghost of his father. "If they are so much like humans, there must be something amusing about them. Or just one. Did your pupil ever try to kick you with those fire feet during spars? Are they as hot as they look?"

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